19 September 2016, The Guardian, Adani Carmichael coalmine faces new legal challenge from conservation foundation. Foundation appeals against ruling that endorsed mine’s approval by the commonwealth. The Australian Conservation Foundation has renewed its legal challenge to Adani’s Carmichael mine, appealing against a federal court ruling that endorsed its approval by the commonwealth. The ACF on Monday lodged an appeal against last month’s decision, which found the then federal environment minister, Greg Hunt, was entitled to find the impact on global warming and the Great Barrier Reef from the Queensland mine’s 4.6bn tonnes of carbon emissions “speculative”. The president of the ACF, Geoff Cousins, said Australia’s national environment protection laws were “broken” if the minister could approve “a mega-polluting coalmine – the biggest in Australia’s history – and claim it will have no impact on the global warming and the reef”. “If our environment laws are too weak to actually protect Australia’s unique species and places, they effectively give companies like Adani a licence to kill,” Cousins said. “Be in no doubt, Adani’s Carmichael proposal is massive and will lock in decades of damaging climate pollution if it goes ahead, further wrecking the reef. “The science is clear that we can have coal or the reef – but we can’t have both.” Read More here
Tag Archives: coal
14 September 2016, Renew Economy, Turnbull marks 1st anniversary with act of clean energy vandalism. Today is the anniversary of Malcolm Turnbull’s overthrow of Tony Abbott as leader of the Liberal Party, and his ascension as prime minister of Australia. To punctuate 12 months of false expectations, the occasion has been marked with another act of vandalism against Australia’s climate and clean energy policies. It had been hoped that Turnbull would represent a turnaround in the debate about Australia’s role in the global efforts to control global warming, and whether Australia would be moved to seize its huge opportunity to become a renewable energy powerhouse and a leader in the inevitable clean energy transition. But rather than taking us to the promised land – “I will not lead a party that does not take climate change as seriously as I do” – things have only got worse. Turnbull has persisted with Abbott’s deluded and deceitful Direct Action policy, and has sought to neuter two important institutions – the Climate Change Authority and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency – that had managed to escape the wrath of Abbott’s “climate change is crap” demagoguery. The CCA – which survived Abbott courtesy of a bizarre deal with Clive Palmer and Al Gore that led to the death of the carbon price – has, since Turnbull’s coronation, been stacked with ex-Coalition MPs and sympathisers and the original architects of Direct Action, who now praise a policy that was ridiculed by the once fiercely independent authority, and described as a “con” and a “fig leaf” by Turnbull himself. ARENA, which also managed to dodge Abbott’s toe-cutters, has instead been knee-capped by the Turnbull administration, stripped of $500 million of funding to slow down its ability to provide new competitors to the incumbent fossil fuel industry. Read More here
12 September 2016, Renew Economy, Garbage in, garbage out: Why the CCA got it so wrong. If Australia continues to rely on a renewable energy target to help meet its share of the global goal of capping global warming by 2°C, it is likely to result in new coal plants being built in the 2040s. Sound implausible? Does it sound completely crazy? Yes, but this is the advice that was given to the Climate Change Authority and presumably helped them form their controversial stance on climate policies that was delivered to the government last week. The idea that Australia, in a world aiming at cutting missions, would be likely to open new coal plants at a time when it should be hitting a zero net carbon target seems extraordinary. Yet that is what consultancy Jacobs is suggesting, even though its modelling shows that 90 per cent of Australia’s generation by 2040 would come from renewables under an extension of the RET. Here’s the graph above. Under Jacobs’ modelling – apart from the reference case where Australia ignores global warming – coal-fired power becomes extinct in all its policy scenarios in Australia by the mid 2030s. Until suddenly, in the renewable energy target scenario, it makes a comeback in the late 2040s. (That’s the blue uptick on the bottom right). “Fossil generation increases from 2040, largely driven by new CCGTs (combined cycle gas plants), although some supercritical black coal generators are also built,” it says. This is despite the share of renewable energy in generation being at 74 per cent in 2030, and peaking at 91 per cent in 2039. Quite where baseload coal plants, or gas plants for that matter, fit into that high renewables scenario is not clear, given the need for flexible generation. And just who would invest in a new coal plant two decades hence, with 90 per cent renewables, as the world nears the zero emissions target it has locked itself into through the Paris agreement, boggles the mind, but that is what we are told the modelling tells us. Read More here
7 September 2016, Climate Home, EU-sized coal fleet shelved since Paris climate deal. China and India are cracking down on excess projects, but remaining pipeline will still blow the 2C carbon budget, say analysts. The volume of coal plants in planning worldwide fell dramatically in the first half of 2016, as China and India tightened up their policies. That is according to data meticulously gathered by researchers at Coal Swarm from company, media and NGO reporting. Between January and July, more projects were shelved or cancelled than added, shrinking the pre-construction pipeline by 158GW – a change of 14%, equivalent to the EU’s entire coal power fleet. The cooling off follows a landmark climate summit in Paris, where 195 countries agreed last December to phase out greenhouse gas emissions. Coal is the biggest source of emissions from energy worldwide and a prime target for climate policy. “It is very significant,” Coal Swarm director Ted Nace told Climate Home, although he added the remaining 932GW in the works would still blow the 1.5C and 2C carbon budgets. Read More here