The Australian
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
FIRST, a simple illustration of how the politics of climate change has changed the dynamics of national politics.
Here’s Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane speaking on the Sunday program two months ago: “I am a sceptic of the connection between emissions and climate change”.
Now listen to Macfarlane fronting the 7.30 Report on Monday night: “Well, let’s get a few things on the table to start with, Kerry. Firstly, in terms of climate change, I agree that climate change is happening and that global warming is happening. I also agree that CO2 emissions and greenhouse gas emissions are too high and have to be lowered… there is a link between human habitation and global warming’’.
You’d have to think the timing of Macfarlane’s public volte-face had something to do with the release of Sir Nicholas Stern’s apocalyptic report warning global warming has reached crisis stage and could cost trillions of dollars to address (Fix global warming now, or pay later).
As the British government, which commissioned the Stern report, flags lobbying Australia to sign up to a global carbon trading market, John Howard remains defiant, defending the government’s green credentials and advocating the pursuit of a nuclear power option in Australia (PM defiant despite global warming alarm).
Labor, holding a steady two-party-preferred lead in Newspoll, sniffs an issue set to surge during the election year.
Here’s Kim Beazley arriving at parliament this morning: “John Howard is totally backward-looking on this. He doesn’t believe it. He looks at the glass being half empty whenever the issue is raised with him. Now that he understands that his road is a road not only to potential disaster for this country, but political disaster for himself, he’s starting to try and use the language. But he doesn’t know how to. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s too backward-looking to be able to handle it”.
Is this, to borrow a horrible cliche, the tipping point? Have the global warming sceptics lost the political argument? Is the government’s U-turn on climate change convincing?
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Q&A: Stern report on climate change
BBC News
31 October, 2006
Q&A: Stern report on climate change
Power firms have to cut emissions by 60-70%, the report says
The world faces an economic collapse on the level of a World War or a depression if climate change is not averted, according to a report by economist Sir Nicholas Stern.
Here, the BBC News website's business editor Tim Weber and environment correspondent Richard Black answer a selection of readers' questions.
Surely things like energy-saving light bulbs and forcing people to ride bicycles is a way to reduce emissions. Why does this government think that the only way to solve a problem is raising tax?
Richard Scott, Iver, UK
Richard Black: The argument used by some politicians and economists is that regulation is less efficient than setting up market mechanisms. This is why we have the European Emissions Trading Scheme rather than, for example, legislation banning short-haul flights or mandatory standards for vehicle fuel efficiency.
Stern is quite clear on the need for regulation but sees it primarily as setting the framework for market mechanisms. Another view of the reluctance to regulate can be found here:
Consumer choice and climate change
Gas bubbles trapped in ice store valuable climatic information
Are we going to be stuck with these taxes for life? When this country's emissions targets are met does that mean the taxes will go away?
Robert, West London
Tim Weber: We don't know yet what the new green tax regime will look like. As you point out correctly, a resounding success on the green front would mean that the "tax base" for green taxes would simply disappear. But don't bet on it.
Most tax proposals envisage that green taxes will simply shift the tax burden: green taxes will rise while other taxes will fall. Whether that's a realistic assumption is doubtful.
But whatever the regime, the government needs money to pay for education, health, defence and the rest of its budget. If the green tax base shrinks, chances are that green targets (and taxes) will be adjusted accordingly.
The UK contributes to a little over 2% of global emissions so how does our paying tax change the behaviour of China, India, the rest of Asia and the USA?
Martin, London
Tim Weber: Well, the UK tax regime hits UK tax payers only - it does not reach beyond the shores of these islands. Having said that, by setting an example the UK might change other countries' behaviour.
Too often governments dodge green laws by insisting that other countries move first. If the UK goes green, other large EU countries are likely to follow suit. And the five-year plans of both China and India already put much more emphasis on protecting the environment.
I drive 37 miles to work every day, I have no choice. My job skills are not needed locally. There is no bus and I work flexi-time so a lift share won't work. Will these "green" taxes take people like me into account?
Tog, Calne, United Kingdom
Tim Weber: You may well be one of the losers of green taxation.
Remember the fuel protests a few years back, when both truck drivers and people living in the countryside protested against high fuel taxes? Given your daily commute, you are very likely to pay more. But don't worry too much yet, the fine print for the green tax regime has not yet been written.
The Earth's climate moves in cycles, we get global warming, we get global cooling. Most this cycle is not 'man-made' but natural. How can you prove that what is happening is man made?
JR, United Kingdom
Richard Black: The Earth has been going through regular cycles of glaciation and warmer periods for at least the last 800,000 years, each cycle lasting for about 100,000 years. The cycling is presumably driven by differences in the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface, although solar variation is clearly amplified by mechanisms that are not completely understood.
What is happening now does not appear to be part of that cycle. The timing is wrong, the speed of change looks too abrupt:
CO2 'highest for 650,000 years'
There is a robust mechanism explaining why elevated levels of greenhouse gases will produce higher temperatures - it is accepted by scientists sceptical of the view that disaster looms.
And there is circumstantial evidence - the fast warming is happening at the one time in those 800,000 years when six and a half billion humans populate the planet, when there has been major loss of forest cover and widespread use of fossil fuels.
The concept of absolute proof is problematical in science - the only thing to do is read the evidence, not the spin, and make up your own mind.
We have massive taxation on petrol, yet people still buy big cars. Nobody buys rubbish to fill their bins, it comes with the products people want. When is the government going to change people's mindset with regard to pollution - rather than just hike taxes?
Scot, London, UK
Richard Black: The government has set up a project and a fund to persuade people of the case for personal action on climate change - you can find details at:
Defra climate change project
The government would also argue that it is setting an example, by measures including requiring the carbon offsetting of ministerial flights.
HAVE YOUR SAY
Tiny changes we make now can save millions of lives
Mark, London
Send us your views
Green taxes will not make the slightest difference to climate change. If they want to provide incentives, why don't they REDUCE tax for the lower polluters?
Justin Ticker, England
Tim Weber: That's just what the chancellor did in his most recent Budget, when he dramatically cut the vehicle excise duty for a range of low-polluting cars.
Having said that, an annual saving of £50 or £100 is not nearly enough an incentive to change the behaviour of people who buy high-emission vehicles like four-wheel drives or fast cars.
And if we look at the big ticket items, the recently introduced Europe-wide carbon emissions trading regime actually is some form of tax reduction for lower polluters.
But let's get real: the current green tax regime has failed to make a serious impact on all of us -polluters both big and small.
And if we accept that public services have to be paid from taxes that come from somewhere, then higher green taxes are more likely to do the trick. Let's just hope that the chancellor of the day will reduce other taxes to ensure that overall the tax burden won't rise.
OK, so If air travel is such a bad thing for the environment, as we are being told, can we look forward to the proposed airport expansion schemes in the UK being stopped?
Kaye, England
Tim Weber: Good question, but there is no good answer. Right now air travel faces hardly any green taxes.
Ultimately this is about supply and demand. If people fly less, the airport expansion schemes will be redundant. But it will be a bold politician who tells his Ryanair and Easyjet loving voters that their next holiday in France or Spain will cost them much more.
At-a-glance: Stern Review
Analysis: A stark warning
Will Stern make a difference?
Why aren't the government encouraging the use of ethanol and other bio fuels most diesels can run on them now?
Nicholas Ford, Benfleet, United Kingdom
Tim Weber: For starters biofuels are a pretty expensive way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It costs about 35p to produce a litre of biofuel. That in itself is not the problem, though.
To make biofuels a success, three things have to be in place:
Supply: Farmers first have to produce enough of the stuff; this would require a dramatic restructuring of global agriculture.
Demand: We would require a massive publicity campaign to persuade consumers to use it and tell them whether their car is suited for this fuel.
Logistics: The biggest problem, though, will be to persuade the owners of petrol stations - oil companies and supermarket chains - to make the massive investments needed to store biofuel (with a stainless steel tank going for £120,000 a pop). In a limited trial currently running in Somerset it took massive financial incentives to persuade several supermarkets to sell bio-ethanol at their forecourts.
And not everybody believes that biofuels are good for you. Some experts are warning that a massive investment in biofuel could lead to food shortages elsewhere. For now, the government is still trying to make up its mind on biofuels.
31 October, 2006
Q&A: Stern report on climate change
Power firms have to cut emissions by 60-70%, the report says
The world faces an economic collapse on the level of a World War or a depression if climate change is not averted, according to a report by economist Sir Nicholas Stern.
Here, the BBC News website's business editor Tim Weber and environment correspondent Richard Black answer a selection of readers' questions.
Surely things like energy-saving light bulbs and forcing people to ride bicycles is a way to reduce emissions. Why does this government think that the only way to solve a problem is raising tax?
Richard Scott, Iver, UK
Richard Black: The argument used by some politicians and economists is that regulation is less efficient than setting up market mechanisms. This is why we have the European Emissions Trading Scheme rather than, for example, legislation banning short-haul flights or mandatory standards for vehicle fuel efficiency.
Stern is quite clear on the need for regulation but sees it primarily as setting the framework for market mechanisms. Another view of the reluctance to regulate can be found here:
Consumer choice and climate change
Gas bubbles trapped in ice store valuable climatic information
Are we going to be stuck with these taxes for life? When this country's emissions targets are met does that mean the taxes will go away?
Robert, West London
Tim Weber: We don't know yet what the new green tax regime will look like. As you point out correctly, a resounding success on the green front would mean that the "tax base" for green taxes would simply disappear. But don't bet on it.
Most tax proposals envisage that green taxes will simply shift the tax burden: green taxes will rise while other taxes will fall. Whether that's a realistic assumption is doubtful.
But whatever the regime, the government needs money to pay for education, health, defence and the rest of its budget. If the green tax base shrinks, chances are that green targets (and taxes) will be adjusted accordingly.
The UK contributes to a little over 2% of global emissions so how does our paying tax change the behaviour of China, India, the rest of Asia and the USA?
Martin, London
Tim Weber: Well, the UK tax regime hits UK tax payers only - it does not reach beyond the shores of these islands. Having said that, by setting an example the UK might change other countries' behaviour.
Too often governments dodge green laws by insisting that other countries move first. If the UK goes green, other large EU countries are likely to follow suit. And the five-year plans of both China and India already put much more emphasis on protecting the environment.
I drive 37 miles to work every day, I have no choice. My job skills are not needed locally. There is no bus and I work flexi-time so a lift share won't work. Will these "green" taxes take people like me into account?
Tog, Calne, United Kingdom
Tim Weber: You may well be one of the losers of green taxation.
Remember the fuel protests a few years back, when both truck drivers and people living in the countryside protested against high fuel taxes? Given your daily commute, you are very likely to pay more. But don't worry too much yet, the fine print for the green tax regime has not yet been written.
The Earth's climate moves in cycles, we get global warming, we get global cooling. Most this cycle is not 'man-made' but natural. How can you prove that what is happening is man made?
JR, United Kingdom
Richard Black: The Earth has been going through regular cycles of glaciation and warmer periods for at least the last 800,000 years, each cycle lasting for about 100,000 years. The cycling is presumably driven by differences in the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface, although solar variation is clearly amplified by mechanisms that are not completely understood.
What is happening now does not appear to be part of that cycle. The timing is wrong, the speed of change looks too abrupt:
CO2 'highest for 650,000 years'
There is a robust mechanism explaining why elevated levels of greenhouse gases will produce higher temperatures - it is accepted by scientists sceptical of the view that disaster looms.
And there is circumstantial evidence - the fast warming is happening at the one time in those 800,000 years when six and a half billion humans populate the planet, when there has been major loss of forest cover and widespread use of fossil fuels.
The concept of absolute proof is problematical in science - the only thing to do is read the evidence, not the spin, and make up your own mind.
We have massive taxation on petrol, yet people still buy big cars. Nobody buys rubbish to fill their bins, it comes with the products people want. When is the government going to change people's mindset with regard to pollution - rather than just hike taxes?
Scot, London, UK
Richard Black: The government has set up a project and a fund to persuade people of the case for personal action on climate change - you can find details at:
Defra climate change project
The government would also argue that it is setting an example, by measures including requiring the carbon offsetting of ministerial flights.
HAVE YOUR SAY
Tiny changes we make now can save millions of lives
Mark, London
Send us your views
Green taxes will not make the slightest difference to climate change. If they want to provide incentives, why don't they REDUCE tax for the lower polluters?
Justin Ticker, England
Tim Weber: That's just what the chancellor did in his most recent Budget, when he dramatically cut the vehicle excise duty for a range of low-polluting cars.
Having said that, an annual saving of £50 or £100 is not nearly enough an incentive to change the behaviour of people who buy high-emission vehicles like four-wheel drives or fast cars.
And if we look at the big ticket items, the recently introduced Europe-wide carbon emissions trading regime actually is some form of tax reduction for lower polluters.
But let's get real: the current green tax regime has failed to make a serious impact on all of us -polluters both big and small.
And if we accept that public services have to be paid from taxes that come from somewhere, then higher green taxes are more likely to do the trick. Let's just hope that the chancellor of the day will reduce other taxes to ensure that overall the tax burden won't rise.
OK, so If air travel is such a bad thing for the environment, as we are being told, can we look forward to the proposed airport expansion schemes in the UK being stopped?
Kaye, England
Tim Weber: Good question, but there is no good answer. Right now air travel faces hardly any green taxes.
Ultimately this is about supply and demand. If people fly less, the airport expansion schemes will be redundant. But it will be a bold politician who tells his Ryanair and Easyjet loving voters that their next holiday in France or Spain will cost them much more.
At-a-glance: Stern Review
Analysis: A stark warning
Will Stern make a difference?
Why aren't the government encouraging the use of ethanol and other bio fuels most diesels can run on them now?
Nicholas Ford, Benfleet, United Kingdom
Tim Weber: For starters biofuels are a pretty expensive way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It costs about 35p to produce a litre of biofuel. That in itself is not the problem, though.
To make biofuels a success, three things have to be in place:
Supply: Farmers first have to produce enough of the stuff; this would require a dramatic restructuring of global agriculture.
Demand: We would require a massive publicity campaign to persuade consumers to use it and tell them whether their car is suited for this fuel.
Logistics: The biggest problem, though, will be to persuade the owners of petrol stations - oil companies and supermarket chains - to make the massive investments needed to store biofuel (with a stainless steel tank going for £120,000 a pop). In a limited trial currently running in Somerset it took massive financial incentives to persuade several supermarkets to sell bio-ethanol at their forecourts.
And not everybody believes that biofuels are good for you. Some experts are warning that a massive investment in biofuel could lead to food shortages elsewhere. For now, the government is still trying to make up its mind on biofuels.
