What you will find on this page: LATEST NEWS; Fossil fuel emissions have stalled; does the world need hydrogen?; Mapped: global coal trade; Complexity of energy systems (maps); Mapped: Germany’s energy sources (interactive access); Power to the people (video); Unburnable Carbon (report); Stern Commission Review; Garnaut reports; live generation data; fossil fuel subsidies; divestment; how to run a divestment campaign guide; local council divestment guide; US coal plant retirement; oil conventional & unconventional; CSG battle in Australia (videos); CSG battle in Victoria; leasing maps for Victoria; coal projects Victoria
Huge task to decarbonise
Source: Australian Delegation presentation to international forum held in Bonn in May 2012
Latest News 13 December 2015, The Guardian, Malcolm Turnbull lifts Abbott ban on government finance for wind power. Malcolm Turnbull has lifted the ban imposed by Tony Abbott on wind investment by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) before it was officially enacted, even though it remains Coalition policy to abolish the green bank. A spokeswoman for the prime minister said the new CEFC investment mandate – issued by the environment minister, Greg Hunt, and the finance minister, Mathias Cormann – reflected “the Turnbull government’s strong support for renewables and innovation”. “The mandate puts the CEFC’s focus on new and emerging renewables technologies, rather than supporting well-established technologies that are financially viable without government support,” the spokeswoman said. In the wake of the new mandate and the Paris agreement, various stakeholders in the renewable sector were optimistic that the CEFC decision could reboot the government’s relationship with the clean energy industry. The new mandate says: “As part of its investment activities in clean energy technologies, the corporation must include a focus on supporting emerging and innovative renewable technologies and energy efficiency, such as large scale solar, storage associated with large and small scale solar, offshore wind technologies, and energy efficient technologies for cities and the built environment.” Read More here 10 December 2015, Renew Economy, Adani hits panic button over Carmichael coal mine. In a seemingly desperate move the billionaire chairman of Adani has announced that early in November he met the new Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and demanded legislation be passed to extinguish legal actions challenging the proposed Carmichael coal mine. On Saturday, a little over a month after his meeting with Turnbull, Gautam Adani complained to journalists that legal challenges against the $15 billion mine, railway and port project had caused banks to refuse to finance the project. “Ultimately, a decision lies with the politicians. They have to go to Parliament for enacting a special law which says that once government gives approval, no one can challenge it. That is what our request is to the Australian government. You come up with a special legislation which they have done in the past also,” Adani complained. “Even though there is no stay, because of the judicial review, no lender will finance the project. They do not know what will be the outcome,” Adani told journalists, including the Indian business news website LiveMint. Adani also bemoaned the dramatic slump in thermal coal process in the seaborne coal market. “In the meanwhile, coal prices have also slumped. We have to revive to the next cycle,” he said. Adani’s loneliness on display Adani’s comments, which reveal how isolated the company has become, are extraordinary for three reasons. Firstly, the fact that Adani has chosen to go public just over a month after the November 4 meeting suggests that Turnbull didn’t immediately accede to Adani’s demand to extinguish the legal rights. In other words, having failed with his behind-the-scenes lobbying, the company is now pinning its hopes on publicly pressing its case via comments to Indian journalists. Read more here 10 December 2015, Energy Post, The electricity network is changing fast – here is where Australia is heading. The Australian electricity sector is changing extremely fast, writes Paul Graham, Chief Economist CSIRO Energy at CSIRO (the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) in Australia. CSIRO Energy sees solar and storage costs still dropping rapidly. According to Graham, scenarios under which a third of people may be leaving the grid and 25-45% of electricity will be generated on-site are “plausible”. Things are changing extremely fast in the electricity sector. In 2013 the electricity industry and its stakeholders came together in the CSIRO Future Grid Forum to imagine the possibilities for the future of electricity industry to 2050. Electricity demand was falling, solar panels were being adopted en masse, retail