20 August 2015, The Guardian, BP lobbied against EU support for clean energy to favour gas, documents reveal. BP was part of oil and gas lobby that successfully undermined EU renewable energy targets and subsidies in favour of gas as a climate fix in 2011. The fossil fuel giant BP helped spur a concerted industry push to curb EU policy support for renewable energies such as wind and solar in favour of gas, the Guardian has learned. The European commission last year outlawed most subsidies for clean energy from 2017, and ended nationally-binding renewable targets after 2020, despite opposition from environmentalists and clean energy firms. The policy decisions were however requested by BP, Shell, Statoil and Total, and by trade associations representing a plethora of oil and gas majors. “It is clear that the fossil fuel companies worked strongly together to get rid of the binding renewable targets and ensure there would be no binding efficiency targets either,” Wendel Trio, the director of Climate Action Network Europe told the Guardian. In October 2011, the Dutch oil and gas firm Shell first proposed that a sole greenhouse gas target take the place of policies that also supported renewables. Shell argued this would allow gas to cut coal-fired emissions, using the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) as a policy lever. Papers obtained by the Guardian in an access to documents request show that just four weeks later, BP also asked Barroso to discuss a similar idea with Jean-François Cirelli, the president of its Eurogas trade association. Read more here
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20 August 2015, SMH, Adani mine a $20b project creating 10,000 jobs? The Abbott government’s myths busted. When it comes to Australia’s largest coal mine, the Abbott government has a difficult relationship with the truth. If you haven’t heard, Australia is under siege from a new kind of eco-warrior, one with a manual and money for legal challenges designed to endlessly frustrate economic development. At the centre of this battle is the proposed Carmichael coal mine in Queensland. The mega mine, led by Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, has had its federal environmental approval set aside. Why? Because a Queensland environment group – the Mackay Conservation Group – exercised its legal rights and used a federal court challenge to expose a flaw in the government’s assessment of that project. The government now wants to remove those legal rights and hinder the ability of green groups to access the courts. The Parliament is clearly entitled to debate whether Australia’s environment laws are working as they were intended. But it should not be too much to expect that the government defend its position with arguments that have some semblance to the truth. To make its case to protect growth and jobs and stop “vigilante litigation”, ministers have repeatedly relied on inflated numbers, distortions and blatant inaccuracies about the Adani project to make their case. Here are some: Read More here
19 August 2015, Renew Economy, The six big lies in Tony Abbott’s attack on the environment. The Abbott government has revealed plans to repeal a section of Australia’s environment laws that allows green groups to challenge approvals for mining projects and other large developments in the courts. Federal Attorney-General George Brandis said the government would seek to repeal section 487 (2) of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and “return to the common law”, after it was used successfully by the Mackay Conservation Group to overturn the federal environment minister’s approval of the Carmichael mega-coal mine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin. The following is a run-down of the six big lies at the centre of the Coalition’s latest attack on the environment…Read More here
18 August 2015, The Guardian, Abbott government war on green ‘saboteurs’ is Laurel and Hardy slapstick. The Coalition’s ‘war on environmental vigilantes and saboteurs’ isn’t consistent: it’s waged against anti-coal activists but in support of anti-windfarm activists. Even for the Abbott government the inconsistencies in the latest “war on environmental vigilantes and saboteurs” are astonishing. And the slapstick nature of its attempt to use the issue as a political wedge is up there with Laurel and Hardy. When an environment group successfully uses 16 year-old national environmental laws to delay a project, the Abbott government tries to change the law to prevent them from ever doing it again. But if an anti-windfarm group can’t find a way to use existing laws and regulations to stop or delay a project, the Abbott government tries to change laws and processes to make it easier for them to succeed. The first is called green “vigilantism” and “sabotage” and the second is, according to environment minister Greg Hunt, a reasonable response because “many people have a sense of deep anxiety, and they have a right to complain.” The government calls regulations that stop fossil fuel or mining projects “green tape”, but a wind commissioner and yet another scientific committee to look at unsubstantiated health complaints regarding wind turbines is apparently no kind of “tape” at all. Read More here