28 July 2016, Renew Economy, Energy minister right on renewables and climate, wrong on gas. The new energy and resources minister Josh Frydenberg has indicated a significant shift in energy policy for the Coalition. He correctly notes that renewables alone are not to blame for recent high electricity prices in South Australia. Unlike the new federal minister for resources, Matthew Canavan, Mr Frydenberg accepts mainstream climate science and the fact that humanities actions are driving global warming. He says that we need a diversified energy mix, that the national Renewable Energy Target (RET) is ‘set in stone’ – which will stabilise the investment environment for renewables, and has ruled out further tax payer subsidies for fossil fuel generation. These moves are all to be welcomed. And while Frydenberg is a long standing supporter of nuclear power, he acknowledges that our country should not move towards domestic use of uranium unless there is ‘bipartisan support’. It is difficult to imagine the majority of Australians would ever support a domestic nuclear reactor. However, Frydenberg is profoundly out of step with the community in calling for an end to the current moratoriums on unconventional gas. In Victoria, 73 regional communities have declared themselves ‘gasfield free’. While these declarations have no legal standing, they indicate deep seated opposition to fracking and drilling by communities. Most of the declared areas are in Coalition held seats and advocacy by the federal minister for state governments to lift the ban will damage the Coalition’s credibility in its core consistency. Further, with a well managed national electricity grid and diversity of renewable sources plus enhanced use of storage technologies (including existing hydro dams) gas is not needed as back up for wind and solar. The argument that gas is a bridging and back-up fuel is out dated. We now have 21st century renewable technology which can meet our electricity needs. Read More here
Category Archives: Australian Response
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
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
7 July 2016, Renew Economy, How an extreme form of climate science denial has found a home in Australia’s Senate. Australians went off to vote in a general election last week, but five days later and the country still doesn’t have a result. As things stand, there appears to be every chance that neither of the two main party groupings — Labor on the left and the coalition of Liberals and Nationals on the right — will win enough seats to form a government in their own right. But one result in the country’s upper house has sparked a wave of discontent, reflection and rage — the election of the right wing anti-Muslim, anti-Halal, anti-vaccination firebrand Pauline Hanson. Hanson, who leads her own One Nation party, has won election to Australia’s Senate and, as counting continues, she could bring more candidates with her.But as well as pushing xenophobia and division, the Queensland politician will also take a most extreme brand of climate science denial with her into the Senate. As I wrote on The Guardian, Hanson’s party has been taking cues on climate science from one of the country’s most enthusiastic and relentless pushers of climate science denial, former coal miner Malcolm Roberts. Roberts is the volunteer project leader of the Galileo Movement, a Queensland-based project launched in 2011 to fight laws to put a price on greenhouse gas emissions…..Conspiracy climate. If you hang around the climate change issue for long enough, then at some point you’ll likely come across the extreme end of science denial and the conspiracy theories that Roberts represents. It goes a bit like this. Humans are not causing climate change. Government-paid climate scientists and their agencies are corrupt. The United Nations is in league with international bankers to defraud the world. It’s all about control. Read More here