prices were rising, and air conditioner ownership had doubled. By 2030, customers with solar panels are expected to be A$150-210 better off on average each year. By 2050 that balloons to $860-$1140 each year. Two years on we’ve updated those scenarios as part of the Electricity Network Transformation Roadmap project with the Energy Networks Association. We expect retail prices to rise further in coming decades, but not as much as we originally thought. Concerningly, we also expect the gap in electricity costs between households with and without solar to increase dramatically. Read More here 9 December 2015, Renew Economy, Paris, COP21: Australia digs in on fossil fuels, sees coal as solution to hunger. One of the big themes of the Paris climate talks has been the focus on renewable energy – wind and solar in particular – as a means to reach emission reduction pledges, and cut pollution in the cities. Australia’s Coalition government, however, is sticking to a familiar theme: it has invested heavily in fossil fuels with long-life assets it is keen to retain and, anyway, coal is still good for humanity. Foreign minister Julie Bishop used a forum hosted by Indonesia called “Pathways to a Sustainable Low Carbon and Climate Resilient Economy” to push the case for Australian fossil fuels. “Right now we are in a transition phase,” Bishop said. “Traditional energy sources, fossil fuels like coal, will remain a significant part of the global energy mix for the foreseeable future. “Barring some technological breakthrough fossil fuels will remain critical to promoting prosperity, growing economies and alleviating hunger for years to come.” Hunger? It seems a variation of the “coal is good for humanity” theme, despite repeated estimates by the likes of the IEA, the World Bank and others that suggest the needs of poor countries are probably best served by renewable energy. The comments yet again underline the disconnect between Australia’s apparent support for a global target of “well below 2°C” and its lack of policies to get its economy beyond the fossil fuel age – few renewables are being built and none of the major coal generators are being closed. Bishop suggested this would be the status quo. “It is a fact that energy is the mainstay of our respective countries’ export markets and underpins economic growth,” she said. “The capital stock and infrastructure we have in stock to create and supply energy, both fossil fuels and renewables, have long life spans.” So no early closures then. Read more here 1 November 2018, Carbon Brief, Negative emissions: Scientists meet in Australia to discuss removing CO2 from air. An international group of researchers and policymakers met in Australia’s capital this week for the country’s first major conference dedicated to the topic of “negative emissions”. The two-day event, held at the Australian Academy of Science’s Shine Dome in Canberra, played host to a range of ideas for removing CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it on land, underground or in the oceans. The topics discussed ranged from “natural” solutions, such as boosting the carbon stores of soils and giant kelp forests, to the more experimental, including “fertilising” the world’s oceans. Carbon Brief was at the conference, which was organised by researchers from Australian National University and the University of Tasmania, to take in the presentations, talks and discussions. The Australian perspective This year has seen a ramping up of interest in negative emissions technologies (NETs) on both national and international levels. In January, the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC) – an independent group that offers science advice to EU policymakers – published a reportlooking at the feasibility and overall potential of NETs from a European perspective. This was followed by the world’s first international conference on NETs, which was held in Sweden in May. The three-day event, which was covered in depth by Carbon Brief, saw scientists debate a range of issues, with a particular focus given to land-based methods such as afforestation and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Access more here 30 October 2018 The Guardian, Clean energy is cheap, surging – and headed for a fall. The relentlessly corrosive nature of political debate about climate change can sometimes mask that this is a golden moment for the clean energy industry in Australia. A near-constant stream of investment announcements suggests a barrier has been knocked down such that leading renewable technologies, so long dependent on public subsidies, have assumed market supremacy. In the Pilbara, Macquarie Bank has joined a proposed $22bn project that plans to use solar and wind to run local mines, create “green” hydrogen energy for north Asia and possibly export electricity to Indonesia. In regional