28 October 2015, The guardian, Paris climate deal will not include global carbon price, says UN climate chief. Christiana Figueres tells investor event that a climate deal to be agreed in Paris in December will not be able to come up with a global carbon price. A climate change deal to be agreed in Paris in December will not be able to come up with a global carbon price, the United Nations’ climate chief, Christiana Figueres, said on Tuesday. Big multinational companies and investors, and most recently oil majors, have called for a global carbon price to help spur investments in low-carbon energy. A global carbon price would help to create an incentive for operators of power plants and factories to switch to cleaner fuels such as gas or to buy more energy-efficient equipment. When the European Union launched a carbon trading scheme in 2005 there were expectations this would eventually lead to a global carbon scheme by 2020 worth around $2 trillion. But the difficulties of bringing together different carbon schemes from countries around the world means the goal of a global carbon price remains elusive. Read More here
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28 October 2015, One Step Off the Grid, How Garnaut & Co plan to help communities take power back from the grid. Eleven years ago, Richard Turner was trying to nut out how to fit his kids’ cubby house with a solar panel and battery, to run a light and a television at night, when the sun wasn’t shining. Long story short, it was no easy DIY task. “Back then, there was no industry at all,” says Turner. The only suitable solar hardware he could find was from a local hobby shop. And then he needed to find a battery to match, and wiring, and make it all safe…“I worked it out, because I did physics and maths at school, and I enjoyed it. But I also did commerce and marketing, and I saw an enormous opportunity here to provide people with a fully branded and integrated (solar and storage) system. …There were no barriers to how big you could go.” Back in 2004, Turner took up that opportunity and the result was ZEN Technologies, now a highly successful Australian solar and storage company based in Adelaide. But since then another opportunity has presented itself to Turner, and that is to provide Australian consumers with an option to use 100 per cent renewable energy to power their homes, businesses or entire communities, at a cost cheaper than electricity from the grid. Read More here
28 October 2015, The Guardian, World leaders to attend Paris climate summit. At least 80 world leaders, including Barack Obama, Xi Jinping, David Cameron and Narendra Modi, will join talks aiming to forge a new global climate deal. Diplomats endorsed the outlines of the proposed deal in Bonn on Friday after five days of fraught negotiation that highlighted just how much work remains to be done in Paris. The aim is to unite all the world’s nations in a single agreement on tackling climate change, with the goal of capping warming at 2C over pre-Industrial Revolution levels. For the opening day on 30 November, “we have already received 80 confirmations, including from the presidents of the United States and China, and the Indian prime minister,” French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, told journalists in Paris on Tuesday.The leaders of Germany, South Africa, Brazil and Canada have also accepted, he said. The last attempt at sealing a global climate pact, in 2009, saw about 110 world leaders descend on a UN summit in Copenhagen for the two final days, only to leave frustrated when the negotiations collapsed. “Together with president Francois Hollande, we decided to invite heads of state to attend the first day and not the end as in Copenhagen,” said Fabius. This had been partly to blame for the failure, he said, “as the negotiators were waiting for heads of state to negotiate, and the heads of state failed to resolve anything.” Read More here
28 October 2015, Climate Home, Australia PM Turnbull stands by coal amid moratorium calls. Recently annointed prime minister is defending mine expansion plans, to the ire of Pacific neighbours and climate campaigners. When Malcolm Turnbull ousted Tony Abbott as prime minister last month, climate watchers were hopeful he would reverse Australia’s coal-friendly stance. There was some sign of that this week, as newly appointed chief science advisor Alan Finkelenvisioned a world free of fossil fuels. Yet it has been business as usual for the country’s bullish mine expansion plans, which threaten international climate goals. That is despite 61 prominent Australians, from rugby player David Pocock to Nobel laureate Peter Doherty, backing Pacific islanders’ calls for a moratorium. Dismissing the idea, Turnbull told national journalists: “Coal is a very important part, a very large part, the largest single part in fact, of the global energy mix… and likely to remain that way for a very long time.” He variously argued that coal-fired power would reduce poverty in developing countries and that if Australia stopped exporting the black stuff, others would. “It would make not the blindest bit of difference to global emissions,” the Guardian reported him saying. Read More here