19 July 2016, Renew Economy, Frydenberg’s choice: Make a big step forward, or a big step back. The make-up of Australia’s new parliament cut a depressing vista on Monday. There was Pauline Hanson, demanding royal commissions into Islam and climate science, who along with other minor party and independent Senators will most likely hold the balance of power in the Senate, with as many as 7 seats but a minimum of 3. In the government, the Coalition led by Malcolm Turnbull has elevated more conservatives to the front bench. Zed Selseja, a conservative who opposes gay marriage and weekend penalty rates, is minister assisting social services.Hanson gave us a taste of what is to come in an extraordinary debate on ABC’s Q&A, which was punctuated with the sort of ignorance and ideology we often see in the energy sector – see South Australia. Matt Canavan, a conservative who dismisses climate science, is appointed resources minister responsible for the coal industry and building dams in northern Australia. Be under no doubt about Canavan: the only energy that matters to him, he has said often, is cheap energy, dirty or not. Read More here
Monthly Archives: July 2016
16 July 2016, Climate News network, Cyclones set to get fiercer as world warms. New analysis of cyclone data and computer climate modelling indicates that global warming is likely to intensify the destructive power of tropical storms. Powerful tropical storms − known variously as cyclones, typhoons and hurricanes − bring death and destruction to huge swathes of the Earth’s surface. And new research suggests that they are likely to become even stronger. Storms such as the super-typhoon Nepartak that scoured Taiwan earlier this month with winds of 150 miles per hour and then flooded parts of China, are expected to grow even fiercer as the planet warms. That trend is not clear yet, but scientists in the US say it soon will be. Ironically, one of the main reasons why these storms will gain in power is theeffort in many countries to reduce air pollution. Damaging as it is in stunting and shortening lives, the one arguable benefit of filthy air is its ability to dampen the effects of greenhouse gases (GHGs) on cyclones and their like. Over the last century, tiny airborne particles called aerosols, which cool the climate by absorbing and reflecting sunlight, have largely cancelled out the effects of GHG emissions on tropical storm intensity, according to a new scientific review paper published in Science journal. Read More here
13 July 2016, Renew Economy, Coalition’s myth about renewables and high electricity prices. Fear of rising electricity prices has been one of the mainstays of the Coalition’s re-election campaign: any efforts to increase the share of renewable energy – as proposed by Labor or even more dramatically by The Greens – or impose some sort of carbon price would end up as a Great Big Electricity Tax. Environment minister Greg Hunt is still at it: “And let me say that equally, we are the only ones that can protect against the electricity price rises that the ALP wants,” he told Melbourne radio 3AW in an interview on Tuesday. So, it should probably be seen as something of an irony that in the week after the July 3 poll, wholesale electricity prices shot to their highest levels on record – in most states averaging nearly double the average price when the carbon tax was in place. The reason, most analysts agree, lies mostly with the soaring price of gas, which has also hit record levels due to the impact of the massive LNG export facilities, and supply blockages in Queensland. But the Coalition is not blameless. Apart from being a hugely enthusiastic supporter of the gas export industry, it brought large-scale renewable energy investment to a halt for three years. As we shall see below, if the estimated 4,500MW of large-scale wind and solar that could have been built in that period had been built, then Australia would likely be enjoying much cheaper wholesale electricity prices today. And while the Coalition has railed against the expense of new renewables, the Labor minority government that runs the Australian Capital Territory has quietly been going about its target of sourcing 100 per cent of its electricity needs from renewable energy by 2020. Read More here
12 July 2016, Renew Economy, ACT could make windfall gains from bold 100% renewables target Who is the smartest energy minister in the country? At the moment, you would have to say it was the ACT’s Simon Corbell, the mastermind behind the territory’s bold 100 per cent renewable energy target, and who is poised to deliver massive savings to consumers in the nation’s capital. Indeed, if current wholesale electricity prices continue as they are across Australia, the ACT will not just have zero emissions electricity by 2020, it may also be getting most of it for free. This extraordinary situation arises out of the nature of the contracts that the ACT government has written with the project developers who have won its unique reverse auction tenders. The ACT has locked in fixed prices at between $77/MWh and $92/MWh for a total of 400MW of wind energy capacity so far. If the wholesale price is below those contracts, the ACT government pays the difference. If it is above, the ACT electricity utility ActewAGL receives the excess. In the past two months, wholesale prices across Australia have gone through the roof, mostly because of soaring gas prices (at record levels in most states), and supply constraints. Some of these rises have already been passed on to consumers. The first of the ACT commissioned wind farms, the 19MW Coonooer Bridge project in Victoria, opened earlier this year and gets a guaranteed $81.50/MWh from the ACT. But prices in Victoria have regularly jumped above $100/MWh in the past two months. Read More here