South Australia, the British billionaire industrialist, Sanjeev Gupta, has said he considered building a coal plant to run the Whyalla steelworks he bought last year, but decided it was cheaper to throw roughly $1.5bn at solar, pumped hydro storage, battery storage and co-generation (creating energy from waste gas) as he adopts his “green steel” model. Outside Townsville, zinc refiner Sun Metals recently opened Australia’s first large-scale solar farm built by a major energy user to service part of its own needs and feed the grid. Access more here 26 October 2018, Renew Economy, Beware fossil-gas suppliers bearing hydrogen gifts. Recently there has been a flood of announcements about renewable hydrogen. Some seem fully legitimate and exciting. But in some others, are we seeing a red-herring not unlike clean-coal? Will the public-relations power of renewable hydrogen be harnessed by fossil-fuel interests only to maintain business-as-usual? In the Aeneid, Virgil had a warning for the Trojans. Something along the lines of “you better have a squiz at this big wooden horse and see what’s up”. So let’s take a quick break from “electrifying everything” and look at what’s up with the green hydrogen being spruiked across Australia by fossil-gas suppliers. In Western Australia, the fossil oil and gas company Woodside says “Green hydrogen is the holy grail and if people want green hydrogen, we’re happy to deliver.” But then Woodside goes on to remind us “currently, the best way to export hydrogen is via LNG” (liquefied fossil gas). ATCO, the Canadian owner of Western Australia’s fossil gas distribution networks will use renewable hydrogen in the quest of “maximising existing network infrastructure”. (Note: After years of experience, we now know that Australian utility companies seeking to “maximise energy network infrastructure” whether it’s needed or not, is code for maximising utility company returns while driving up consumer energy costs.) Access more here 24 October 2018,Renew Economy, Coalition digs deeper into coal and climate denial. If the Wentworth and Wagga Wagga by-elections were supposed to send a message to Coalition governments about the need to act on carbon emissions and embrace renewables, it hasn’t worked. If anything, it seems the federal government has lurched even further to the hard right, deepened its attachment to coal, and declared its outright hostility to making any moves to increase its emissions reduction targets. It has vowed to do all it can to stop Labor from doing just that, should it win power in the next federal poll. This shouldn’t be a surprise from a government led by the coal-swinging prime minister Scott Morrison, an anti-renewable energy minister in Angus Taylor, and an environment minister in Melissa Price who doesn’t seem to understand that emissions reductions should be a high priority. Morrison turned a tin ear to the public when the extent of the Wentworth wipe-out became apparent on Saturday night. And by Tuesday he and Taylor were “back at work”, doing whatever they could to encourage the proliferation of their fabled new energy source – fair dinkum power – and to take some wild, interventionist shots at big energy that could end up killing competition, rather than boosting it. It’s a staggering and dangerous mix of ideology and incompetence – broken only by the welcome news that the Coalition will not embrace ACCC boss Rod Sims’ long campaign against rooftop solar subsidies, and will allow them to wind down as planned over the next decade. Elsewhere, though, alarm bells are ringing. Access more here 3 November 2020, Carbon Brief: Hydrogen gas has long been recognised as an alternative to fossil fuels and a potentially valuable tool for tackling climate change. Now, as nations come forward with net-zero strategies to align with their international climate targets, hydrogen has once again risen up the agenda from Australia and the UK through to Germany and Japan. In the most optimistic outlooks, hydrogen could soon power trucks, planes and ships. It could heat homes, balance electricity grids and help heavy industry to make everything from steel to cement. But doing all these things with hydrogen would require staggering quantities of the fuel, which is only as clean as the methods used to produce it. Moreover, for every potentially transformative application of hydrogen, there are unique challenges that must be overcome. In this in-depth Q&A – which includes a range of infographics, maps and interactive charts, as well as the views of dozens of experts – Carbon Brief examines the big questions around the “hydrogen economy” and looks at the extent to which it could help the world avoid dangerous climate change. Access full article here Fossil fuel emissions have stalled 14 November 2016, The Conversation, Fossil fuel emissions have stalled: Global Carbon Budget 