Monday, October 30, 2006
Key points of the UN report
The Australian
October 30, 2006
IGNORING climate change could lead to economic upheaval on the scale of the 1930s Depression, underlining the need for urgent action to combat global warming, a British report on the costs of climate change said.
These are highlights of the report, a summary of which was obtained by Reuters.
PREDICTIONS
- Even if the annual flow of emissions did not rise beyond today's rate, the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would reach double pre-industrial levels by 2050 -- that is 550 parts per million -- and would continue growing thereafter.
- On current trends, average global temperatures will rise by 2-3 degrees centigrade within the next 50 years or so (compared with the period before 1850).
COSTS
- If no action is taken, climate change will reduce global consumption per head by between five and 20 percent, and is likely to be at the upper end of that range.
- The costs of extreme weather alone could be 0.5 to 1 percent of global Gross Domestic Product by 2050.
- By comparison, the annual costs of stabilising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at 500-550 parts per million (ppm) is estimated to be about one percent of annual world GDP by 2050, a level the report describes as "significant but manageable".
ASSUMPTIONS/RISKS
- The report's cost estimate is based on stabilising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at 500-550 ppm; it said costs would likely rise rapidly to achieve anything below this.
- A level of 550 ppm has up to a 99 percent chance of resulting in a more than 2 degrees centigrade global average temperature rise compared to the pre-industrial era. It says 550 ppm is associated with significant global warming risks.
- This suggests EU policy may be over-optimistic. EU leaders said in March 2005: "... with a view to achieving the ultimate objective of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the global annual mean surface temperature increase should not exceed 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels."
- Stabilising gases at 450 ppm, seen likely avoiding the most dangerous effects, was "already almost out of reach".
OPPORTUNITIES
- Markets for low-carbon energy products are likely to be worth at least $500 billion per year by 2050, and perhaps more.
- Climate change policy may kickstart reform of inefficient energy systems and removal of distorting energy subsidies, on which governments spend around $250 billion a year.
- In a calculation of the "social cost" of carbon, it estimates the net benefits in the long term of immediately implementing policies at around $2.5 trillion.
REDUCING EMISSIONS
- Large-scale uptake of a range of clean power, heat and transport technologies is required for radical emission cuts in the medium to long term.
- The global power sector will have to be at least 60 percent, and perhaps as much as 75 percent, decarbonised by 2050 to stabilise greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
- Even with very strong expansion of the use of renewable energy and other low-carbon energy sources, hydrocarbons may still make up over half of global energy supply in 2050.
- Extensive carbon capture and storage, burying greenhouse gases from power plants and factories underground, would allow continued use of fossil fuels without damage to the atmosphere.
- Policy to reduce emissions should be based on three essential elements: carbon pricing, technology policy and removal of barriers to changing people's behaviour.
- Public spending on research and development into low-carbon technologies has fallen in the last two decades. Likely high returns to a doubling of investments in this area to around $20 billion a year globally.
- The report argues that worldwide incentives to encourage the use of new low-carbon technologies should be raised by two to five times from the current level of some $34 billion a year.
ADAPTING TO CLIMATE CHANGE
- The additional costs of making new infrastructure and buildings resilient to climate change in OECD countries could be between $15 billion and $150 billion a year.
RESPONSE
- A global view on the problem's urgency and on long-term goals, plus an international approach based on multilateral frameworks and coordinated action, are essential.
- Securing broad-based and sustained cooperation requires equitable effort across developed and developing countries.
- Calculations based on income, historic responsibility and per capita emissions point to rich nations taking responsibility for emissions cuts of 60-80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050.
- A broadly similar price of carbon is necessary to keep down the overall costs of making these reductions and can be created through tax, trading or regulation.
- Enabling the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme to link with other emerging trading schemes could improve liquidity while also establishing the nucleus of a global carbon market.
- Emissions from deforestation are estimated to represent more than 18 percent of global emissions.
- Need urgent action to preserve the remaining areas of natural forest.
POOR NATIONS
- The poorest developing countries will be hit earliest and hardest by climate change. The international community has an obligation to support them in adapting to climate change.
October 30, 2006
IGNORING climate change could lead to economic upheaval on the scale of the 1930s Depression, underlining the need for urgent action to combat global warming, a British report on the costs of climate change said.
These are highlights of the report, a summary of which was obtained by Reuters.
PREDICTIONS
- Even if the annual flow of emissions did not rise beyond today's rate, the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would reach double pre-industrial levels by 2050 -- that is 550 parts per million -- and would continue growing thereafter.
- On current trends, average global temperatures will rise by 2-3 degrees centigrade within the next 50 years or so (compared with the period before 1850).
COSTS
- If no action is taken, climate change will reduce global consumption per head by between five and 20 percent, and is likely to be at the upper end of that range.
- The costs of extreme weather alone could be 0.5 to 1 percent of global Gross Domestic Product by 2050.
- By comparison, the annual costs of stabilising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at 500-550 parts per million (ppm) is estimated to be about one percent of annual world GDP by 2050, a level the report describes as "significant but manageable".
ASSUMPTIONS/RISKS
- The report's cost estimate is based on stabilising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at 500-550 ppm; it said costs would likely rise rapidly to achieve anything below this.
- A level of 550 ppm has up to a 99 percent chance of resulting in a more than 2 degrees centigrade global average temperature rise compared to the pre-industrial era. It says 550 ppm is associated with significant global warming risks.
- This suggests EU policy may be over-optimistic. EU leaders said in March 2005: "... with a view to achieving the ultimate objective of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the global annual mean surface temperature increase should not exceed 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels."
- Stabilising gases at 450 ppm, seen likely avoiding the most dangerous effects, was "already almost out of reach".
OPPORTUNITIES
- Markets for low-carbon energy products are likely to be worth at least $500 billion per year by 2050, and perhaps more.
- Climate change policy may kickstart reform of inefficient energy systems and removal of distorting energy subsidies, on which governments spend around $250 billion a year.
- In a calculation of the "social cost" of carbon, it estimates the net benefits in the long term of immediately implementing policies at around $2.5 trillion.
REDUCING EMISSIONS
- Large-scale uptake of a range of clean power, heat and transport technologies is required for radical emission cuts in the medium to long term.
- The global power sector will have to be at least 60 percent, and perhaps as much as 75 percent, decarbonised by 2050 to stabilise greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
- Even with very strong expansion of the use of renewable energy and other low-carbon energy sources, hydrocarbons may still make up over half of global energy supply in 2050.
- Extensive carbon capture and storage, burying greenhouse gases from power plants and factories underground, would allow continued use of fossil fuels without damage to the atmosphere.
- Policy to reduce emissions should be based on three essential elements: carbon pricing, technology policy and removal of barriers to changing people's behaviour.
- Public spending on research and development into low-carbon technologies has fallen in the last two decades. Likely high returns to a doubling of investments in this area to around $20 billion a year globally.
- The report argues that worldwide incentives to encourage the use of new low-carbon technologies should be raised by two to five times from the current level of some $34 billion a year.
ADAPTING TO CLIMATE CHANGE
- The additional costs of making new infrastructure and buildings resilient to climate change in OECD countries could be between $15 billion and $150 billion a year.
RESPONSE
- A global view on the problem's urgency and on long-term goals, plus an international approach based on multilateral frameworks and coordinated action, are essential.
- Securing broad-based and sustained cooperation requires equitable effort across developed and developing countries.
- Calculations based on income, historic responsibility and per capita emissions point to rich nations taking responsibility for emissions cuts of 60-80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050.
- A broadly similar price of carbon is necessary to keep down the overall costs of making these reductions and can be created through tax, trading or regulation.
- Enabling the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme to link with other emerging trading schemes could improve liquidity while also establishing the nucleus of a global carbon market.
- Emissions from deforestation are estimated to represent more than 18 percent of global emissions.
- Need urgent action to preserve the remaining areas of natural forest.
POOR NATIONS
- The poorest developing countries will be hit earliest and hardest by climate change. The international community has an obligation to support them in adapting to climate change.
US, Australia blow Kyoto limits
SMH
October 30, 2006
THE US and Australia are spewing out greenhouse gases well beyond the levels they agreed to before ultimately abandoning the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
The findings are contained in a UN report, released today, that says greenhouse gas emissions by the industrialised world are still rising.
The US is firmly entrenched as the biggest polluter, says the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in its annual update on global-warming pollution.
Under Kyoto, which President George W Bush abandoned in 2001 because of what he cited as its cost to the US economy, the US pledged to reduce its emissions by six per cent by 2012, compared with the benchmark year of 1990.
But in 2004, it was 21.1 per cent above the 1990 benchmark year, the UNFCCC said. The increase from 2000 to 2004 was 1.3 per cent.
The report also showed that in 2004, Australia's greenhouse gas emissions were 15.8 per cent higher than Canberra had promised, under Kyoto, they would be by 2012.
Both the US and Australia signed the landmark protocol for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, but neither went on to ratify it.
The UNFCCC report said that, compared with 1990, the 41 industrialised countries it monitors trimmed their emissions by 3.3 per cent by the end of 2004.
But this was mainly due to the slump in the former Soviet bloc economies in the 1990s, which forced the closure or overhaul of thousands of power stations and factories that spewed out carbon dioxide.
Because of that historic change, countries in eastern and central Europe had a decrease in emissions from 1990-2004 of 36.8 per cent. But from 2000-2004, they in fact increased their pollution by 4.1 per cent as their economies emerged from the post-Soviet crash.
By contrast, the other industrialised countries saw an increase in pollution of 11 per cent from 1990-2004. From 2000-2004, the increase was two per cent.
"Industrialised countries will need to intensify their efforts to implement strong policies which reduce greenhouse gas emissions," the UNFCCC's executive secretary, Yvo de Boer, warned.
The report applies to so-called Annex 1 countries of the UNFCCC, the offshoot of the famous 1992 Rio Summit on the planet's environmental future and parent of the Kyoto Protocol. Annex 2 parties are developing countries and the poorer ex-Soviet republics.
The report showed the US remains by far the world's biggest polluter.
Of the 17.931 billion tonnes emitted by Annex 1 countries in 2004, 39.4 per cent was emitted by the US alone.
With 7.067 billion tonnes, the US accounts for nearly a quarter of the global total of greenhouse gas pollution (ie from Annex 1 and Annex 2 countries together).
The Kyoto Protocol ratifiers have pledged to cut emissions by on average five per cent by 2012 compared with 1990.
In 2004, they were 15.3 per cent below the 1990 level, although this figure masks the effects of the economic post-Soviet slump in eastern and central Europe and some hugely varying performances.
Japan, for instance, pledged a cut of six per cent by 2012, yet in 2004 it already had an increase of six per cent over 1990. Spain is pegged to a rise of only 15 per cent by 2012 but in 2004 was already 49 per cent over the 1990 target.
De Boer was upbeat, though.
He said Kyoto countries stood a good chance of meeting their promises provided they swiftly applied pollution curbing measures and used the protocol's market mechanisms to help accelerate these programs.
Emissions by Annex 1 countries from agriculture fell by 20 per cent from 1990-2004 and from industry by 13.1 per cent. But pollution by transport rose by 23.9 per cent, reflecting that reductions in this sector "seem to be especially hard to achieve," the UNFCCC said.
Greenhouse gases are so called because, as in a stuffy greenhouse, they linger invisibly in the air. Instead of letting solar radiation bounce back into space, the gases trap it, thus warming Earth's surface.
Scientists say there is mounting evidence that the world's climate system is starting to be affected by the warming and are demanding quick, deep cuts in the gases to avert what could be a catastrophe.
The big culprits for this carbon-based pollution are oil, gas and coal - the fossil fuels on which today's prosperity was built and on which every economy still depends.
Curbing the pollution carries an economic and thus political cost, because it requires users of these fuels to be more efficient or switch to cleaner alternatives.
AFP
October 30, 2006
THE US and Australia are spewing out greenhouse gases well beyond the levels they agreed to before ultimately abandoning the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
The findings are contained in a UN report, released today, that says greenhouse gas emissions by the industrialised world are still rising.
The US is firmly entrenched as the biggest polluter, says the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in its annual update on global-warming pollution.
Under Kyoto, which President George W Bush abandoned in 2001 because of what he cited as its cost to the US economy, the US pledged to reduce its emissions by six per cent by 2012, compared with the benchmark year of 1990.
But in 2004, it was 21.1 per cent above the 1990 benchmark year, the UNFCCC said. The increase from 2000 to 2004 was 1.3 per cent.
The report also showed that in 2004, Australia's greenhouse gas emissions were 15.8 per cent higher than Canberra had promised, under Kyoto, they would be by 2012.
Both the US and Australia signed the landmark protocol for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, but neither went on to ratify it.
The UNFCCC report said that, compared with 1990, the 41 industrialised countries it monitors trimmed their emissions by 3.3 per cent by the end of 2004.
But this was mainly due to the slump in the former Soviet bloc economies in the 1990s, which forced the closure or overhaul of thousands of power stations and factories that spewed out carbon dioxide.
Because of that historic change, countries in eastern and central Europe had a decrease in emissions from 1990-2004 of 36.8 per cent. But from 2000-2004, they in fact increased their pollution by 4.1 per cent as their economies emerged from the post-Soviet crash.
By contrast, the other industrialised countries saw an increase in pollution of 11 per cent from 1990-2004. From 2000-2004, the increase was two per cent.
"Industrialised countries will need to intensify their efforts to implement strong policies which reduce greenhouse gas emissions," the UNFCCC's executive secretary, Yvo de Boer, warned.
The report applies to so-called Annex 1 countries of the UNFCCC, the offshoot of the famous 1992 Rio Summit on the planet's environmental future and parent of the Kyoto Protocol. Annex 2 parties are developing countries and the poorer ex-Soviet republics.
The report showed the US remains by far the world's biggest polluter.
Of the 17.931 billion tonnes emitted by Annex 1 countries in 2004, 39.4 per cent was emitted by the US alone.
With 7.067 billion tonnes, the US accounts for nearly a quarter of the global total of greenhouse gas pollution (ie from Annex 1 and Annex 2 countries together).
The Kyoto Protocol ratifiers have pledged to cut emissions by on average five per cent by 2012 compared with 1990.
In 2004, they were 15.3 per cent below the 1990 level, although this figure masks the effects of the economic post-Soviet slump in eastern and central Europe and some hugely varying performances.
Japan, for instance, pledged a cut of six per cent by 2012, yet in 2004 it already had an increase of six per cent over 1990. Spain is pegged to a rise of only 15 per cent by 2012 but in 2004 was already 49 per cent over the 1990 target.
De Boer was upbeat, though.
