23 March 2016, Renew Economy, Turnbull’s sleight of hand on clean energy investment. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has put his own stamp on clean energy investment in Australia, dumping Coalition plans to scrap the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, but announcing new plans to essentially de-fund the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and replace it with a new “Clean Energy Innovation Fund.” The retention of the CEFC will be welcome and signals a potential shift from the anti-renewable policy stance of the Abbott regime that preceded him. But the move to de-fund ARENA and create a “new” fund using money already allocated to the CEFC is nothing but a sleight of hand, and an elaborate ruse by Turnbull to save more than a $1.3 billion and get his new pet-word “innovation” included in a financing scheme. It may also be designed to meet Australia’s Paris commitment to invest “new money” in clean energy innovation. But the move may back-fire, because although the new set-up will continue to support near commercial projects, the technologies and ideas at the formative stage of the innovation process may be left stranded, without funding. According to the former chairman of ARENA, Greg Bourne, Australian innovation may move overseas to get the necessary support. So much for the innovation nation. The Turnbull government has been showing less interest in ARENA, and its cost to the budget, and over the last few months has allowed not renewed contracts for directors, and allowed it to narrow to a single director, the head of Greg Hunt’s environment department. ARENA will continue to manage its current projects, and complete its $100 million funding program for large scale solar projects. But after that its funding will be stopped and it will effectively be morphed – along with its staff – into an annexe of the CEFC and the new fund. Under the new plan hatched by Turnbull and Hunt, ARENA’s grants-based funding strategy will be replaced by “innovative” finance such as debt and equity funding – effectively lending money and buying shares in the investments. Read More here
Monthly Archives: March 2016
22 March 2016, Reuters, Australia announces A$1 billion clean energy fund, in break with past. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Wednesday said the country would establish a A$1 billion ($761.60 million) clean-energy innovation fund, in a major departure from his predecessor’s much maligned approach to combating climate change. Conservative former Prime Minister Tony Abbott was criticized by environmental groups for lagging behind other advanced economies when he announced cuts to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions last year. Abbott, a climate change skeptic who was ousted in a party coup by Turnbull in September, also faced criticism for his strong support for the coal industry and for scrapping an ambitious carbon tax and emissions trading plan in 2014. Turnbull said the new fund would focus on investing in high-tech clean energy technologies. “What that is going to do is every year invest A$100 million in the smartest, most cutting edge Australian clean-energy technologies and businesses to ensure that we … play our part in cracking the very hard problems, the challenging technical difficulties that we face in terms of reducing emissions,” he told reporters. Abbott pledged that the world’s largest exporter of coal and iron ore would cut emissions by 26-28 percent of 2005 levels by 2030, a target he submitted as part of negotiations on a global climate deal in Paris last year. Abbott also sought and failed to scrap the country’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, which Turnbull said on Wednesday would be retained. Australia is one of the largest carbon emitters on a per capita basis due to its reliance on coal-fired power plants, and critics say it has done little to match ambitious targets set by the United States and Europe. Read More here
19 March 2016, Climate News Network, Western Europe coasts face a pounding. Extreme weather caused by global warming could lead to more violent and more frequent storms devastating beaches on exposed Atlantic coastlines in Europe. The Atlantic seas could be getting rougher, with winter storms capable of causing dramatic changes to the beaches of Western Europe. And new research shows that the pounding delivered to the shorelines of the UK and France in the winter of 2013-2014 was the most violent since 1948. Gerd Masselink, professor of coastal geomorphology at Plymouth University School of Marine Science and Engineering, UK, and colleagues report in Geophysical Research Letters that they decided to switch focus from sea level rise resulting from global warming. Instead, they concentrated on the energy delivered by the rising waves as they crashed onto the beaches, dunes, shingle beds and rocky coasts, and on the consequent erosion of sediment. Rising levels For decades, climate scientists have predicted that rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases from the human combustion of fossil fuel could lead to global warming, and that warming would be accompanied by more frequent or more violent storms. That sea level rise inexorably means damage to coastlines has been repeatedly confirmed. And the fact that Atlantic waves have been getting higher was settled long ago. A study in 1991 revealed that wave heights − measured from a lightship and an ocean weather station − had been rising by 2% a year since 1950. ” “It should undoubtedly be considered in future coastal and sea defence planning along the Atlantic coast of Europe” The latest study examined open-coast sites across Scotland, Ireland, England, France, Portugal, Spain and Morocco. The researchers found that, along exposed coastlines in France and England, the beaches had taken a hammering. For every one metre strip of beach, there had been sand and shingle losses of up to 200 cubic metres. Read more here
18 March 2016, The Guardian, Welcome to the climate emergency: you’re about 20 years late February 2016 saw global warming records tumble with new data suggesting more Australians think humans are the cause. Everywhere you look right now, the Earth’s climate system seems to be breaking records. To choose the most inappropriate metaphor possible, February 2016 would have been enough to bring a lot of climate watchers out in a cold sweat. Figures from Nasa using thermometers and ocean temperature readings showed February was the hottest month on record, by quite a margin. According to satellite data, the amount of Arctic sea ice also hit an all-time low for this time of year since measurements began in 1979. Scientists also use satellite data to calculate air temperatures. Climate science contrarians and denialists like these readings because they have not shown as much warming as the more reliable readings on the surface. But February also set a new record for global temperatures from satellites. As Joe Romm at Climate Progress noted, “climate science deniers need a new meme”. These heat records have been variously described as “terrifying”, “jawdropping” and “shocking”. One climate scientist in particular, Professor Stefan Rahmstorf, appeared to capture the mood with a quote repeated in stories around the world, including here on the Guardian. “We are in a kind of climate emergency now,” said Rahmstorf, of Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. But here’s the rub. Global warming is proceeding pretty much exactly as predicted. Professor Stefan Rahmstorf. To climate scientists like Rahmstorf, the temperature records being broken right now are not a surprise and, at least according to Rahmstorf, they shouldn’t be seen as an entry point to some terrifying new era (at least not as terrifying as things already are). “The media’s view is too short-term,” he told me. “As scientists we want to keep an overview of all the data and the knowledge of how the whole system works.” Read More here