2016. For the third year in a row, global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry have barely grown, while the global economy has continued to grow strongly. This level of decoupling of carbon emissions from global economic growth is unprecedented.Global CO₂ emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels and industry (including cement production) were 36.3 billion tonnes in 2015, the same as in 2014, and are projected to rise by only 0.2% in 2016 to reach 36.4 billion tonnes. This is a remarkable departure from emissions growth rates of 2.3% for the previous decade, and more than 3% during the 2000’s. Read More here Do you want to understand the complexity of energy systems which support our high consumption lifestyles? Most people don’t give too much thought to where their electricity comes from. Flip a switch, and the lights go on. That’s all. The origins of that energy, or how it actually got into our homes, is generally hidden from view. This link will take you to 11 maps which explain energy in America (it is typical enough as an example of a similar lifestyle as Australia – when I find maps for Oz I’ll add them in) e.g. above map showing the coal plants in the US. Source: Vox Explainers Mapped: how Germany generates its electricity – another example Power to the People – Lock the Gate looks back at the wins of 2015 And there’s lots more coming up in 2016. Some of the big priorities coming up next for the “Lock the Gate” movement are: If you want to give “Lock the Gate” your support – go here for more info This new report reveals that the pollution from Australia’s coal resources, particularly the enormous Galilee coal basin, could take us two-thirds of the way to a two degree rise in global temperature. To Read More and download report The 2006 UK government commissioned Stern Commission Review on the Economics of Climate Change is still the best complete appraisal of global climate change economics. The review broke new ground on climate change assessment in a number of ways. It made headlines by concluding that avoiding global climate change catastrophe was almost beyond our grasp. It also found that the costs of ignoring global climate change could be as great as the Great Depression and the two World Wars combined. The review was (still is) in fact a very good assessment of global climate change, which inferred in 2006 that the situation was a global emergency. Read More here The Garnaut Climate Change Review was commissioned by the Commonwealth, state and territory governments in 2007 to conduct an independent study of the impacts of climate change on the Australian economy. Prof. Garnaut presented The Garnaut Climate Change Review: Final Report to the Australian Prime Minister, Premiers and Chief Ministers in September 2008 in which he examined how Australia was likely to be affected by climate change, and suggested policy responses. In November 2010, he was commissioned by the Australian Government to provide an update to the 2008 Review. In particular, he was asked to examine whether significant changes had occurred that would affect the analysis and recommendations from 2008. The final report was presented May 2011. Since then the Professor has regularly participated in the debate of fossil fuel reduction, as per his latest below: To access his reports; interviews; submissions go here 27 May 2015, Renew Economy, Garnaut: Cost of stranded assets already bigger than cost of climate action. This is one carbon budget that Australia has already blown. Economist and climate change advisor Professor Ross Garnaut has delivered a withering critique of Australia’s economic policies and investment patterns, saying the cost of misguided over-investment in the recent mining boom would likely outweigh the cost of climate action over the next few decades. Read More here Live generation of electricity by fuel type Fossil Fuel Subsidies – The Age of entitlement continues 24 June 2014, Renew Economy, Age of entitlement has not ended for fossil fuels: A new report from The Australia Institute exposes the massive scale of state government assistance, totalling $17.6 billion over a six-year period, not including significant Federal government support and subsidies. Queensland taxpayers are providing the greatest assistance by far with a total of $9.5 billion, followed by Western Australia at $6.2 billion. The table shows almost $18 billion dollars has been spent over the past 6 years by state governments, supporting some of Australia’s biggest, most profitable industries, which are sending most of the profits offshore. That’s $18 billion dollars that could have gone to vital public services such as hospitals, schools and emergency services. State governments are usually associated with the provision of essential services like health and education so it will shock taxpayers to learn of the massive scale of government handouts to the minerals and fossil fuel industries. This report shows that Australian taxpayers have been misled about the costs and benefits of this industry, which we can now see are grossly disproportionate. Each state provides millions of dollars’ worth of assistance to the mining industry every year, with the big mining states of Queensland and Western Australia routinely spending over one billion dollars in assistance annually. Read More here – access full report here What is fossil fuel divestment? Local Governments ready to divest Aligning Council Money With Council Values A Guide To Ensuring Council Money Isn’t Funding Climate Change. 