He said Kyoto countries stood a good chance of meeting their promises provided they swiftly applied pollution curbing measures and used the protocol's market mechanisms to help accelerate these programs.
Emissions by Annex 1 countries from agriculture fell by 20 per cent from 1990-2004 and from industry by 13.1 per cent. But pollution by transport rose by 23.9 per cent, reflecting that reductions in this sector "seem to be especially hard to achieve," the UNFCCC said.
Greenhouse gases are so called because, as in a stuffy greenhouse, they linger invisibly in the air. Instead of letting solar radiation bounce back into space, the gases trap it, thus warming Earth's surface.
Scientists say there is mounting evidence that the world's climate system is starting to be affected by the warming and are demanding quick, deep cuts in the gases to avert what could be a catastrophe.
The big culprits for this carbon-based pollution are oil, gas and coal - the fossil fuels on which today's prosperity was built and on which every economy still depends.
Curbing the pollution carries an economic and thus political cost, because it requires users of these fuels to be more efficient or switch to cleaner alternatives.
AFP
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Climate comes in from the cold
SMH Weekend Edition
News Review Page 30
(photo of Clean Energy for Eternity human sign not included in the online version)
October 28, 2006
After playing down the effects of climate change for years, the Federal Government has suddenly changed its tune, writes Wendy Frew.
For Matthew Nott, it all started on New Year's Day.
Across the state, near-record temperatures drove many people indoors, demand for electricity soared as air-conditioning units were switched on and railway tracks buckled in the heat.
At Tathra Beach, 20 minutes east of Bega on the South Coast, where Nott had gone to cool off, the temperature had soared to 42 degrees by 10am.
"I was reading Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers and I thought 'What a juxtaposition, this book about climate change and record temperatures'," says Nott, an orthopedic surgeon who moved to the Bega Valley six years ago with his family.
It was a juxtaposition he says changed his life. With no political or environmental experience before then, Nott has since spent his spare time researching climate change. He was disturbed by what he discovered: predictions from the world's leading scientists that man-made greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere would dramatically alter the earth's climate, and evidence some of the changes were taking place.
Frustrated by a lack of government action on the problem, in May Nott rallied 3000 residents in the Bega Shire to form a human sign on Tathra Beach that read "Clean Energy for Eternity". From that event, a small group of activists was formed to encourage the local council to cut energy consumption in the shire and source some of its electricity from renewable energy. The group has started to talk to residents in the neighbouring shires of Eurobodalla and Snowy River about similar programs.
While grassroots groups like this one were springing up all over Australia, little was changing in the top political echelons.
The Howard Government remained a steadfast critic of the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to tackle climate change, and argued any attempt to penalise greenhouse gas polluters would damage the economy.
Government ministers continued to play down the link between climate change, urban water shortages and the widespread drought.
But suddenly, two weeks ago, the Government's tune appeared to change.The Prime Minister, who had long scoffed at the "gloomy predictions" about climate change, finally made the link between drought and global warming.
"I don't think it alters my outlook on Kyoto, but it certainly emphasises that the world does have a problem with climate change," he said.
A few days later, he said climate change was a reason Australia should adopt nuclear power. Next up, the Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, confessed that "a bloody hot day" in early October at the Port Elliot Show in his electorate near Adelaide crystallised his thinking on the issue.
This week, there was a flurry of Government announcements about clean energy: a $75 million grant for a solar power plant in regional Victoria and a backdown on a plan to abolish consumer rebates for solar energy were among them.
Was this a sudden change of heart from a Government derided by many for its "go slow" attitude on climate change? And if so, what prompted it?
An increasing sense of urgency about the devastation wrecked by the drought appears to be part of it. But political commentators, the Opposition and green groups say the Government's conversion is more rhetoric than real and is purely driven by public opinion.
"I think [the recent change] is utterly poll driven," says Greens senator Christine Milne. "In the federal budget, Costello did not once mention climate change and did not say the cost of the drought would blow out the budget.
"Two weeks ago Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane said [the climate change documentary] An Inconvenient Truth was "just entertainment" and Howard said we shouldn't exaggerate the link between climate change and the drought. Then, Friday week ago they suddenly changed their position," Milne says.
"The polling shows the Australian community have put two and two together and see that drought, more and hotter bushfires, the water shortage and climate change are all connected and they blame the Government for 10 years of inaction."
A Lowy Institute poll released in early October found 68 per cent of Australians believed climate change was a "critical threat" that should be immediately addressed, even if this involved significant costs.
As the institute's executive director, Allan Gyngell, observed, "this has become mainstream; it's no longer just an issue for Greens and people dressed up in koala suits".
The Climate Institute of Australia's chief executive, Corin Millais, agrees public opinion, particularly in rural areas, was a key factor in what he sees as a change in Government rhetoric.
"It is the polling that has focused the Government's mind, more than any intellectual position on climate change," Millais says.
"Climate change is on the [political] agenda. I think what the Government is now trying to decide is what [action] is palatable."
The Environment Minister, Ian Campbell, says claims the Government is only driven by the polls are unfair. He says the Government has been concerned about climate change for some time and remains open to new ideas about how to tackle it.
However, he concedes things have changed a little recently and he attributes that to the Prime Minister being tuned in to public concerns.
"That is his great skill," says Campbell. "I don't think the Prime Minister has crossed the road to Damascus but he has picked up that climate change has become a mainstream issue … people are seeing a pattern here."
He defended the recent clean energy announcements, made under the Government's $500 million Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund, pointing out that the money had been allocated some time ago.
But energy experts and opposition parties described this week's announcement by the Treasurer, Peter Costello, of a $75 million grant for a solar power plant in regional Victoria as "short-term thinking" and a one-off. Greenpeace's energy campaigner, Mark Wakeham, welcomed the funding but said the company behind the plant had admitted it might not have gone ahead if it was not for a Victorian Government renewable energy support scheme and this highlighted the Federal Government's inadequate policies.
"If you are going to tackle climate change you need systemic change," says Wakeham. "You need a price on carbon … you need incentives for all renewable energy, not just funding for one project.
"If that is the Government's response to climate change then we should be worried."
Labor's spokesman on the environment, Anthony Albanese, also welcomed the funding but questioned the timing of the announcement.
"The Government is good at allocating money to funds and then making political decisions at politically convenient times," he says.
"But on the issue of climate change, we require a systematic response. We need to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. We need to have a significant increase in our mandatory renewable energy target. We need a national target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and we need to have a price on carbon by having a national emissions trading system."
Without a price on carbon pollution, coal will remain Australia's cheapest energy source, way ahead of solar, wind and even less-polluting gas-fired power. It will make it uneconomic for coal-fired power generators to adopt technology that eliminates greenhouse gases, if and when that proves feasible.
It will also mean that nuclear energy - being touted by Howard as a major way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions - will be too expensive. That point was recently conceded by the former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski, appointed by the Government to examine the future of Australia's nuclear sector.
Switkowski, who expects to report to the Government in a month, told the Herald: "Australia is blessed with a couple of things - very low-cost electricity because of access to coal and gas, and many centuries of coal supply available. Any comparison will be unfavourable for every alternative source in the absence of an explicit cost for carbon."
Business groups, particularly banks, investment and insurance companies, have been quietly lobbying the Government for just that kind of policy.
Westpac's group general manager for stakeholder communications, Noel Purcell, says it should be acknowledged that the Government has been working on projects addressing climate change for some time. However, he says recent advice it would have received on the worsening outlook for the drought, plus the shift in public sentiment about climate change, would have influenced its position.
Now, "the big issue is putting a price on carbon and that has to be confronted", says Purcell.
Just how seriously Australians view climate change could be demonstrated next Saturday at the Walk Against Warming marches to be held in capital cities.
The Nature Conservation Council director, Cate Faehrmann, who is helping organise the event, says the response so far has been "absolutely amazing" and far stronger than for last year's walk, which attracted 5000 people in Sydney. "We have handed out 100,000 flyers, we are getting lots of phone calls from people who want to help out, businesses have contacted us to help advertise the event. The people who are coming to the walk are desperate that it be successful and are willing to do their bit to make sure it is."
The heat is on
> Over the past decade, Australia's greenhouse pollution has increased 10 per cent. It is expected to increase by 17 per cent more by 2020.
> In 2003, energy production accounted for 68 per cent of that pollution, and by 2020. It is expected to have increased by 70 per cent from 1990 levels.
> 166 nations have ratified the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Australia is not one of them.
> The Federal Government has allocated $500 million over 15 years to develop low greenhouse gas emission technology.
> Every year, it spends $790 million on aviation fuel concessions, and $1 billion on fringe benefit tax concessions for company cars. Transport is a major contributor to Australia's greenhouse pollution.
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Climate change: Our green paper
The Independent
Tony Blair says global warming is among the biggest threats of our age. But are his plans for a Climate Bill ambitious enough? Here, we offer a more radical manifesto
Published: 26 October 2006
Set annual targets for emission reductions
The Government's policy of setting ambitious long-term carbon emission reduction targets has failed. Britain's emissions have been rising every year since 2002. A binding carbon reduction target should be determined by Parliament every year and the Government's performance in delivering these reductions must be monitored by an independent body.
Decentralise energy production
There must be generous grants for decentralised energy production (micro-generation). Local authorities should be given binding targets for reducing their carbon footprint.
Rethink aviation policy
Unless action is taken to curb the rise in the number of flights, all other national efforts to reduce emissions will be cancelled out by 2050. The Government must commit itself to working towards a EU-wide tax on airline fuel. The present aviation tax (levied per passenger) should be replaced with a tax on each plane journey (to encourage airlines to fill planes to capacity). And there should be a presumption against airport expansion in planning decisions.
Curb road pollution
The Government must unfreeze the fuel-tax escalator, cynically suspended six years ago, to discourage the second-biggest contributor to UK carbon emissions - car journeys. Road tax should be increased for fuel-inefficient cars.
Step up the drive for renewable energy
Nuclear power is not the answer to our problems: investment in alternatives should be stepped up. There should be greater commercial incentives for wind-power companies. The renewables target for the national grid (currently 10 per cent by 2010) should double.
Insist on greener homes
Statutory demands (rather than mere guidelines) are needed to ensure that all new houses meet strict energy-efficiency targets. There must also be council-tax discounts or grants for existing homes to increase energy efficiency.
Fight inefficiency
Britain should push for EU-level regulations to discourage energy-wasting products and packaging. Car manufacturers should also be required to meet strict fuel-efficiency standards.
Reduce industrial emissions
The Government's climate-change levy on industry has penalised energy use rather than emissions. This emphasis should be reversed. The Government should also sponsor more research into carbon sequestration techniques.
Invest in green transport
Britain needs far more investment in its cycle lane network and public transport infrastructure. All road-building projects should be reappraised.
masthead
Set annual targets for emission reductions
The Government's policy of setting ambitious long-term carbon emission reduction targets has failed. Britain's emissions have been rising every year since 2002. A binding carbon reduction target should be determined by Parliament every year and the Government's performance in delivering these reductions must be monitored by an independent body.
Decentralise energy production
There must be generous grants for decentralised energy production (micro-generation). Local authorities should be given binding targets for reducing their carbon footprint.
Rethink aviation policy
Unless action is taken to curb the rise in the number of flights, all other national efforts to reduce emissions will be cancelled out by 2050. The Government must commit itself to working towards a EU-wide tax on airline fuel. The present aviation tax (levied per passenger) should be replaced with a tax on each plane journey (to encourage airlines to fill planes to capacity). And there should be a presumption against airport expansion in planning decisions.
Curb road pollution
The Government must unfreeze the fuel-tax escalator, cynically suspended six years ago, to discourage the second-biggest contributor to UK carbon emissions - car journeys. Road tax should be increased for fuel-inefficient cars.
Step up the drive for renewable energy
Nuclear power is not the answer to our problems: investment in alternatives should be stepped up. There should be greater commercial incentives for wind-power companies. The renewables target for the national grid (currently 10 per cent by 2010) should double.
Insist on greener homes
Statutory demands (rather than mere guidelines) are needed to ensure that all new houses meet strict energy-efficiency targets. There must also be council-tax discounts or grants for existing homes to increase energy efficiency.
Fight inefficiency
Britain should push for EU-level regulations to discourage energy-wasting products and packaging. Car manufacturers should also be required to meet strict fuel-efficiency standards.
Reduce industrial emissions
The Government's climate-change levy on industry has penalised energy use rather than emissions. This emphasis should be reversed. The Government should also sponsor more research into carbon sequestration techniques.
Invest in green transport
Britain needs far more investment in its cycle lane network and public transport infrastructure. All road-building projects should be reappraised.
Tony Blair says global warming is among the biggest threats of our age. But are his plans for a Climate Bill ambitious enough? Here, we offer a more radical manifesto
Published: 26 October 2006
Set annual targets for emission reductions
The Government's policy of setting ambitious long-term carbon emission reduction targets has failed. Britain's emissions have been rising every year since 2002. A binding carbon reduction target should be determined by Parliament every year and the Government's performance in delivering these reductions must be monitored by an independent body.
Decentralise energy production
There must be generous grants for decentralised energy production (micro-generation). Local authorities should be given binding targets for reducing their carbon footprint.
Rethink aviation policy
Unless action is taken to curb the rise in the number of flights, all other national efforts to reduce emissions will be cancelled out by 2050. The Government must commit itself to working towards a EU-wide tax on airline fuel. The present aviation tax (levied per passenger) should be replaced with a tax on each plane journey (to encourage airlines to fill planes to capacity). And there should be a presumption against airport expansion in planning decisions.
Curb road pollution
The Government must unfreeze the fuel-tax escalator, cynically suspended six years ago, to discourage the second-biggest contributor to UK carbon emissions - car journeys. Road tax should be increased for fuel-inefficient cars.
Step up the drive for renewable energy
Nuclear power is not the answer to our problems: investment in alternatives should be stepped up. There should be greater commercial incentives for wind-power companies. The renewables target for the national grid (currently 10 per cent by 2010) should double.
Insist on greener homes
Statutory demands (rather than mere guidelines) are needed to ensure that all new houses meet strict energy-efficiency targets. There must also be council-tax discounts or grants for existing homes to increase energy efficiency.
Fight inefficiency
Britain should push for EU-level regulations to discourage energy-wasting products and packaging. Car manufacturers should also be required to meet strict fuel-efficiency standards.
Reduce industrial emissions
The Government's climate-change levy on industry has penalised energy use rather than emissions. This emphasis should be reversed. The Government should also sponsor more research into carbon sequestration techniques.
Invest in green transport
Britain needs far more investment in its cycle lane network and public transport infrastructure. All road-building projects should be reappraised.
masthead
Set annual targets for emission reductions
The Government's policy of setting ambitious long-term carbon emission reduction targets has failed. Britain's emissions have been rising every year since 2002. A binding carbon reduction target should be determined by Parliament every year and the Government's performance in delivering these reductions must be monitored by an independent body.
