21 February 2017, The Conversation, Labor’s climate policy could remove the need for renewable energy targets. The federal Labor Party has sought to simplify its climate change policy. Any suggestion of expanding the Renewable Energy Target has been dropped. But there is debate over whether the new policy is actually any more straightforward as a result. One thing Labor did confirm is its support for an emissions intensity scheme (EIS) as its central climate change policy for the electricity sector. This adds clarity to the position the party took to the 2016 election and could conceivably remove the need for a prescribed renewable energy target anyway. An EIS effectively gives electricity generators a limit on how much carbon dioxide they can emit for each unit of electricity they produce. Power stations that exceed the baseline have to buy permits for the extra CO₂ they emit. Power stations with emissions intensities below the baseline create permits that they can sell. An EIS increases the cost of producing electricity from emissions-intensive sources such as coal generation, while reducing the relative cost of less polluting energy sources such as renewables. The theory is that this cost differential will help to drive a switch from high-emission to low-emission sources of electricity. The pros and cons of an EIS, compared with other forms of carbon pricing, have been debated for years. But two things are clear. Read More here
Tag Archives: RET scheme
13 November 2015, Renew Economy, Malcolm Turnbull was right: Direct Action is a climate con. You’ve got to hand environment minister Greg Hunt a capital A for Audacity. Or maybe a capital C for Chutzpah. Round two of the government’s emissions reduction fund – the central plank of its Direct Action plan – has come and gone, another $557 million has been spent making some farmers and carbon traders a lot richer than they used to be, and Hunt is still insisting that it is the greatest success in the history of emissions reductions. Ever. “In the lead up to Paris, this government has once again demonstrated that we can significantly reduce emissions and tackle climate change without a carbon tax and increased electricity prices,” he press released on Thursday. It’s easy to claim a triumph with rhetoric, but not so easy to do so with the numbers. Here is what the government has claimed to have done: It has cherry picked, presumably on the basis of price and authenticity, some 131 projects – mostly in vegetation and savannah burning, but also some in landfill gas and energy efficient lighting – that will deliver 45 million tonnes of abatement at an average of $12.25 each, over 10 years. Hunt – outrageously – says this is a price that is just one per cent of the carbon price under Labor. Dubiously, he says it will deliver on the government’s (modest) emissions reduction targets – minus 5 per cent from 2000 levels by 2020, and minus 19 per cent on 2000 levels by 2030. Everyone involved in this charade is keeping mum – or their hands firmly on the wads of cash now in their wallets – about what they really think. They have been dicked around so much by the coming and going of the CPRS and the carbon price, that they feel they deserve something, and wads of cash from a government auction is fair game. If a government is determined to force money into their pockets for doing something that their clients may well have done anyway (growing trees, not clearing other vegetation, continuing landfill gas operations), then who are they to argue. But here are a couple of key stats to put it into perspective. Read More here
13 November 2015, The Conversation, Australia’s climate targets still out of reach after second emissions auction. The government’s Clean Energy Regulator yesterday announced the results of the second “reverse auction”. It spent A$557 million to buy emissions cuts of some 45 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. Australia needs to cut its CO₂ emissions by 236 million tonnes to meet its current 2020 mitigation target of -5% below 2000 levels. The Direct Action Plan and its Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) is the Turnbull government’s major program for doing so. The first auction, in April this year, spent A$660 million for 47.3 million tonnes. So far, then, almost half of the A$2.55 billion allocated to the ERF has been used and some 92.8 million tonnes of emissions reduction “bought” at an average rate of almost A$13.12 per tonne of CO₂. The ERF will also form part of efforts to achieve Australia’s 2030 climate target. The latest round of UN climate negotiations begins in Paris in three weeks’ time. These talks aim to produce tougher national greenhouse targets for the decade to 2030. Ironically, the focus on Paris is drawing attention away from the urgency of emissions cuts that need to be delivered beforehand. In Australia, the Paris talks encourage us to accept as given our 2020 target of -5% below 2000 emissions levels, although it is among the weakest of national mitigation efforts for that period. They encourage us to ignore the fact that – according to criteria accepted by both Labor and Coalitions governments and now met because of the rising ambitions and efforts of major emitters elsewhere – Australia’s target should have increased to -15% by 2020. It is against this second benchmark that the Turnbull government’s efforts should now be measured. Read More here
17 September 2015, Renew Economy, Turnbull channels Abbott as he attacks Labor’s renewables target, ETS. Plus ça change. The more it changes, the more it stays the same. Despite Malcolm Turnbull’s tantalising sales pitch ahead of the leadership spill earlier this week, there wasno real expectation for quick policy change. But there was hope that at least the rhetoric might change once Turnbull dislodged Tony Abbott as head of the Liberal Party and as prime minister of Australia. It hasn’t happened. It is pretty much business as usual. Nothing has changed. On Wednesday, Turnbull attacked Labor’s 50 per cent renewable energy target as reckless, environment minister Greg Hunt trotted out his usual nonsense about the cost of Labor’s as yet unstated emissions reductions target, while Queensland Liberal Senator Ian Macdonald resumed his long-running campaign to describe climate change science as a hoax and a fraud. If that wasn’t enough, the federal Nationals rejected a motion put forward by progressive members from their Western Australia division to declare support for renewable energy. Meanwhile, in the Senate, the independent Senator John Madigan, head of a Coalition-supported wind inquiry, continued to wage war on the industry. Turnbull’s comments were particularly alarming, given his presumed support for renewable energy. He has yet to pronounce himself on the future of the Climate Change Authority, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation or the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, three institutions that Abbott tried unsuccessfully to destroy, but Turnbull was already dismissive of Labor’s proposed 50 per cent renewable energy target by 2030. Read More here