350.org Australia – with the help of the incredible team at Earth Hour – has pulled together a simple 3-step guide for local governments interested in divestment. The movement to align council money with council values is constantly growing in Australia. It complements the existing work that councils are doing to shape a safe climate future. It can also help to reshape the funding practices of Australia’s fossil fuel funding banks. The steps are simple. The impact is huge.The guide can also be used by local groups who are interested in supporting their local government to divest as a step-by-step reference point. Access guide here How coal is staying in the ground in the US Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign May 2015, Politico, Michael Grunwald: The war on coal is not just political rhetoric, or a paranoid fantasy concocted by rapacious polluters. It’s real and it’s relentless. Over the past five years, it has killed a coal-fired power plant every 10 days. It has quietly transformed the U.S. electric grid and the global climate debate. The industry and its supporters use “war on coal” as shorthand for a ferocious assault by a hostile White House, but the real war on coal is not primarily an Obama war, or even a Washington war. It’s a guerrilla war. The front lines are not at the Environmental Protection Agency or the Supreme Court. If you want to see how the fossil fuel that once powered most of the country is being battered by enemy forces, you have to watch state and local hearings where utility commissions and other obscure governing bodies debate individual coal plants. You probably won’t find much drama. You’ll definitely find lawyers from the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, the boots on the ground in the war on coal. Read More here Oil – conventional & unconventional May 2015, Oil change International Report: On the Edge: 1.6 Million Barrels per Day of Proposed Tar Sands Oil on Life Support. The Canadian tar sands is among the most carbon-intensive, highest-cost sources of oil in the world. Even prior to the precipitous drop in global oil prices late last year, three major projects were cancelled in the sector with companies unable to chart a profitable path forward. Since the collapse in global oil prices, the sector has been under pressure to make further cuts, leading to substantial budget cuts, job losses, and a much more bearish outlook on expansion projections in the coming years. Read full report here. For summary of report USA Sierra Club Beyond Oil Campaign Coal Seam Gas battle in Australia Lock the Gate Alliance is a national coalition of people from across Australia, including farmers, traditional custodians, conservationists and urban residents, who are uniting to protect our common heritage – our land, water and communities – from unsafe or inappropriate mining for coal seam gas and other fossil fuels. Read more about the missions and principles of Lock the Gate. Access more Lock the Gate videos here. Access Lock the Gate fact sheets here 2014: Parliament of Victoria Research Paper: Unconventional Gas: Coal Seam Gas, Shale Gas and Tight Gas: This Research Paper provides an introduction and overview of issues relevant to the development of unconventional gas – coal seam, shale and tight gas – in the Australian and specifically Victorian context. At present, the Victorian unconventional gas industry is at a very early stage. It is not yet known whether there is any coal seam gas or shale gas in Victoria and, if there is, whether it would be economically viable to extract it. A moratorium on fracking has been in place in Victoria since August 2012 while more information is gathered on potential environmental risks posed by the industry. The parts of Victoria with the highest potential for unconventional gas are the Gippsland and Otway basins. Notably, tight gas has been located near Seaspray in Gippsland but is not yet being produced. There is a high level of community concern in regard to the potential impact an unconventional gas industry could have on agriculture in the Gippsland and Otway regions. Industry proponents, however, assert that conventional