Decentralise energy production
There must be generous grants for decentralised energy production (micro-generation). Local authorities should be given binding targets for reducing their carbon footprint.
Rethink aviation policy
Unless action is taken to curb the rise in the number of flights, all other national efforts to reduce emissions will be cancelled out by 2050. The Government must commit itself to working towards a EU-wide tax on airline fuel. The present aviation tax (levied per passenger) should be replaced with a tax on each plane journey (to encourage airlines to fill planes to capacity). And there should be a presumption against airport expansion in planning decisions.
Curb road pollution
The Government must unfreeze the fuel-tax escalator, cynically suspended six years ago, to discourage the second-biggest contributor to UK carbon emissions - car journeys. Road tax should be increased for fuel-inefficient cars.
Step up the drive for renewable energy
Nuclear power is not the answer to our problems: investment in alternatives should be stepped up. There should be greater commercial incentives for wind-power companies. The renewables target for the national grid (currently 10 per cent by 2010) should double.
Insist on greener homes
Statutory demands (rather than mere guidelines) are needed to ensure that all new houses meet strict energy-efficiency targets. There must also be council-tax discounts or grants for existing homes to increase energy efficiency.
Fight inefficiency
Britain should push for EU-level regulations to discourage energy-wasting products and packaging. Car manufacturers should also be required to meet strict fuel-efficiency standards.
Reduce industrial emissions
The Government's climate-change levy on industry has penalised energy use rather than emissions. This emphasis should be reversed. The Government should also sponsor more research into carbon sequestration techniques.
Invest in green transport
Britain needs far more investment in its cycle lane network and public transport infrastructure. All road-building projects should be reappraised.
Evidence grows of waning ocean current
SMH
James Randerson in London
October 28, 2006
SCIENTISTS have uncovered more evidence of a dramatic weakening in the vast ocean current that gives Western Europe its relatively balmy climate by dragging warm water northwards from the tropics.
The slowdown of the North Atlantic Drift, which climate modellers have predicted will follow global warming, has been confirmed by the most detailed study yet of ocean flow in the Atlantic.
Most alarmingly, the data reveals part of the current, usually 60 times more powerful than the Amazon River, came to a temporary halt during November 2004.
The nightmare scenario of a shutdown in the meridional ocean current that drives the Gulf Stream was dramatically portrayed in disaster film The Day After Tomorrow.
That scenario had Europe and North America plunged into a new ice age virtually overnight. Although no scientist thinks the switch-off could happen that fast, they do agree that even a weakening over a few decades would have profound consequences.
The Gulf Stream originates in the Gulf of Mexico, flows up the US east coast, then crosses the Atlantic, where it splits in two, with one branch crossing to West Africa. The other branch, the North Atlantic Drift, extends towards Europe. The warm water it brings to Western Europe's shores raises the temperature by as much as 10 degrees in some places and without it the continent would be much colder and drier.
Researchers are unsure what to make of the 10-day hiatus in the current in 2004.
"We'd never seen anything like that before and we don't understand it. We didn't know it could happen," said Harry Bryden, of Britain's National Oceanography Centre, who presented the findings to a conference in Birmingham on rapid climate change.
Is it the first sign that the current is stuttering to a halt?
"I want to know more before I say that," Professor Bryden said.
Lloyd Keigwin, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US, said the 2004 shutdown was "the most abrupt change in the whole [climate] record". "Suppose it lasted 30 or 60 days, when do you ring up the prime minister and say let's start stockpiling fuel? … How can we rule out a longer one next year?" he said.
Professor Bryden's group stunned climate researchers last year with data suggesting that the flow rate of the Atlantic circulation had dropped by about 6 million tonnes of water a second from 1957 to 1998.
If the current remained that weak, he predicted, it would lead to a one-degree drop in temperature in Britain in the next decade. A complete shutdown would lead to a four- to six-degree cooling over 20 years.
Guardian News & Media
James Randerson in London
October 28, 2006
SCIENTISTS have uncovered more evidence of a dramatic weakening in the vast ocean current that gives Western Europe its relatively balmy climate by dragging warm water northwards from the tropics.
The slowdown of the North Atlantic Drift, which climate modellers have predicted will follow global warming, has been confirmed by the most detailed study yet of ocean flow in the Atlantic.
Most alarmingly, the data reveals part of the current, usually 60 times more powerful than the Amazon River, came to a temporary halt during November 2004.
The nightmare scenario of a shutdown in the meridional ocean current that drives the Gulf Stream was dramatically portrayed in disaster film The Day After Tomorrow.
That scenario had Europe and North America plunged into a new ice age virtually overnight. Although no scientist thinks the switch-off could happen that fast, they do agree that even a weakening over a few decades would have profound consequences.
The Gulf Stream originates in the Gulf of Mexico, flows up the US east coast, then crosses the Atlantic, where it splits in two, with one branch crossing to West Africa. The other branch, the North Atlantic Drift, extends towards Europe. The warm water it brings to Western Europe's shores raises the temperature by as much as 10 degrees in some places and without it the continent would be much colder and drier.
Researchers are unsure what to make of the 10-day hiatus in the current in 2004.
"We'd never seen anything like that before and we don't understand it. We didn't know it could happen," said Harry Bryden, of Britain's National Oceanography Centre, who presented the findings to a conference in Birmingham on rapid climate change.
Is it the first sign that the current is stuttering to a halt?
"I want to know more before I say that," Professor Bryden said.
Lloyd Keigwin, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US, said the 2004 shutdown was "the most abrupt change in the whole [climate] record". "Suppose it lasted 30 or 60 days, when do you ring up the prime minister and say let's start stockpiling fuel? … How can we rule out a longer one next year?" he said.
Professor Bryden's group stunned climate researchers last year with data suggesting that the flow rate of the Atlantic circulation had dropped by about 6 million tonnes of water a second from 1957 to 1998.
If the current remained that weak, he predicted, it would lead to a one-degree drop in temperature in Britain in the next decade. A complete shutdown would lead to a four- to six-degree cooling over 20 years.
Guardian News & Media
A huge wind farm and a dire warning
The Age
A huge wind farm and a dire warning
Climate scientist Graeme Pearman says Australia could have led the world.
Photo: Simon Schluter
A $600 million wind farm generating enough electricity to power almost 190,000 homes will be built in western Victoria.
Planning Minister Rob Hulls said yesterday the wind farm, the biggest in the southern hemisphere, would be built on 5500 hectares of farmland at Macarthur, near Port Fairy.
And while the State Government was boosting its green credentials, Prime Minister John Howard said the evidence of global warming was stronger now than before, although he did not subscribe to "alarmist theories".
A comprehensive British report on the economic effects of climate change says that countries will need to spend 1 per cent of their annual gross domestic product to fight global warming. Doing nothing could cost them up to 20 times that amount, it warns.
The report, by Sir Nicholas Stern, says global inaction will lead this century to the submerging of the Netherlands, Bangladesh and many Pacific islands, and the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, according to shadow treasurer Wayne Swan, who was briefed by Sir Nicholas on Thursday. The report will be published on Monday.
Several of the nation's foremost experts on the subject yesterday told The Age of their concerns about the Australia's progress on the issue.
Retired senior CSIRO scientist Barrie Pittock said "governments of all persuasions had not done enough, both here and overseas". "The real thing that we've been lacking (here) is a sense of urgency, because we do have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in absolute terms this decade."
Former CSIRO chief of atmospheric research Graeme Pearman said there had been "great expectations a decade ago" that Australia would lead the world on responding to climate change.
"The fact that the climate is changing is now becoming bleedingly obvious to everyone, and everyone's in a sudden rush to ask what we can do. But the thing I worry about is, are we going to look back and really rue these 10 lost years of action?"
Sir Nicholas believed that a period of 10 to 15 years exists to save the global economy from severe damage but after that it would be too late, Mr Swan said.
Insurance analysts said in evidence to Sir Nicholas that they feared insurance claims caused by storms, droughts and other natural disasters could exceed the world's GDP.
The Stern report proposes a global carbon trading scheme, increased regulation of carbon-emitting products and green taxes as part of a framework of strategies to fight climate change.
Mr Howard said yesterday: "We'd be foolish to pretend that there aren't greenhouse gas emissions doing damage to the atmosphere … I think it would be equally foolish to imagine we're on the verge of collapse and a new dark age and an economic pestilence. That's an extreme view."
"The rate of melt of the Arctic icecap is indisputable and deeply troubling. It should convince everyone that climate change is by far the most urgent threat facing humanity. It also tells us that the long recalcitrance of the Howard Government in respect to climate change has already cost us dearly."
Mr Howard said cleaner coal technology needed to be developed, and — if it stacked up — the potential of nuclear power should be embraced. Wind power and solar could contribute "at the margin".
"I don't think we'll ever have the day where renewables replace power stations," he said. "There's simply not enough capacity, unless you have thousands of windmills."
The 183-turbine Macarthur project, will be operated by AGL.
Premier Steve Bracks yesterday cast the state election as presenting voters with a clear choice: "whether they want a cleaner environment in the future, with less greenhouse gases and tackling climate change, or whether they don't."
Mr Bracks said the wind farm would be lost to Victoria if the Government's 10 per cent renewable energy scheme was abandoned. The Opposition has pledged to end the scheme.
But former Liberal leader Denis Napthine, MLA for South-West Coast and a supporter of the project, said abolition of the scheme would not affect the wind farm's viability.
The Macarthur wind farm is the ninth to get the go-ahead in Victoria. A planning panel recommended approval after it received 1295 submissions, of which 1148 were in favour. David O'Brien, the Nationals candidate for South-West Coast, also supported it.
Annie Gardner, a Macarthur sheep farmer, said the turbines would devalue her property by 40 per cent and decimate local brolga numbers.
With MICHELLE GRATTAN, PAUL AUSTIN
Window of 15 years to fight climate change
SMH
At risk … the Great Barrier Reef is among areas said to facing destruction
COUNTRIES will need to spend 1 per cent of gross domestic product to fight global warming, but doing nothing could cost them up to 20 times that amount, a British report on the economic effects of climate change warns.
The report, to be published on Monday, warns that global inaction will lead to the submerging of the Netherlands, Bangladesh and many Pacific islands, and the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, according to the shadow treasurer, Wayne Swan, who was briefed by the author, Sir Nicholas Stern, on Thursday.
The 700-page report proposes a global carbon trading scheme, increased regulation of carbon-emitting products and green taxes as part of national and international strategies to fight global warming.
Sir Nicholas, a former World Bank chief economist, seeks to overturn conventional thinking by arguing that fighting climate change will save, not cost, money.
Whitehall sources told The Independent that the report was hard-headed. "It didn't deal in sandals and brown rice. It stuck to the economics."
Insurance analysts said in evidence to Sir Nicholas that they feared insurance claims caused by storms, droughts and other natural disasters could exceed the world's GDP.
Sir Nicholas believes a window of 10 to 15 years exists to save the global economy from severe damage - but after that it will be too late, Mr Swan said.
The report argues an incentive system - carbon trading - is essential to persuade rapidly developing countries such as China and India to tackle global warming.
But that alone would not be sufficient. "We have to set ambitious targets for reductions. They may be achieved through a mix of carbon trading, investment in new technologies, taxes and regulatory policies," he said.
The report - which may also propose carbon trading schemes for companies - - is certain to influence the global discussion on how to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. Sir Nicholas has briefed ministers from the 20 highest carbon-producing nations - including Australia - on his report.
Mr Swan, who is in Britain to discuss global warming with government leaders, described the Stern report as "the most far-reaching analysis from any Western country".
Friday, October 27, 2006
Canberra's go-slow slammed
Deborah Snow
THE Howard Government's stance on climate change was "unrealistic and unreasonable", with the latest scientific evidence showing global warming was having an impact faster than previously expected, a leading international expert has warned.
The chief economist with the British Government-backed Carbon Trust, Michael Grubb, slammed Canberra's go-slow policy response as "hard to understand, because it is so clearly not a position which can lead to any credible solutions".
Professor Grubb questioned the Government's continuing opposition to carbon pricing and trading schemes, which would reward businesses that switched to lower carbon-emission operations. Without these measures, industry would not invest in alternative energy technologies, Professor Grubb said.
In Europe, which has a carbon emissions trading scheme operating across 25 countries, the corporate world had shown it could adapt to and even profit from such schemes, he said.
The rising level of carbon in the atmosphere is the major cause of global warming.
"I must say, coming to Australia, in terms of [inaction] … at the federal level, it feels like going back in time because so little generally seems to have been done on the ground here," Professor Grubb told the Herald.
Although he has "not been allowed near the higher echelons of the political system" in Australia, he did meet senior public servants in Canberra on Monday. "I think I can legitimately say … a number of them feel pretty uncomfortable with the situation that Australia is in," he said.
Professor Grubb has helped write reports for the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and warned that its next report, due out in 2007, would be "a lot more scary" than its predecessors.
"This is no longer an abstract problem that may hurt us at some point in the future" he told the Lowy Institute this week.
"We are not far from the point where the Arctic ice cap will start to melt".
World economy 'faces ruin' from climate change
James Button Herald Correspondent in London and agencies
CLIMATE change could push the world into the worst recession since the Great Depression, with many countries facing economic ruin, a comprehensive British report on the effects of global warming will warn next week.
The report, written by the former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern and commissioned by the British Treasury, seeks to overturn conventional wisdom by insisting that fighting climate change will save - not cost - governments money.
The report's contents have been kept secret but Sir Nicholas briefed environment and energy ministers from the world's top 20 greenhouse gas-emitting nations - including the Industry, Tourism and Resources Minister, Ian McFarlane - in Mexico this month.
Britain's chief scientist, Sir David King, said the report indicated "that if we don't take global action … we will be faced with the kind of downturn that has not been seen since the Great Depression and the two world wars".
"If you look at sea level rises alone, and the impact that will have on global economies where cities are becoming inundated by flooding … this will cause the displacement of hundreds of millions of people," he said.
Sir David described the Stern report as the most detailed economic analysis that has been conducted and said it would "surprise many people in terms of the relatively small cost of action."
But he told a climate change conference in Birmingham that achieving global consensus would be tremendously difficult.
"In my view, this is the biggest challenge our global political system has ever been faced with. We've never been faced with a decision where collective decision-making is required by all major countries … around risks to their populations that are well outside the time period of any electoral process."
Sir David compared the consequences of doing nothing on climate change because it was seen as too difficult to the effects of the Asian tsunami in 2004. Seismologists had warned that a disaster was likely because of tectonic activity, but no government chose to act on the advice.
