Monthly Archives: April 2016

PLEA Network

18 April 2016, The Conversation, Australia’s carbon emissions and electricity demand are growing: here’s why. Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are on the rise. Electricity emissions, which make up about a third of the total, rose 2.7% in the year to March 2016. Australia’s emissions reached their peak in 2008-2009. Since then total emissions have barely changed, but the proportion of emissions from electricity fell, largely due to falling demand and less electricity produced by coal. But over the last year demand grew by 2.5%, nearly all of this supplied by coal. In 2015 I wrote about concerns that Australia’s electricity demand and emissions would start increasing again. This has now come true. So what’s driving the trend? Why did demand fall? To understand this trend we need to look at data from Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM), which accounts for just under 90% of total Australian electricity generation. While the NEM doesn’t include Western Australia or the Northern Territory, it has much better publicly available data. The chart below shows electricity generation from June 2009 to March 2016.

Hugh Saddler, Author provided
 The most important things to note are that, until February 2015, overall generation fell and the amount of electricity supplied by coal also fell. These two trends are closely related. Read More here
PLEA Network

15 April 2016, Renew Economy, Turnbull’s Jekyll and Hyde climate and clean energy policy. Environment minister Greg Hunt this week has been on a mini-tour of Western Australia, with the head of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency – which he wants to de-fund – announcing the sort of grants for solar and battery storage installations that he wants to stop. If there was any hint of irony in praising the work of ARENA and taking credit for the initiatives of an institution that the Coalition has spent much of the last three years trying to abolish, it was not immediately apparent. “The Turnbull government is providing $17 million funding for nine new R&D projects set to deliver renewable energy technologies and solutions suited to the 21st century,” Hunt proudly announced in a press release, before enthusing at the opening about the potential for Australia to lead the world in battery storage. “I’m delighted to announce that in partnership with Synergy, the Australian government is contributing $3.3 million for a community household storing of – solar storage and energy facility,” he told a gathering of media and dignitaries. “Behind us we have 1.1 million hours’ worth of storage. This is the real world, this is the future that is behind us in terms of storage, solar energy on the roofs in front of us, the storage behind us.” And on it went. Indeed, Hunt’s speech was a compilation of everything that people find confusing and dumbfounding about this Turnbull government. Australia will be among the first to formally sign the Paris climate deal, but it still hasn’t the domestic targets or the policies to get anywhere near its share of meeting that agreement; it professes support for wind and solar but has no new developments to show for it; it claims to have brought certainty to the renewable energy industry, when the only certainty in the last three years has been the lack of investment; it hails innovative solar and storage projects and then removes the funding mechanism that makes them possible; it applauds the work of a key agency it has tried to dismantle and finally strips it of funding; it wants to cease grants to clean energy projects “to protect taxpayers money” but then uses grants to polluters as the basis of its emissions reduction fund. Read More here

PLEA Network

14 April 2016, The Guardian, World’s scientists to join forces on major 1.5C climate change report. Special UN report will offer comprehensive assessment of impacts of a 1.5C rise in global warming on sea level, coral bleaching and biodiversity. Scientists from around the world will contribute to a major UN report on how global temperatures can be held to a rise of 1.5C and what the impact might be on sea level rises, the bleaching of corals and biodiversity. The special report, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), will assess all the available peer-reviewed science along with other special reports on how land and oceans are being affected by climate change. These will look at the melting of ice in polar and mountain regions, as well as the impact of climate change on cities and food supplies. “We now have a roadmap for the next comprehensive assessment which will be published in 2022, in good time for the global stocktake by governments in 2023,” said Hoesung Lee, chair of the panel, in Nairobi. The 1.5C report was requested by governments meeting at the Paris climate talks in December where countries unexpectedly agreed to “pursue efforts” to limit warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. 1.5C marks the point, say many scientists, where there is a real danger of serious “tipping points” in the world’s climate. Temperatures have already risen 1C and show little sign of slowing. “Before the Paris meeting governments were focussing on [a rise of ] 2C. The latest assessment by the IPCC showed that some serious risks to corals and sea-level rise emerge at 1.5C. But there was not much available [science] on these topics. There is a lot we need to find out about 1.5C. We are ready to embark on this,” said Lee. “Limiting warming to 1.5C will be a significant challenge,” said Myles Allen, Professor of Geosystem Science at Oxford university’s Environmental Change Institute (ECI). “In a nutshell, it means we have to reduce emissions twice as fast as we would have done to limit warming to 2C – and that was already looking challenging. Inevitably, people are already starting to ask if it is worth it. These are big tough questions, and we haven’t much time to answer them, so the academic community needs to step up.” Read More here

PLEA Network

14 April 2016, Kelvin Thompson MP, Population Growth Driving Infrastructure Deficit.  Josh Gordon is absolutely right to raise the problems associated with Melbourne’s rapid population growth of the past decade. It is absolutely correct that politicians and economists are allowed to get away with murder by talking about economic growth when they should be required to talk about GDP per capita. It is like saying that because more people have moved into your street, that the street has more money, and therefore you are richer. You are not personally richer at all – indeed the probability is that your street is more crowded and that in amenity you are poorer. Melbourne’s rapid population growth is the reason there is an infrastructure problem. The Queensland academic Jane O’Sullivan has done research which shows that in a stable population the community needs to set aside around 2 per cent of its income to repair and replace ageing infrastructure, but that in a community growing by 1 per cent it needs to set aside 3 per cent of its income to keep up, and in a community growing by 2 per cent it needs to set aside 4 per cent of its income. The infrastructure task doubles, with only 2 per cent extra people to pay for it.  Read More here