gas resources are declining and Victoria’s unconventional gas resources need to be ascertained and developed. Read More here 28 January 2015, ABC News, Coal seam gas exploration: Victoria’s fracking ban to remain as Parliament probes regulations: A ban on coal seam gas (CSG) exploration will stay in place in Victoria until a parliamentary inquiry hands down its findings, the State Government has promised. There is a moratorium on the controversial mining technique, known as fracking, until the middle of 2015. The Napthine government conducted a review into CSG, headed by former Howard government minister Peter Reith, which recommended regulations around fracking be relaxed. Labor was critical of the review, claiming it failed to consult with farmers, environmental scientists and local communities. Read more here Keep up to date and how you can be involved here Friends of the Earth Melbourne Coal & Gas Free Victoria 20 May 2015, FoE, Inquiry into Unconventional Gas: Check here for details on the Victorian government’s Inquiry into unconventional gas. The public hearings have not yet started, however the Terms of Reference have been released. The state government’s promised Inquiry into Unconventional Gas has now been formally announced, with broad terms of reference (TOR). FoE’s response to the TOR is available here. The Upper House Environment and Planning Committee will manage the Inquiry. You can find the Inquiry website here. The final TOR will be determined by the committee. Significantly, it is a cross party committee. The Chair is a Liberal (David Davis), and there is one National (Melinda Bath), one Green (Samantha Dunn), three from the ALP (Gayle Tierney, Harriet Shing, Shaun Leane), an additional MP from the Liberals (Richard Dalla-Riva), and one MP from the Shooters Party (Daniel Young). Work started by the previous government, into water tables and the community consultation process run by the Primary Agency, will be released as part of the inquiry.The moratorium on unconventional gas exploration will stay in place until the inquiry delivers its findings. The interim report is due in September and the final report by December. There is the possibility that the committee will amend this timeline if they are overwhelmed with submissions or information. Parliament will then need to consider the recommendations of the committee and make a final decision about how to proceed. This is likely to happen when parliament resumes after the summer break, in early 2016. Quit Coal is a Melbourne-based collective that campaigns against the expansion of the coal and unconventional gas industries in Victoria. Quit Coal uses a range of tactics to tackle this problem. We advise the broader Victorian community about plans for new coal and unconventional gas projects, we put pressure on our government to stop investing in these projects, and we help to inform and mobilise Victorian communities so they can campaign on their own behalf. We focus on being strategic, creative, and as much as possible, fun! The above screen shot is of the Victorian State government’s Mining Licences Near Me site. Go to this link to see what is happening in your area Environment Victoria’s campaign CoalWatch is an interactive resource that tracks the coal industry’s expansion plans and helps builds a movement to stop these polluting developments. CoalWatch provides a way for everyday Victorians to keep track of the coal industry’s ambitious expansion plans. To check what tax-payer money has been pledged to brown coal projects and the coal projects industry is spruiking to our politicians. Here’s another map via EV website (go to their website and you should be able to get better detail from Google Maps: Red areas: Exploration licences (EL). These areas are held by companies to undertake exploration activity. A small bond is held by government in case of any damage. If a company wants to progress the project it needs to obtain a mining licence. Exploration Licence applications are marked with an asterix in the Places Index eg. EL4684*. Yellow areas: Mining Licences (MIN). A mining licence is granted with the expectation that mining will occur. A larger bond is paid to government. Green areas: Exploration licences that have been withdrawn or altered due to community concern. Green outline: Existing mines within Mining Licences. Purple areas: Geological Carbon Storage Exploration areas for carbon capture and storage. On-shore areas have been released by the State Government, while off-shore areas have been released by the Federal Government. The Coal Watch wiki tracks current and future Victorian coal projects, whether they are power stations, coal mines, proposals to export coal or some other inventive way of burning more coal. To get the full picture of coal in Victoria visit our wiki page. Get more info and see the full list