"Thirty million [US] dollars as the cost to install some kind of early-warning system presumably looked like a lot of money," Sir David said, but added that such a system could have saved 150,000 lives.
The contents of the review into the economics of climate change have been kept secret since the nature of the work was revealed to the environment ministers.
The British Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, said on Tuesday: "This is not just an environmental problem … It is a defence problem. It is a problem for those who deal with economics and development, conflict prevention, agriculture, finance, housing, transport, innovation, trade and health."
The International Energy Agency predicts that $US15 trillion ($20 trillion) of investment in new energy sources will be required during the next 15 years.
"The massive investment program that's ahead of us is an opportunity for us to move towards a zero carbon energy system. The investment process is going to act quite possibly in the opposite direction to an economic downturn," Sir David said.
with The Guardian
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Warming to the idea (the worm is definately turning!)
The AGE
October 26, 2006
A self-proclaimed climate-change sceptic, John Howard is now repositioning his Government to the front line of the global warming battle. Katharine Murphy outlines the reasons why.
IMAGINE a large artist's canvas. Draw four squares. Label them Drought, Water, Climate change and Energy. Start painting in the corner of each box and work your way carefully towards the middle, where the boxes intersect.
This is the image Grahame Morris sees when he looks at his former boss, John Howard, wrestling with the politics of global warming.
Morris was once Howard's chief of staff. Now he runs government services for PricewaterhouseCoopers and remains a keen observer of conservative politics. Faced with all the complexity on the picture, it is important to "paint in", Morris says, with his strategists' bent, "from each corner of the canvas".
But he won't predict where the lines will ultimately intersect. "The solution to this (problem) is lots of bits and pieces, not one big hit. Anyone who thinks they have all the answers on this is an idiot," he offers cheerfully.
But Morris will certainly acknowledge the potency of the issue. Climate change, he says, was a big deal for Australian voters a few years ago, but went off the boil. But now it's back, looming large in the consciousness of the community, back as he puts it "in full swing" as a mainstream political issue.
A much-quoted recent poll from the Lowy Institute bears out this conclusion: 68 per cent of respondents said climate change was a "critical threat" to Australia's interests over the next decade — rating it ahead of issues such as Islamic fundamentalism.
After a decade of trying to dismiss global warming as an elite preoccupation by strange hemp-wearing eco-warriors and the loathed latte set, John Howard has suddenly shifted gear.
Backbenchers who have been worried about climate change feel they are finally being listened to. Canberra is knocking itself out telling the community they have the political will to deal with rising temperatures, although we are not sure yet how.
But with an election looming next year, the Government is busy, busy, busy. One day, it's buckets of money to farmers on the bones of their backsides in the dry. Howard flew back to Australia from the Pacific
last night and will head straight to the west of NSW to visit drought-stricken farmers with a plane full of television crews in hot pursuit.
While holding out the hand of friendship to the bush, Howard is brawling with the states over water policy. One minute we seem on the verge of a referendum that would see Canberra take control of the nation's water resources, the next day they are suing for peace, asking the states to work co-operatively in the national interest.
Yesterday, there was more money both for solar power and to clean up Victoria's Hazelwood power station.
The Prime Minister is also flying kites about nuclear energy. Australia needs nuclear energy, he said a week ago, because it is a critical part of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which may be making the weather worse (which leads us back to
the drought). And the drought leads us to water. No rain, naturally enough, stretches Australia's already stretched water resources.
Drought-water-climate-energy: the Prime Minister is bolting the political narrative together and looking frenetically busy. But so far, there has been more politics than substance. The really tough policy decisions now loom.
Treasurer Peter Costello said on Tuesday Canberra would consider "small adjustments" in policy to make business reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Industry is giving the Government some cover to press ahead. Business Council of Australia president Michael Chaney yesterday accepted global warming as a reality — and hinted business would cop modest steps requiring it to cut emissions. The head of the Minerals Council of Australia, Mitch Hooke, acknowledged on behalf of Australia's big mining giants on Tuesday that "there will be a carbon price in a carbon-constrained world".
HOWARD will get a report from his nuclear taskforce next month, which will give him a road map to increase the use of renewable energy in Australia and add it to the mix. Both energy sources will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but they are more expensive than coal, and that will increase electricity prices to consumers.
At the centre of the challenge before the Government — the centre of the canvas, where the lines of the four boxes meet — is whether to put a price on pollution, and through that, improve the economic viability of power sources other than coal.
There are many options to "price" carbon. There is a carbon tax — which the Government has ruled out. There are emissions trading schemes, in which greenhouse gas emissions are capped and companies trade permits among themselves. The Government is sending mixed messages about whether it would accept emissions trading. Another option that would put a price on pollution is to make companies increasingly bear the costs of their emissions, by requiring investment and use of technology to make coal clean, or to capture emissions and bury them.
Greg Bourne had a long career as a petroleum executive for BP before joining environmental group WWF Australia as chief executive. Bourne says Howard is moving with alacrity on global warming because voters are genuinely alarmed at the doomsday scenarios. He says Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth hit home with the Australian public, as did Tim Flannery's recent book, The Weather Makers.
"The electorate is now signalling that they care and they are worried, and this Government hates being left behind," Bourne tells The Age. He predicts Canberra will put a price on pollution, otherwise there is every possibility of Howard looking like King Canute, with the waves lapping at his feet.
Australia will remain critically dependent on coal. Bourne says business is prepared to pick up at least some of the tab for its pollution, and is already "shadow pricing" — in plain terms, factoring the cost of a pollution price into its operations.
"I think the Government will go there," he says. "I think they will signal a carbon price is coming in."
His prediction is the Government will unveil a "modest" carbon price, signal that it will take effect from a certain date, and call for submissions from business about the best way to design the system.
Business is also signalling that it is prepared to cop a global system of emissions trading.
Around the world, governments are wrestling with their restive populations on climate change.
Reports from the United Kingdom suggest the Blair Government will shortly agree to legislation cutting carbon emissions. The move will follow a report by Sir Nicholas Stern, which was commissioned before new negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol due to begin in Nairobi in November.
October 26, 2006
A self-proclaimed climate-change sceptic, John Howard is now repositioning his Government to the front line of the global warming battle. Katharine Murphy outlines the reasons why.
IMAGINE a large artist's canvas. Draw four squares. Label them Drought, Water, Climate change and Energy. Start painting in the corner of each box and work your way carefully towards the middle, where the boxes intersect.
This is the image Grahame Morris sees when he looks at his former boss, John Howard, wrestling with the politics of global warming.
Morris was once Howard's chief of staff. Now he runs government services for PricewaterhouseCoopers and remains a keen observer of conservative politics. Faced with all the complexity on the picture, it is important to "paint in", Morris says, with his strategists' bent, "from each corner of the canvas".
But he won't predict where the lines will ultimately intersect. "The solution to this (problem) is lots of bits and pieces, not one big hit. Anyone who thinks they have all the answers on this is an idiot," he offers cheerfully.
But Morris will certainly acknowledge the potency of the issue. Climate change, he says, was a big deal for Australian voters a few years ago, but went off the boil. But now it's back, looming large in the consciousness of the community, back as he puts it "in full swing" as a mainstream political issue.
A much-quoted recent poll from the Lowy Institute bears out this conclusion: 68 per cent of respondents said climate change was a "critical threat" to Australia's interests over the next decade — rating it ahead of issues such as Islamic fundamentalism.
After a decade of trying to dismiss global warming as an elite preoccupation by strange hemp-wearing eco-warriors and the loathed latte set, John Howard has suddenly shifted gear.
Backbenchers who have been worried about climate change feel they are finally being listened to. Canberra is knocking itself out telling the community they have the political will to deal with rising temperatures, although we are not sure yet how.
But with an election looming next year, the Government is busy, busy, busy. One day, it's buckets of money to farmers on the bones of their backsides in the dry. Howard flew back to Australia from the Pacific
last night and will head straight to the west of NSW to visit drought-stricken farmers with a plane full of television crews in hot pursuit.
While holding out the hand of friendship to the bush, Howard is brawling with the states over water policy. One minute we seem on the verge of a referendum that would see Canberra take control of the nation's water resources, the next day they are suing for peace, asking the states to work co-operatively in the national interest.
Yesterday, there was more money both for solar power and to clean up Victoria's Hazelwood power station.
The Prime Minister is also flying kites about nuclear energy. Australia needs nuclear energy, he said a week ago, because it is a critical part of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which may be making the weather worse (which leads us back to
the drought). And the drought leads us to water. No rain, naturally enough, stretches Australia's already stretched water resources.
Drought-water-climate-energy: the Prime Minister is bolting the political narrative together and looking frenetically busy. But so far, there has been more politics than substance. The really tough policy decisions now loom.
Treasurer Peter Costello said on Tuesday Canberra would consider "small adjustments" in policy to make business reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Industry is giving the Government some cover to press ahead. Business Council of Australia president Michael Chaney yesterday accepted global warming as a reality — and hinted business would cop modest steps requiring it to cut emissions. The head of the Minerals Council of Australia, Mitch Hooke, acknowledged on behalf of Australia's big mining giants on Tuesday that "there will be a carbon price in a carbon-constrained world".
HOWARD will get a report from his nuclear taskforce next month, which will give him a road map to increase the use of renewable energy in Australia and add it to the mix. Both energy sources will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but they are more expensive than coal, and that will increase electricity prices to consumers.
At the centre of the challenge before the Government — the centre of the canvas, where the lines of the four boxes meet — is whether to put a price on pollution, and through that, improve the economic viability of power sources other than coal.
There are many options to "price" carbon. There is a carbon tax — which the Government has ruled out. There are emissions trading schemes, in which greenhouse gas emissions are capped and companies trade permits among themselves. The Government is sending mixed messages about whether it would accept emissions trading. Another option that would put a price on pollution is to make companies increasingly bear the costs of their emissions, by requiring investment and use of technology to make coal clean, or to capture emissions and bury them.
Greg Bourne had a long career as a petroleum executive for BP before joining environmental group WWF Australia as chief executive. Bourne says Howard is moving with alacrity on global warming because voters are genuinely alarmed at the doomsday scenarios. He says Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth hit home with the Australian public, as did Tim Flannery's recent book, The Weather Makers.
"The electorate is now signalling that they care and they are worried, and this Government hates being left behind," Bourne tells The Age. He predicts Canberra will put a price on pollution, otherwise there is every possibility of Howard looking like King Canute, with the waves lapping at his feet.
Australia will remain critically dependent on coal. Bourne says business is prepared to pick up at least some of the tab for its pollution, and is already "shadow pricing" — in plain terms, factoring the cost of a pollution price into its operations.
"I think the Government will go there," he says. "I think they will signal a carbon price is coming in."
His prediction is the Government will unveil a "modest" carbon price, signal that it will take effect from a certain date, and call for submissions from business about the best way to design the system.
Business is also signalling that it is prepared to cop a global system of emissions trading.
Around the world, governments are wrestling with their restive populations on climate change.
Reports from the United Kingdom suggest the Blair Government will shortly agree to legislation cutting carbon emissions. The move will follow a report by Sir Nicholas Stern, which was commissioned before new negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol due to begin in Nairobi in November.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Solar plan embarrasses Howard
The AGE
October 25, 2006 - 7:05PM
The Federal Government felt the heat of climate change today when a huge solar energy project given federal funds said it may not have gone ahead without the Victorian Labor government.
On the day the Federal Government prepared to flaunt its green credentials by announcing $75 million for the solar project and $50 million to clean up a power station, it was embarrassed at the official launch.
Solar Systems Generation received $125 million in federal and state grants to build its proposed solar concentrator using photovoltaic cells in north-west Victoria.
The $420 million solar power project is expected to pump electricity into the national grid equivalent to the annual needs of 45,000 homes, with no greenhouse gas emissions.
Both the company and Premier Steve Bracks said Victoria's renewable energy target of 10 per cent green power by 2016 - known as VRET - had made the project, the largest of its kind in the world, viable.
"The VRET scheme is a key ingredient in the economics of the project," the company's managing director Dave Holland told reporters today.
"If VRET was to shut down, we would have some serious discussion with the government of the day."
With the Federal Government capping its own mandatory renewable energy target at two per cent, federal Treasurer Peter Costello played down the significance of Victoria's scheme.
Mr Costello said the solar project would "absolutely" be viable even without VRET because it was a technology demonstration scheme.
Asked if today's $75 million in federal funding for the project was an endorsement of Victoria's renewable energy targets Mr Costello said: "No, not in the slightest".
Mr Costello said the $50 million towards cleaning up the Hazelwood coal power station would make a major contribution towards reducing emissions.
"It just shows practical, considered, financially viable, workable technologies which can improve the emissions problem that will help us on our way to reduce global warming," he said.
With more clean energy announcements expected in coming weeks, the opposition and some green groups criticised the government for taking a piecemeal approach to greenhouse gas abatement measures rather than an over-arching scheme.
But the two projects were largely welcomed, with most groups pleased to see action from the rich low-emissions technology demonstration fund, a $500 million barrel of money which was announced in June 2004.
The fund's aim is to generate a further $1.5 billion in private investment in technologies to clean-up existing fossil fuel industries, and for renewable energies.
Labor's environment spokesman Anthony Albanese criticised the government for taking more than two years to announce the project.
"The government is good at allocating money to funds and then making political decisions at politically convenient times - reannouncements."
Greenpeace spokesman Danny Kennedy said the government was starting to bow to growing public pressure and concern about climate change.
"If the federal government's strategy is to lay out a series of LETDF announcements from now to the election, it is a thinly disguised attempt to avoid the real action that is needed - moving Australia away from polluting coal," he said.
Greenhouse lobby group the Climate Institute welcomed the funding but said it was not an adequate response to climate change because the projects were not required to begin to cut emissions until after 2030.
"While it is important to demonstrate new technologies, this announcement ... is like throwing a cup of water on a bushfire," chief executive Corin Millais said.
Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC) chief executive Peter Cook congratulated the government for including carbon dioxide capture and storage in the Hazelwood project.
"The project will see state-of-the-art technology fitted to one of Hazelwood's 200 megawatt electricity generating units to reduce greenhouse gas emissions initially by an estimated 30 per cent," he said.
"With carbon capture and storage technologies, the scheme has the potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 80 per cent in the longer term.
"It will be one of the world's foremost demonstrations of post-combustion capture of carbon dioxide."
AAP
October 25, 2006 - 7:05PM
The Federal Government felt the heat of climate change today when a huge solar energy project given federal funds said it may not have gone ahead without the Victorian Labor government.
