29 August 2016, The Guardian, Greg Hunt’s approval of Adani’s Queensland mine upheld by federal court. Former environment minister entitled to find any assessment of resulting carbon pollution on the Great Barrier Reef was ‘speculative’, court says. The federal court has upheld the commonwealth approval of Adani’s Queensland mine, ruling that former environment minister Greg Hunt was entitled to find any assessment of resulting carbon pollution on the Great Barrier Reef was “speculative”. The court on Monday dismissed a challenge by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), which claimed Hunt failed to consider the impacts of the mine’s 4.6bn tonnes of emissions on the world heritage values of the reef. The ruling prompted the ACF to call for tougher national environment laws to tackle carbon pollution from coalmines, while flagging hopes that Hunt’s successor, Josh Frydenberg, would take a “fresh look” at the Carmichael mine. The Queensland resources council accused the ACF of running a “nonsense case” that was akin to holding the Saudi Arabian government responsible for emissions from Australian cars running on their oil. Read more here
Tag Archives: Fed Govt
24 August 2016, Renew Economy, Labor ready to sacrifice ARENA for medal in budget Olympics. Federal Labor appears ready to sacrifice the Australian Renewable Energy Agency it established just a few years ago as it reacts to Coalition government taunts that it is not serious about “budget repair”. In a decision that will rank – along with the Coalition’s removal of the carbon price – at the very top of the Stupid List, Labor appears to have accepted the Coalition’s challenge to pass a $6.5 billion omnibus budget repair package that includes stripping $1 billion from ARENA’s legislated funds. The move to strip funds from the agency responsible for bringing in new technologies, business models and ideas that will be critical to efforts to cut emissions appears extraordinary in a country that has possibly the strongest budget in the developed world and one of the worst records on climate and emissions policies. The decision was all but confirmed by Labor leader Bill Shorten in his address to the National Press Club, which represents an institution so obsessed with line items in the budget and being a political insider, it has virtually abandoned its coverage of actual policy. It was the Abbott government that first attempted to strip the remaining funds from ARENA, along with its attempts to abolish other institutions such as the Climate Change Authority and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and the carbon price. ARENA’s abolition remains policy, despite the elevation of Malcolm Turnbull, who has changed little of the Abbott-era climate and clean energy policies, despite his previous vow not to lead a government that did not take climate change seriously. But as the Climate Institute says in its new report on Wednesday, the Australian government is facing a policy train crash if it ever decides to take its commitment to the Paris climate deal seriously. Read More here
23 August 2016, The Conversation, Australia’s new focus on gas could be playing with fire. Gas is back on Australia’s agenda in a big way. Last week’s meeting of state and federal energy ministers in particular saw an extraordinary focus on gas in the electricity sector. While the meeting promised major reform for the energy sector, the federal energy and environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, highlighted the need for more gas supplies and “the growing importance of gas as a transition fuel as we move to incorporate more renewables into the system”. Gas is certainly a lower-carbon energy source than coal, but gas prices have soared as Australia begins shipping gas overseas. So what might this mean for energy and climate policy? Rising gas. In 2013-14 natural gas-fired generation rose to account for 22% of Australia’s electricity generation, although the figure falls to 12% in the National Electricity Market (NEM), which excludes Western Australia and the Northern Territory, both of which use a large amount of gas. Among the NEM states, South Australia relies the most on gas-powered generation. This means that gas generators generally set the state’s average electricity price, which has usually been higher than those in the eastern states. Average electricity prices in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland tend to be set more often by coal power generators than by gas. Read More here
22 August 2016, Renew Economy, Gas bubble looms as energy ministers baulk at zero emissions target. State and federal energy ministers hailed progress they made in their COAG Energy Council summit late last week, but they may have condemned Australia to another great big investment bubble – this time in gas infrastructure. The meeting of ministers – brought forward by the apparent energy “crisis” in South Australia – resulted in a couple of promising steps that may help contain price surges of the type seen in recent months, but it seems to have ducked action on the critical issues. On the plus side, there is the creation of two new gas trading hubs that might improve transparency into a notoriously opaque market, and the potential for a new electricity inter-connector linking NSW and South Australia to be bought forward. But elsewhere, not a lot of tangible progress was made. The ministers baulked at calls to write zero net carbon emissions into the electricity market goals, despite that being implicit in the Paris climate goals that Australia has signed up to.And if the energy ministers did avoid turning the meeting into an anti-renewable jihad – as they were lobbied to do and might have been tempted under a previous federal energy minister – they did come face to face with some of the significant barriers to the rapid transition to a low emissions grid that they profess to support. One such example came from the Australian Energy Market Operator, whose chairman Anthony Marxsen stunned the audience on Friday when he suggested during a presentation that battery storage technology could be up to 20 years away from making a commercial contribution. Some dismissed this as garbage and a plug for the gas industry. AEMO is 40 per cent owned by industry “players”. Another is the painfully slow progress from the main policy maker, the Australian Energy Market Commission, which has been dragging out crucial rule changes most people believe are essential to moving to new technologies. Read more here