of Exploration Licences current at 17 August 2012 here August 2015, Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis – powerpoint: Changing Dynamics in the Global Seaborne Thermal Coal Markets and Stranded Asset Risk. Information from one of the slides follows. To view full presentation go here Economic Implications for Australia 83% of Australian coal mines are foreign owned, hence direct leverage of fossil fuels to the ASX is relatively small at 1-2%. However, for Australia the exposure is high, time is needed for transition and the new industry opportunities are significant: 1. Energy Infrastructure: Australia spends $5-10bn pa on electricity / grid sector, much of it a regulated asset base that all ratepayers fund much of it stranded. BNEF estimate of Australia’s renewable energy infrastructure investment for 2015-2020 was cut 30% from A$20bn post RET. Lost opportunities. 2. Direct employment: The ABS shows a fall of ~20k from the 2012 peak of 70K from coal mining across Australia, and cuts are ongoing. Indirect employment material. 3. Terms of trade: BZE estimates the collapse in the pricing of iron ore, coal and LNG cuts A$100bn pa from Australia’s export revenues by 2030, a halving relative to government budget estimates of 2013/14. Coal was 25% of NSW’s total A$ value of exports in 2013/14 (38% of Qld). Australia will be #1 globally in LNG by 2018. 4. The financial sector: is leveraged to mining and associated rail port infrastructure. WICET 80% financed by banks, mostly Australian. Adani’s Abbot Point Port is foreign owned, but A$1.2bn of Australian sourced debt. Insurance firms and infrastructure funds are leveraged to fossil fuels vs little RE infrastructure assets. BBY! 5. Rehabilitation: $18bn of unfunded coal mining rehabilitation across Australia. 6. Economic growth: curtailed as Australia fails to develop low carbon industries. In-depth Q&A: Does the world need hydrogen to solve climate change?
3 May 2016, Carbon Brief, The global coal trade doubled in the decade to 2012 as a coal-fueled boom took hold in Asia. Now, the coal trade seems to have stalled, or even gone into reverse. This change of fortune has devastated the coal mining industry, with Peabody – the world’s largest private coal-mining company – the latest of 50 US firms to file for bankruptcy. It could also be a turning point for the climate, with the continued burning of coal the biggest difference between business-as-usual emissions and avoiding dangerous climate change. Carbon Brief has produced a series of maps and interactive charts to show how the global coal trade is changing. As well as providing a global overview, we focus on a few key countries: Read More here/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3915730/EIA%20coal%20power%20plants.png)
21 April 2015, Climate Council, Will Steffen: Unburnable Carbon: Why we need to leave fossil fuels in the ground.Stern Commission Review
Australia’s Garnaut Review
November 2014 – The Fossil Fuel Bailout: G20 subsidies for oil, gas and coal exploration report: Governments across the G20 countries are estimated to be spending $88 billion every year subsidising exploration for fossil fuels. Their exploration subsidies marry bad economics with potentially disastrous consequences for climate change. In effect, governments are propping up the development of oil, gas and coal reserves that cannot be exploited if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change. This report documents, for the first time, the scale and structure of fossil fuel exploration subsidies in the G20 countries. The evidence points to a publicly financed bailout for carbon-intensive companies, and support for uneconomic investments that could drive the planet far beyond the internationally agreed target of limiting global temperature increases to no more than 2ºC. It finds that, by providing subsidies for fossil fuel exploration, the G20 countries are creating a ‘triple-lose’ scenario. They are directing large volumes of finance into high-carbon assets that cannot be exploited without catastrophic climate effects. They are diverting investment from economic low-carbon alternatives such as solar, wind and hydro-power. And they are undermining the prospects for an ambitious climate deal in 2015. Access full report here For the summary on Australia’s susidisation of it’s fossil fuel industry go to page 51 of the report. The report said that the United States and Australia paid the highest level of national subsidies for exploration in the form of direct spending or tax breaks. Overall, G20 country spending on national subsidies was $23 billion. In Australia, this includes exploration funding for Geoscience Australia and tax deductions for mining and petroleum exploration. The report also classifies the Federal Government’s fuel rebate program for resources companies as a subsidy.