On the day the Federal Government prepared to flaunt its green credentials by announcing $75 million for the solar project and $50 million to clean up a power station, it was embarrassed at the official launch.
Solar Systems Generation received $125 million in federal and state grants to build its proposed solar concentrator using photovoltaic cells in north-west Victoria.
The $420 million solar power project is expected to pump electricity into the national grid equivalent to the annual needs of 45,000 homes, with no greenhouse gas emissions.
Both the company and Premier Steve Bracks said Victoria's renewable energy target of 10 per cent green power by 2016 - known as VRET - had made the project, the largest of its kind in the world, viable.
"The VRET scheme is a key ingredient in the economics of the project," the company's managing director Dave Holland told reporters today.
"If VRET was to shut down, we would have some serious discussion with the government of the day."
With the Federal Government capping its own mandatory renewable energy target at two per cent, federal Treasurer Peter Costello played down the significance of Victoria's scheme.
Mr Costello said the solar project would "absolutely" be viable even without VRET because it was a technology demonstration scheme.
Asked if today's $75 million in federal funding for the project was an endorsement of Victoria's renewable energy targets Mr Costello said: "No, not in the slightest".
Mr Costello said the $50 million towards cleaning up the Hazelwood coal power station would make a major contribution towards reducing emissions.
"It just shows practical, considered, financially viable, workable technologies which can improve the emissions problem that will help us on our way to reduce global warming," he said.
With more clean energy announcements expected in coming weeks, the opposition and some green groups criticised the government for taking a piecemeal approach to greenhouse gas abatement measures rather than an over-arching scheme.
But the two projects were largely welcomed, with most groups pleased to see action from the rich low-emissions technology demonstration fund, a $500 million barrel of money which was announced in June 2004.
The fund's aim is to generate a further $1.5 billion in private investment in technologies to clean-up existing fossil fuel industries, and for renewable energies.
Labor's environment spokesman Anthony Albanese criticised the government for taking more than two years to announce the project.
"The government is good at allocating money to funds and then making political decisions at politically convenient times - reannouncements."
Greenpeace spokesman Danny Kennedy said the government was starting to bow to growing public pressure and concern about climate change.
"If the federal government's strategy is to lay out a series of LETDF announcements from now to the election, it is a thinly disguised attempt to avoid the real action that is needed - moving Australia away from polluting coal," he said.
Greenhouse lobby group the Climate Institute welcomed the funding but said it was not an adequate response to climate change because the projects were not required to begin to cut emissions until after 2030.
"While it is important to demonstrate new technologies, this announcement ... is like throwing a cup of water on a bushfire," chief executive Corin Millais said.
Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC) chief executive Peter Cook congratulated the government for including carbon dioxide capture and storage in the Hazelwood project.
"The project will see state-of-the-art technology fitted to one of Hazelwood's 200 megawatt electricity generating units to reduce greenhouse gas emissions initially by an estimated 30 per cent," he said.
"With carbon capture and storage technologies, the scheme has the potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 80 per cent in the longer term.
"It will be one of the world's foremost demonstrations of post-combustion capture of carbon dioxide."
AAP
Penguins protest CSIRO's frozen research
The Canberra Times
Wednesday, 25 October 2006
By Rosslyn Beeby
Arriving at CSIRO's Black Mountain laboratories today, federal Science Minister Julie Bishop will be greeted by a flock of seven angry penguins, protesting against cuts to renewable energy research.
Tethered to the nature strip, the inflatable penguins head a protest procession of 15 signs spaced along Clunies Ross Drive, urging the public to take action to "Save Our CSIRO".
The signs spell out the ecological dangers of climate change, warning that a temperature rise of one degree will kill 82 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef, and warn the public to "beware executive spin denying CSIRO decline".
The protest penguins and signs were installed - "out of core work hours" - by scientist David Grice as "a private citizen deeply concerned about the future of CSIRO".
A notice taped to the tummy of one of the penguins flags the formation of "an underground group" of rebel scientists, who will offer "alternative views to executive spin" through leaflets distributed to the public and to CSIRO staff.
"I am deeply concerned about the CSIRO executive decision to focus research on coal and decrease research on renewable energy, combined with the gagging of climate scientists, " the notice says.
"Serving the public without fear or favour has turned into fear of funding cuts and favour of the Government's ideology... Scientists roll over and submit and seal their lips for fear of offending the Government and suffering further cuts to funding.
"Despite their silence, research funding has not even kept pace with inflation, making the purpose of their silence meaningless. And then to reinforce the decline of our CSIRO, executive mouthpieces tell the public everything is brilliant and how exciting the future will be, with the zeal of deluded over-optimists."
Mr Grice, who has worked on major research projects at CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems for 25 years, distributed leaflets yesterday at the CSIRO Discovery Centre.
"Why Penguins?," the leaflet begins.
"I originally thought of polar bears but emperor penguins are much more relevant to Australia (and I could buy them!) with the extreme possibility of Antarctica melting.
"A less extreme possibility is disruption to their food supplies as suggested is already happening for fairy penguins. Anyway the idea of emperor penguins marching on CSIRO asking why they are funding coal research but at same time reducing renewable research seemed like a reasonable idea."
CSIRO sources at Black Mountain said CSIRO corporate staff removed the leaflets, describing Mr Grice as "a troublemaker" and "out of touch" with changes to CSIRO's research priorities.
CSIRO group executive Dr Steve Morton said Mr Grice "has a right to voice his views as a public citizen" and was unlikely to be disciplined or formally cautioned for his penguin protest.
"Naturally, I have different views to those expressed in the leaflets," he said.
Dr Morton said CSIRO was planning to build its capacity for solar research and had only closed down one small program as a result of its recent overhaul of research priorities.
"We intend to focus on solar energy and organic photovoltaics, leaving the development of silicon photovoltaics to other research institutions," he said.
Dr Morton denied there had been substantial funding cuts to environmental research programs at CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems but said some staff were unhappy that "we've stopped some smaller areas of research".
Wednesday, 25 October 2006
By Rosslyn Beeby
Arriving at CSIRO's Black Mountain laboratories today, federal Science Minister Julie Bishop will be greeted by a flock of seven angry penguins, protesting against cuts to renewable energy research.
Tethered to the nature strip, the inflatable penguins head a protest procession of 15 signs spaced along Clunies Ross Drive, urging the public to take action to "Save Our CSIRO".
The signs spell out the ecological dangers of climate change, warning that a temperature rise of one degree will kill 82 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef, and warn the public to "beware executive spin denying CSIRO decline".
The protest penguins and signs were installed - "out of core work hours" - by scientist David Grice as "a private citizen deeply concerned about the future of CSIRO".
A notice taped to the tummy of one of the penguins flags the formation of "an underground group" of rebel scientists, who will offer "alternative views to executive spin" through leaflets distributed to the public and to CSIRO staff.
"I am deeply concerned about the CSIRO executive decision to focus research on coal and decrease research on renewable energy, combined with the gagging of climate scientists, " the notice says.
"Serving the public without fear or favour has turned into fear of funding cuts and favour of the Government's ideology... Scientists roll over and submit and seal their lips for fear of offending the Government and suffering further cuts to funding.
"Despite their silence, research funding has not even kept pace with inflation, making the purpose of their silence meaningless. And then to reinforce the decline of our CSIRO, executive mouthpieces tell the public everything is brilliant and how exciting the future will be, with the zeal of deluded over-optimists."
Mr Grice, who has worked on major research projects at CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems for 25 years, distributed leaflets yesterday at the CSIRO Discovery Centre.
"Why Penguins?," the leaflet begins.
"I originally thought of polar bears but emperor penguins are much more relevant to Australia (and I could buy them!) with the extreme possibility of Antarctica melting.
"A less extreme possibility is disruption to their food supplies as suggested is already happening for fairy penguins. Anyway the idea of emperor penguins marching on CSIRO asking why they are funding coal research but at same time reducing renewable research seemed like a reasonable idea."
CSIRO sources at Black Mountain said CSIRO corporate staff removed the leaflets, describing Mr Grice as "a troublemaker" and "out of touch" with changes to CSIRO's research priorities.
CSIRO group executive Dr Steve Morton said Mr Grice "has a right to voice his views as a public citizen" and was unlikely to be disciplined or formally cautioned for his penguin protest.
"Naturally, I have different views to those expressed in the leaflets," he said.
Dr Morton said CSIRO was planning to build its capacity for solar research and had only closed down one small program as a result of its recent overhaul of research priorities.
"We intend to focus on solar energy and organic photovoltaics, leaving the development of silicon photovoltaics to other research institutions," he said.
Dr Morton denied there had been substantial funding cuts to environmental research programs at CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems but said some staff were unhappy that "we've stopped some smaller areas of research".
PM turns up heat on solar power
Joseph Kerr and Dennis Shanahan
October 25, 2006
A PROPOSED $400 million solar plant that could deliver 154 megawatts of power will be the cornerstone of the Howard Government's fight against climate change.
In a political shift that steals an approach trumpeted by federal Labor, the federal and Victorian governments will contribute $125 million towards the plant, to be built in northern Victoria using technology developed by Melbourne firm Solar Systems.
The announcement today, part of a $230 million package, is the first in a series that will see an eventual $2 billion invested in new technology aimed at cutting greenhouse emissions.
A coal-drying project in the Latrobe Valley is also expected to be announced today, to help burn Victoria's large brown coal deposits more cleanly than current technology allows. Other projects include seed funding for developing affordable ways of pumping carbon gases from coal-fired power stations underground or diverting carbon dioxide from coal before it is used to generate electricity.
The federal Government hopes its spending will encourage up to $10 billion in greenhouse-friendly electricity projects.
The funding is also going towards developing solar and wind technologies as part of a mix between fossil fuel power and renewable energy sources.
Treasurer Peter Costello, who will announce the funding today with Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane, has kept alive the prospect of domestic nuclear power, predicting that a plant will be built in Australia as soon as it becomes economically viable, perhaps within 10 years.
Mr Costello said the Government should not legislate to stop companies investing in nuclear energy apart from on safety and environmental grounds. "I don't think we should legislatively stop it," he said yesterday.
"I think we should legislatively say, provided you meet all of the requirements in relation to safety and export controls and all those sorts of things, environmental consideration, that there is no legislative bar and then I would let the market work. And the day it becomes commercial someone will build it."
The Howard Government's announcements come before the release next week of a British review, which will radically change the attitude to the economic effect of climate change with long-term predictions of economic costs if it's not addressed quickly.
Before heading to Fiji for the Pacific Islands Forum, where climate change and rising sea levels are major concerns, John Howard said climate change had to be addressed.
The Prime Minister said there was no single answer, but Australia's role as an energy producer for the world meant it should look at technological ways to cut greenhouse emissions from coal-fired power.
Instead of simply converting direct sunlight that hits expensive photovoltaic cells to electricity, the Solar Systems technology works by concentrating the sun's rays with cheap glass and steel on to highly efficient photovoltaic units. The Melbourne-based company has been focusing its efforts on drawing ever greater efficiencies from photovoltaic cells, as well as improving its mirror technology. It has invested more than $40 million in developing its technologies.
Such a solar power station would be one of the biggest in the world, but would produce only a quarter of the power of a small coal-fired station.
The funding comes from various federal Government commitments, including promises under the Asia-Pacific Clean Development agreement - struck by the AP-6, which includes India, China and the US - of $500million, state governments and the coal industry's own $300million.
A spokesman for Victorian Energy Minister Theo Theophanous said the state was "likely to attract more significant renewable energy projects thanks to our renewable energy targets, which will cut 27 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions".
More announcements are expected in Queensland - where Premier Peter Beattie has pledged his own funding to develop clean coal technology - and one other state.
Mr Beattie recently said he wanted a clean coal process developed before he committed Queensland, a large coal producing state, to a proposed states-backed emissions trading system that would push up the cost of electricity and impose costs on carbon emissions.
Mr Howard on Monday said the Government was about to reveal funding "for exciting new technologies, including those designed to ensure that the use of our abundant fossil fuel reserves will in the future occur in a cleaner, greener fashion, thus reducing the process of climate change".
October 25, 2006
A PROPOSED $400 million solar plant that could deliver 154 megawatts of power will be the cornerstone of the Howard Government's fight against climate change.
In a political shift that steals an approach trumpeted by federal Labor, the federal and Victorian governments will contribute $125 million towards the plant, to be built in northern Victoria using technology developed by Melbourne firm Solar Systems.
The announcement today, part of a $230 million package, is the first in a series that will see an eventual $2 billion invested in new technology aimed at cutting greenhouse emissions.
A coal-drying project in the Latrobe Valley is also expected to be announced today, to help burn Victoria's large brown coal deposits more cleanly than current technology allows. Other projects include seed funding for developing affordable ways of pumping carbon gases from coal-fired power stations underground or diverting carbon dioxide from coal before it is used to generate electricity.
The federal Government hopes its spending will encourage up to $10 billion in greenhouse-friendly electricity projects.
The funding is also going towards developing solar and wind technologies as part of a mix between fossil fuel power and renewable energy sources.
Treasurer Peter Costello, who will announce the funding today with Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane, has kept alive the prospect of domestic nuclear power, predicting that a plant will be built in Australia as soon as it becomes economically viable, perhaps within 10 years.
Mr Costello said the Government should not legislate to stop companies investing in nuclear energy apart from on safety and environmental grounds. "I don't think we should legislatively stop it," he said yesterday.
"I think we should legislatively say, provided you meet all of the requirements in relation to safety and export controls and all those sorts of things, environmental consideration, that there is no legislative bar and then I would let the market work. And the day it becomes commercial someone will build it."
The Howard Government's announcements come before the release next week of a British review, which will radically change the attitude to the economic effect of climate change with long-term predictions of economic costs if it's not addressed quickly.
Before heading to Fiji for the Pacific Islands Forum, where climate change and rising sea levels are major concerns, John Howard said climate change had to be addressed.
The Prime Minister said there was no single answer, but Australia's role as an energy producer for the world meant it should look at technological ways to cut greenhouse emissions from coal-fired power.
Instead of simply converting direct sunlight that hits expensive photovoltaic cells to electricity, the Solar Systems technology works by concentrating the sun's rays with cheap glass and steel on to highly efficient photovoltaic units. The Melbourne-based company has been focusing its efforts on drawing ever greater efficiencies from photovoltaic cells, as well as improving its mirror technology. It has invested more than $40 million in developing its technologies.
Such a solar power station would be one of the biggest in the world, but would produce only a quarter of the power of a small coal-fired station.
The funding comes from various federal Government commitments, including promises under the Asia-Pacific Clean Development agreement - struck by the AP-6, which includes India, China and the US - of $500million, state governments and the coal industry's own $300million.
A spokesman for Victorian Energy Minister Theo Theophanous said the state was "likely to attract more significant renewable energy projects thanks to our renewable energy targets, which will cut 27 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions".
More announcements are expected in Queensland - where Premier Peter Beattie has pledged his own funding to develop clean coal technology - and one other state.
Mr Beattie recently said he wanted a clean coal process developed before he committed Queensland, a large coal producing state, to a proposed states-backed emissions trading system that would push up the cost of electricity and impose costs on carbon emissions.
Mr Howard on Monday said the Government was about to reveal funding "for exciting new technologies, including those designed to ensure that the use of our abundant fossil fuel reserves will in the future occur in a cleaner, greener fashion, thus reducing the process of climate change".
PM turns up heat on solar power
The Australian
Joseph Kerr and Dennis Shanahan
October 25, 2006
A PROPOSED $400 million solar plant that could deliver 154 megawatts of power will be the cornerstone of the Howard Government's fight against climate change.
In a political shift that steals an approach trumpeted by federal Labor, the federal and Victorian governments will contribute $125 million towards the plant, to be built in northern Victoria using technology developed by Melbourne firm Solar Systems.
The announcement today, part of a $230 million package, is the first in a series that will see an eventual $2 billion invested in new technology aimed at cutting greenhouse emissions.
A coal-drying project in the Latrobe Valley is also expected to be announced today, to help burn Victoria's large brown coal deposits more cleanly than current technology allows. Other projects include seed funding for developing affordable ways of pumping carbon gases from coal-fired power stations underground or diverting carbon dioxide from coal before it is used to generate electricity.
The federal Government hopes its spending will encourage up to $10 billion in greenhouse-friendly electricity projects.
The funding is also going towards developing solar and wind technologies as part of a mix between fossil fuel power and renewable energy sources.
Treasurer Peter Costello, who will announce the funding today with Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane, has kept alive the prospect of domestic nuclear power, predicting that a plant will be built in Australia as soon as it becomes economically viable, perhaps within 10 years.
Mr Costello said the Government should not legislate to stop companies investing in nuclear energy apart from on safety and environmental grounds. "I don't think we should legislatively stop it," he said yesterday.
"I think we should legislatively say, provided you meet all of the requirements in relation to safety and export controls and all those sorts of things, environmental consideration, that there is no legislative bar and then I would let the market work. And the day it becomes commercial someone will build it."
The Howard Government's announcements come before the release next week of a British review, which will radically change the attitude to the economic effect of climate change with long-term predictions of economic costs if it's not addressed quickly.
Before heading to Fiji for the Pacific Islands Forum, where climate change and rising sea levels are major concerns, John Howard said climate change had to be addressed.
The Prime Minister said there was no single answer, but Australia's role as an energy producer for the world meant it should look at technological ways to cut greenhouse emissions from coal-fired power.
Instead of simply converting direct sunlight that hits expensive photovoltaic cells to electricity, the Solar Systems technology works by concentrating the sun's rays with cheap glass and steel on to highly efficient photovoltaic units. The Melbourne-based company has been focusing its efforts on drawing ever greater efficiencies from photovoltaic cells, as well as improving its mirror technology. It has invested more than $40 million in developing its technologies.
Such a solar power station would be one of the biggest in the world, but would produce only a quarter of the power of a small coal-fired station.
The funding comes from various federal Government commitments, including promises under the Asia-Pacific Clean Development agreement - struck by the AP-6, which includes India, China and the US - of $500million, state governments and the coal industry's own $300million.
A spokesman for Victorian Energy Minister Theo Theophanous said the state was "likely to attract more significant renewable energy projects thanks to our renewable energy targets, which will cut 27 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions".
More announcements are expected in Queensland - where Premier Peter Beattie has pledged his own funding to develop clean coal technology - and one other state.
Mr Beattie recently said he wanted a clean coal process developed before he committed Queensland, a large coal producing state, to a proposed states-backed emissions trading system that would push up the cost of electricity and impose costs on carbon emissions.
Mr Howard on Monday said the Government was about to reveal funding "for exciting new technologies, including those designed to ensure that the use of our abundant fossil fuel reserves will in the future occur in a cleaner, greener fashion, thus reducing the process of climate change".
Joseph Kerr and Dennis Shanahan
October 25, 2006
A PROPOSED $400 million solar plant that could deliver 154 megawatts of power will be the cornerstone of the Howard Government's fight against climate change.
In a political shift that steals an approach trumpeted by federal Labor, the federal and Victorian governments will contribute $125 million towards the plant, to be built in northern Victoria using technology developed by Melbourne firm Solar Systems.
The announcement today, part of a $230 million package, is the first in a series that will see an eventual $2 billion invested in new technology aimed at cutting greenhouse emissions.
A coal-drying project in the Latrobe Valley is also expected to be announced today, to help burn Victoria's large brown coal deposits more cleanly than current technology allows. Other projects include seed funding for developing affordable ways of pumping carbon gases from coal-fired power stations underground or diverting carbon dioxide from coal before it is used to generate electricity.
The federal Government hopes its spending will encourage up to $10 billion in greenhouse-friendly electricity projects.
The funding is also going towards developing solar and wind technologies as part of a mix between fossil fuel power and renewable energy sources.
Treasurer Peter Costello, who will announce the funding today with Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane, has kept alive the prospect of domestic nuclear power, predicting that a plant will be built in Australia as soon as it becomes economically viable, perhaps within 10 years.
Mr Costello said the Government should not legislate to stop companies investing in nuclear energy apart from on safety and environmental grounds. "I don't think we should legislatively stop it," he said yesterday.
"I think we should legislatively say, provided you meet all of the requirements in relation to safety and export controls and all those sorts of things, environmental consideration, that there is no legislative bar and then I would let the market work. And the day it becomes commercial someone will build it."
The Howard Government's announcements come before the release next week of a British review, which will radically change the attitude to the economic effect of climate change with long-term predictions of economic costs if it's not addressed quickly.
Before heading to Fiji for the Pacific Islands Forum, where climate change and rising sea levels are major concerns, John Howard said climate change had to be addressed.
The Prime Minister said there was no single answer, but Australia's role as an energy producer for the world meant it should look at technological ways to cut greenhouse emissions from coal-fired power.
Instead of simply converting direct sunlight that hits expensive photovoltaic cells to electricity, the Solar Systems technology works by concentrating the sun's rays with cheap glass and steel on to highly efficient photovoltaic units. The Melbourne-based company has been focusing its efforts on drawing ever greater efficiencies from photovoltaic cells, as well as improving its mirror technology. It has invested more than $40 million in developing its technologies.
Such a solar power station would be one of the biggest in the world, but would produce only a quarter of the power of a small coal-fired station.
The funding comes from various federal Government commitments, including promises under the Asia-Pacific Clean Development agreement - struck by the AP-6, which includes India, China and the US - of $500million, state governments and the coal industry's own $300million.
A spokesman for Victorian Energy Minister Theo Theophanous said the state was "likely to attract more significant renewable energy projects thanks to our renewable energy targets, which will cut 27 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions".
More announcements are expected in Queensland - where Premier Peter Beattie has pledged his own funding to develop clean coal technology - and one other state.
Mr Beattie recently said he wanted a clean coal process developed before he committed Queensland, a large coal producing state, to a proposed states-backed emissions trading system that would push up the cost of electricity and impose costs on carbon emissions.
Mr Howard on Monday said the Government was about to reveal funding "for exciting new technologies, including those designed to ensure that the use of our abundant fossil fuel reserves will in the future occur in a cleaner, greener fashion, thus reducing the process of climate change".
We're running out of power
SMH
Anne Davies and John Garnaut
October 25, 2006
NSW faces blackouts and skyrocketing electricity prices within five years unless it increases supply, the national energy market regulator has warned.
In a report to be released today, it forecasts that demand for electricity in the state could outstrip supply by 2010-11, causing the network to fall below its tough reliability standards.
The forecast for NSW and other states will again focus debate on how Australia should meet its power needs in the face of mounting evidence about the effects of climate change on farming, tourism and other industries.
Today the federal and Victorian governments will announce funding to help build one of the world's biggest solar power stations, a $400 million project that will be a key part of the national strategy to fight climate change.
The federal Treasurer, Peter Costello - who has previously dismissed the prospect of Australian nuclear power as commercially unviable - shifted his position yesterday. He said a nuclear plant would be built as soon as it became commercial, and that was possible within 10 years.
Australia's greenhouse emissions are among the worst in the world - 3.41 tonnes of CO2 per capita - according to a report released yesterday by the conservation group WWF.
NSW's energy demand is being fuelled mainly by air-conditioning - a standard feature in new homes - which leads to bigger and more frequent peaks in demand in summer, according to the report by the National Electricity Market Management Company.
NSW's demand is projected to grow by 0.2 per cent in the year to June 2007, but the number of summer days with a 10 per cent or more likelihood of exceeding the network's reliability standard is forecast to rise by 2.7 per cent.
Mainland states depend mainly on greenhouse-causing coal, although NSW is turning to gas-fired plants to meet the increasingly sharp peaks in demand. Gas-fired plants are more expensive to run but have about half the emissions and are more suited to peak demand. But the rising population will mean more need for baseload power to meet everyday needs, which are currently met by coal-fired stations running 24 hours a day.
The regulator is responsible for managing the wholesale electricity market, following the introduction of a national trading system. Its predictions are notoriously conservative, based on the worst case, such as the failure of a power station on a hot day.
NSW is not the most vulnerable state. South Australia faces potential power shortages as early as 2007-08 and Victoria a year later.
NSW has improved its position since last year, after it decided to build a gas-fired power plant at Tallawarra, on the South Coast.
The state Energy Minister, Joe Tripodi, said yesterday: "The most important thing about this is we have plenty of electricity, both peak and baseload, and the need has been pushed out for another year. The biggest issue for the NSW electricity industry is peak demand, and that's where our efforts have been applied."
The Government was close to awarding tenders for a second gas-fired plant at Munmorah, on the Central Coast, and several more were planned.
A white paper on energy was due out last year, but - like the State Government's water plan - it seems to have disappeared from the political agenda. Mr Tripodi said the Government now intended to make policy announcements as they were needed.
Green groups had promised to campaign against any new coal-fired power stations as the election in March approached. The white paper is unlikely to see the light of day until after polling day.
Without a pollution tax, nuclear power has been dismissed as uneconomic because of the large start-up costs and Australia's abundance of cheap coal. But the Industry Minister, Ian Macfarlane, says nuclear plants could be under construction within 10 years, and the Prime Minister says they will play a role in reducing global warming. Yesterday Mr Costello said: "I have said that it is not commercial as of now. Can I conceive a time when it will become commercial? Yes.
"Will it be 10 years? Maybe, possibly not. But … it will become commercial, and when it becomes commercial someone will build it. I don't think we should legislatively stop it. I think we should legislatively say, provided you meet all of the requirements in relation to safety and export controls and all those sorts of things, environmental consideration, that there is no legislative bar and then I would let the market work."
Mr Costello would not endorse any pollution tax.
Anne Davies and John Garnaut
October 25, 2006
NSW faces blackouts and skyrocketing electricity prices within five years unless it increases supply, the national energy market regulator has warned.
In a report to be released today, it forecasts that demand for electricity in the state could outstrip supply by 2010-11, causing the network to fall below its tough reliability standards.
The forecast for NSW and other states will again focus debate on how Australia should meet its power needs in the face of mounting evidence about the effects of climate change on farming, tourism and other industries.
Today the federal and Victorian governments will announce funding to help build one of the world's biggest solar power stations, a $400 million project that will be a key part of the national strategy to fight climate change.
The federal Treasurer, Peter Costello - who has previously dismissed the prospect of Australian nuclear power as commercially unviable - shifted his position yesterday. He said a nuclear plant would be built as soon as it became commercial, and that was possible within 10 years.
Australia's greenhouse emissions are among the worst in the world - 3.41 tonnes of CO2 per capita - according to a report released yesterday by the conservation group WWF.
NSW's energy demand is being fuelled mainly by air-conditioning - a standard feature in new homes - which leads to bigger and more frequent peaks in demand in summer, according to the report by the National Electricity Market Management Company.
NSW's demand is projected to grow by 0.2 per cent in the year to June 2007, but the number of summer days with a 10 per cent or more likelihood of exceeding the network's reliability standard is forecast to rise by 2.7 per cent.
Mainland states depend mainly on greenhouse-causing coal, although NSW is turning to gas-fired plants to meet the increasingly sharp peaks in demand. Gas-fired plants are more expensive to run but have about half the emissions and are more suited to peak demand. But the rising population will mean more need for baseload power to meet everyday needs, which are currently met by coal-fired stations running 24 hours a day.
The regulator is responsible for managing the wholesale electricity market, following the introduction of a national trading system. Its predictions are notoriously conservative, based on the worst case, such as the failure of a power station on a hot day.
NSW is not the most vulnerable state. South Australia faces potential power shortages as early as 2007-08 and Victoria a year later.
NSW has improved its position since last year, after it decided to build a gas-fired power plant at Tallawarra, on the South Coast.
The state Energy Minister, Joe Tripodi, said yesterday: "The most important thing about this is we have plenty of electricity, both peak and baseload, and the need has been pushed out for another year. The biggest issue for the NSW electricity industry is peak demand, and that's where our efforts have been applied."
The Government was close to awarding tenders for a second gas-fired plant at Munmorah, on the Central Coast, and several more were planned.
A white paper on energy was due out last year, but - like the State Government's water plan - it seems to have disappeared from the political agenda. Mr Tripodi said the Government now intended to make policy announcements as they were needed.
Green groups had promised to campaign against any new coal-fired power stations as the election in March approached. The white paper is unlikely to see the light of day until after polling day.
Without a pollution tax, nuclear power has been dismissed as uneconomic because of the large start-up costs and Australia's abundance of cheap coal. But the Industry Minister, Ian Macfarlane, says nuclear plants could be under construction within 10 years, and the Prime Minister says they will play a role in reducing global warming. Yesterday Mr Costello said: "I have said that it is not commercial as of now. Can I conceive a time when it will become commercial? Yes.
"Will it be 10 years? Maybe, possibly not. But … it will become commercial, and when it becomes commercial someone will build it. I don't think we should legislatively stop it. I think we should legislatively say, provided you meet all of the requirements in relation to safety and export controls and all those sorts of things, environmental consideration, that there is no legislative bar and then I would let the market work."
Mr Costello would not endorse any pollution tax.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Trying to avoid the reality of climate change
SMH
By Ian Dunlop
October 24, 2006
This may yet turn out to be the year in which Australia gets serious about climate change. Community concern has been growing for some time, but even last month, during Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth visit, the Federal Government preferred denial, epitomised by Industry and Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane's immortal comment on the film: "It's just entertainment, and really that's all it is."
For far too long Australian debate has remained stuck on the question of whether climate change is man-made, a debate that we will not know the answer to for decades. Meanwhile, scientific opinion has moved strongly to the view that human activity, particularly emissions of greenhouse gases, probably is a major contributor. But what measures should we be putting in place to mitigate the effects of climate change and to adapt to it?
In the past week those risks have become real as we focus on the full implications of high temperatures, drought and water shortage. Finally, it seems that ministers are starting to acknowledge that climate change may have something to do with it - yet Federal Government policy remains confused and contradictory.
In particular, the Government remains adamantly opposed to ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, preferring to focus its efforts on the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6). If we are serious about tackling climate change, that needs to change.
The political spin on this issue has the Government tied in knots. Ian Macfarlane notwithstanding, the Prime Minister now apparently accepts that climate change needs to be addressed. He does not want to ratify Kyoto, but emphasises that we are meeting our Kyoto obligations. If so, why not ratify it?
The essential difference between AP6 and Kyoto is that Kyoto sets binding limits on carbon emissions from the outset and provides for various mechanisms under which these can be achieved, including emissions trading that puts a price on carbon pollution. AP6 relies on developing clean technology without accepting any binding commitment to reduce carbon emissions, or pricing carbon.
The Australian Government position is that AP6 is complementary to, not a replacement for, Kyoto. Environment Minister Ian Campbell says we need a carbon emissions trading system to put a price on carbon pollution and to reduce emissions, but that it would be premature to introduce it before clean technologies are developed. In short, our policy is to avoid doing anything to rock the boat of conventional economic growth, particularly while the resource boom lasts.
On any rational technical or economic grounds, this policy makes no sense. Further, it is ethically flawed. If we accept that carbon emissions are a serious problem, why do we maintain the enormous subsidy the fossil fuel industries have enjoyed for decades by not pricing carbon?
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol has been ratified by 165 countries, including China and India, encompassing more than 86 per cent of the world's population. Kyoto legally binds 36 industrialised countries, from the 165, to reduce their emissions of six greenhouse gases by 5 per cent overall relative to 1990 levels during the first commitment period from 2008 to 2012.
To achieve the 5 per cent reduction, the countries negotiated individual targets dependent upon their circumstances. These countries include the EU and Russia but exclude the US and Australia, which refused to ratify the protocol despite having led the negotiations and signed it in 1997, and which are the highest per capita carbon emitters in the world.
Kyoto has a cost, but the cost of the initial commitment is nowhere near the disaster that various vested interests claim. The cost will rise as emission reductions are tightened, but so will the opportunities for innovation and new market development, provided government and industry are seeking solutions rather than reactive defence of the status quo.
There must be a global solution to this global problem. The Government professed itself well pleased with the target negotiated for our participation in the protocol, an 8 per cent increase in Australian emissions over 1990 levels on average over the 2008-12 period. Then the US refused to ratify Kyoto in 2001 and, in a volte-face, Australia obediently followed suit in 2002. The Asia Pacific Partnership was finally launched in 2005.
We need to combine an improved Kyoto with increased emission reduction obligations and developing country participation, AP6 and probably a great deal more. We urgently need a price placed on carbon emissions and a mechanism for reducing those emissions.
Developing a new international framework is hardly realistic. The protracted Kyoto negotiations demonstrated the enormous effort required to get a global agreement of this kind off the ground and time is of the essence. Kyoto represents the binding commitments that the Australian and US governments seem desperate to avoid. But "what gets measured gets done".
Most importantly, we should keep our energy options open. There are no silver bullets to fix this problem: the solution lies in serious emission reductions and myriad initiatives across the energy spectrum, to encourage alternative energy supplies, increase efficiency and reduce demand.
Ian Dunlop chaired the Australian Coal Association in 1987-88 and the AGO Experts Group on Emissions Trading in 1999-2000.
By Ian Dunlop
October 24, 2006
This may yet turn out to be the year in which Australia gets serious about climate change. Community concern has been growing for some time, but even last month, during Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth visit, the Federal Government preferred denial, epitomised by Industry and Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane's immortal comment on the film: "It's just entertainment, and really that's all it is."
For far too long Australian debate has remained stuck on the question of whether climate change is man-made, a debate that we will not know the answer to for decades. Meanwhile, scientific opinion has moved strongly to the view that human activity, particularly emissions of greenhouse gases, probably is a major contributor. But what measures should we be putting in place to mitigate the effects of climate change and to adapt to it?
In the past week those risks have become real as we focus on the full implications of high temperatures, drought and water shortage. Finally, it seems that ministers are starting to acknowledge that climate change may have something to do with it - yet Federal Government policy remains confused and contradictory.
In particular, the Government remains adamantly opposed to ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, preferring to focus its efforts on the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6). If we are serious about tackling climate change, that needs to change.
The political spin on this issue has the Government tied in knots. Ian Macfarlane notwithstanding, the Prime Minister now apparently accepts that climate change needs to be addressed. He does not want to ratify Kyoto, but emphasises that we are meeting our Kyoto obligations. If so, why not ratify it?
The essential difference between AP6 and Kyoto is that Kyoto sets binding limits on carbon emissions from the outset and provides for various mechanisms under which these can be achieved, including emissions trading that puts a price on carbon pollution. AP6 relies on developing clean technology without accepting any binding commitment to reduce carbon emissions, or pricing carbon.
The Australian Government position is that AP6 is complementary to, not a replacement for, Kyoto. Environment Minister Ian Campbell says we need a carbon emissions trading system to put a price on carbon pollution and to reduce emissions, but that it would be premature to introduce it before clean technologies are developed. In short, our policy is to avoid doing anything to rock the boat of conventional economic growth, particularly while the resource boom lasts.
On any rational technical or economic grounds, this policy makes no sense. Further, it is ethically flawed. If we accept that carbon emissions are a serious problem, why do we maintain the enormous subsidy the fossil fuel industries have enjoyed for decades by not pricing carbon?
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol has been ratified by 165 countries, including China and India, encompassing more than 86 per cent of the world's population. Kyoto legally binds 36 industrialised countries, from the 165, to reduce their emissions of six greenhouse gases by 5 per cent overall relative to 1990 levels during the first commitment period from 2008 to 2012.
To achieve the 5 per cent reduction, the countries negotiated individual targets dependent upon their circumstances. These countries include the EU and Russia but exclude the US and Australia, which refused to ratify the protocol despite having led the negotiations and signed it in 1997, and which are the highest per capita carbon emitters in the world.
Kyoto has a cost, but the cost of the initial commitment is nowhere near the disaster that various vested interests claim. The cost will rise as emission reductions are tightened, but so will the opportunities for innovation and new market development, provided government and industry are seeking solutions rather than reactive defence of the status quo.
There must be a global solution to this global problem. The Government professed itself well pleased with the target negotiated for our participation in the protocol, an 8 per cent increase in Australian emissions over 1990 levels on average over the 2008-12 period. Then the US refused to ratify Kyoto in 2001 and, in a volte-face, Australia obediently followed suit in 2002. The Asia Pacific Partnership was finally launched in 2005.
We need to combine an improved Kyoto with increased emission reduction obligations and developing country participation, AP6 and probably a great deal more. We urgently need a price placed on carbon emissions and a mechanism for reducing those emissions.
Developing a new international framework is hardly realistic. The protracted Kyoto negotiations demonstrated the enormous effort required to get a global agreement of this kind off the ground and time is of the essence. Kyoto represents the binding commitments that the Australian and US governments seem desperate to avoid. But "what gets measured gets done".
Most importantly, we should keep our energy options open. There are no silver bullets to fix this problem: the solution lies in serious emission reductions and myriad initiatives across the energy spectrum, to encourage alternative energy supplies, increase efficiency and reduce demand.
Ian Dunlop chaired the Australian Coal Association in 1987-88 and the AGO Experts Group on Emissions Trading in 1999-2000.
Sniffing out an election
The European solution
Illustration: Spooner
By Tim Colebatch
October 24, 2006
Tony Blair and his Dutch counterpart, Jan Peter Balkenende, are two European politicians John Howard likes. Blair is from the left and Balkenende from the right, but last week they joined to send European leaders a stark wake-up call on the issue Australians rate as more serious than terrorism: global warming.
"The science of climate change has never been clearer," the two PMs wrote. "Without further action, scientists now estimate we may be heading for temperature rises of at least three to four degrees above pre-industrial levels.
"We have a window of only 10 to 15 years to avoid crossing catastrophic tipping points. These would have serious consequences for our economic growth prospects, the safety of our people and the supply of resources, most notably energy.
"Europe has the opportunity to lead the world in making the technology transition to a low-carbon economy . . . The technologies are already available or within reach.
"A historic political choice faces us. The need to respond to climate change can be seen as a burden. Or it can be seen as a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Europe to mobilise the political will and resources to transform and modernise our energy system."
This is Europe, mind you. It already has the world's most advanced emissions trading scheme. The European Union has 36 action plans to cut emissions from everything from buildings to power generators to cars.
John Howard, now rethinking his own policies on global warming, might marvel at his European mates saying they must do far more. While Europe has pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 8 per cent between 1990 and 2010 - and insists it will meet the target, though others are sceptical - Australia has pledged only to hold its growth in emissions to 8 per cent.
Even that will require some tricky accounting. The Australian Greenhouse Office estimates that by 2010, we will be pumping out 45 per cent more carbon emissions to produce energy, and 53 per cent more from industrial use. We get down to 8 per cent growth only because three-quarters of the growth in energy and industrial emissions will be offset by a one-off decline in land-clearing and new plantations.
By 2020, the Greenhouse Office predicts Australia's emissions will have swollen 22 per cent from their 1990 levels. Transport would be emitting 78 per cent more gases than in 1990, power generation 70 per cent more, industry 75 per cent more. The gap between us and Europe would be stark.
Blair and Balkenende have both been here recently and, among other things, asking Howard to do more on global warming. Now that he is interested, he might look at what they propose. They argue for:
· Strengthening the EU's emissions trading system, which has had a bumpy start, by tightening the caps (i.e. reducing emission levels), extending it to cover more than the 11,500 firms so far included, and linking it to other countries.
· Adopting a wide-ranging plan presented last week by EU energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs to cut Europe's energy consumption by 20 per cent by lifting energy efficiency in appliances, cars, buildings, power generators, the lot.
Among other things, it envisages higher taxes on fuel-inefficient cars, minimum efficiency standards for appliances (including in stand-by mode, which accounts for 7 per cent of European energy consumption) and ad campaigns to persuade households to turn down thermostats, insulate their homes and turn off lights when they leave the room.
· Investing more in biofuels and wind farms at sea, accelerating development of clean coal technology and establishing policies for "an effective and durable post-2012 (i.e. post-Kyoto) framework".
How does this help Howard frame his own policy? Well, he must start by creating a financial disincentive to emitting greenhouse gases. Without that, there will be no carbon capture and storage, no clean coal technology, and no nuclear power stations. Without a carbon tax, or European-style emissions trading scheme, dirty coal will remain by far the cheapest source of baseload power, and the only one any firm wanting to stay competitive could use.
The arithmetic is simple. Dirty coal (A) plus the cost of cleaning it (B) must cost more than dirty coal (A). A+B must be more than A. The Government has to admit that and bite the bullet.
Around the world, emission targets are in, and Kim Beazley and the states have embraced them as Labor's solution. But if Howard wants to differentiate himself, in the long term, he would do better to go for a carbon tax. Why? Because it is more likely to be adopted in any global agreement after Kyoto.
Howard won't want to be seen to back down by signing Kyoto or adopting an emissions trading scheme. That's not important. What really matters is the post-Kyoto agreement, and to have Australia lead the way towards it.
A global agreement on emissions trading would be a Swiss cheese. Every country would demand special deals to protect industries. It would be far cleaner and simpler to have a common global tax on carbon emissions, whether in Mumbai, Mombasa or Melbourne.
This is not a time for Howard to play politics. We are going to need a lot of new investment in energy over coming years, and it ought to start now. But what investors need is policy certainty. We are asking them to commit to very expensive, very long-term projects on time scales over which prices of rival fuels and resources could change dramatically.
They deserve to have a stable long-term policy environment. In this area, as much as possible, policies should be bipartisan. Play politics with it, and Australia will be the loser.
Tim Colebatch is economics editor.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Eco companies to quit NSW
SMH
Pilot scheme ... Welder Daniel Sattler at Liddell Power Station.
Photo: Brock Perks
Catharine Munro
October 22, 2006
NSW risks losing $9 billion in energy investment if it fails to make a quarter of the state's electricity green by 2020, says a report to be released today.
High-tech companies have confirmed they will abandon projects combating climate change and go overseas if Premier Morris Iemma does not do more to help.
With a national scheme about to expire, the companies want new state laws to force electricity retailers to buy energy that is generated using solar power, wind or waste instead of fossil fuels, which are blamed for climate change.
NSW would be halfway towards meeting a 25 per cent renewable energy target if 19 proposed projects, worth $3.1 billion, were developed, the report, co-written by Greenpeace, the Total Environment Centre and the Nature Conservation Council, said.
One proposed project, a solar power development near Moree in the state's north-west, could generate enough power to light up a town the size of the state's largest inland city, Wagga Wagga. Managing director of Solar, Heat and Power, Peter Le Lievre, who is planning the Moree development, said government schemes in Europe and the US were far more profitable.
"If there's nothing coming from NSW we will go overseas," he said. "We are up and out of here.
"It's a pity because we got our start in Australia but we have to pay our bills and make money."
The company has one pilot scheme running. It feeds electricity, generated by solar power, into the grid at the Liddell plant near Singleton in the Hunter Valley.
As the March state election approaches, the issue of alternative energy is shaping up to challenge the Labor Government's green credentials.
The results of polling by independent think tank the Lowy Institute show voters see climate change as a serious concern.
Even China appears to be doing more to find alternatives to fossil fuels, by demanding that 15 per cent of its energy must come from renewable sources by 2015.
Australia was the first country to introduce targets for renewable energy, but the Federal Government has not maintained the targets, leaving no incentives for new companies to look for ways of creating electricity out of alternatives to fossil fuels. Victoria and South Australia have already decided to set their own targets.
"NSW has one of the worst regimes in place for ensuring renewable energy," said Greenpeace's green energy campaigner Mark Wakeham.
"The proof is that since 2001 only two wind turbines have been introduced in NSW and there have been 215 in South Australia."
Meanwhile, a 1 per cent increase in temperatures in Australia would make the drought in NSW increase by 70 per cent, the report says.
Source: The Sun-Herald
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