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 5 June 2015, Truth Dig, Big Oil Soon to be Extinct: What do Big Oil and whale oil have in common? According to Amory B. Lovins, chairman and chief scientist of the sustainability-focused Rocky Mountain Institute, Big Oil is soon to follow whale oil’s downward trajectory toward extinction. At the Ceres Conference 2015 for sustainable business, Lovins challenged big businesses to rethink the outdated belief that investing in fossil fuels remains the safest way to get rich (dolphins, seabirds and humanity be damned). At first look, Lovins appears to be a nerdy, middle-aged scientist in a suit, but once he starts talking, it becomes clear that he’s actually a brilliant revolutionary. Lovins’ message hasn’t changed much in the four decades he’s been doggedly trying to get the world to embrace renewable energy, but he’s accumulated more data to prove his point to a host of unlikely converts, from communist China to Arab sheiks and presidents of companies like Texaco. Even if you don’t care much about the environment, Lovins makes the case that you’d be economically foolish not to invest in renewable energy, because green technology today is akin to the discovery of petroleum and its effect on the whaling industry of the 19th century. Read more here 4 June 2015, RTCC, Oil giants support for UN climate pact signals change in strategy. Top hydrocarbon producers seem to accept a global deal will be done in Paris – the question is can they limit its damage? It’s unprecedented for the UN’s climate chief to receive a letter from six oil companies offering help. More likely Sepp Blatter resigning in the wake of FIFA’s corruption scandal, Tony Blair making a speech at a hunger summit for free. But that’s what happened on Friday when the heads of BP, Shell, BG Group, Statoil, Eni and Total wrote to Christiana Figueres. “Climate change is a critical challenge for our world,” they said. “We stand ready to play our part.” The chief executives emphasised the importance of a global price on carbon, and their willingness to work with the UN to make this happen…. But why now, and why this letter? Tom Burke, advisor to BP from 1999-2001 and chair of environmental think tank E3G is in no doubt. It’s fear. “They are getting worried. They are beginning to think governments will bend to respond on pressure on climate change more than they thought they would,” he says.“They assumed governments would not do enough to stay below 2C [a temperature level the UN agreed to avoid in 2010]. It’s unprecedented and a sign they are nervous.” The letter is a sign, argues Burke that work exposing the risk of “stranded assets” as a result of climate policies that make fossil fuels unusable is starting to hit home. Read more here 4 June 2015, Timberbiz, RET could revive timber in Victoria. The revised Renewable Energy Target (RET) currently before Parliament would provide a market for otherwise unsaleable timber, according to a document from Victoria’s state-owned forestry business, VicForests, obtained by the ABC. Source: ABC News. Environment Minister Greg Hunt introduced the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Amendment Bill and the legislation locks in the bipartisan deal for a new, lower, 2020 Renewable Energy Target. But, controversially, it reinstates the burning of native forest wood waste as a renewable energy source in the RET scheme. “There is no evidence that its eligibility leads to unsustainable practices or has a negative impact on Australia’s biodiversity,” Mr Hunt said when introducing the bill. “Using wood waste for generation is more beneficial to the environment than burning waste alone on the forest floor or simply allowing it to decompose and to produce methane a very high global warming potential gas.” The changes will help hardwood timber company Australian Solar Timbers (AST) build a two-megawatt power plant that will generate electricity onsite. AST chairman Douglas Head said timber for the plant in New South Wales’ Macleay Valley would come from existing sawmill waste that had little current value. “There is not one new tree that would be cut. Frankly you would not cut a tree to produce electricity alone. It’s got to be cut for some other high-value use,” he said. He said the wood by-products now potentially eligible for burning were “used sometimes as boiler fuels, potting mix, horse stable coverings and in the chicken industry — very low value”. The VicForests document says wood could be used as a brown coal substitute, but Nathan Trushell from VicForests downplayed the prospect of massive forest furnaces. “I think the stark reality for us is we would see some significant economic challenges with Renewable Energy Target credits or not,” he said. “I think if there is opportunity for us in that space, it’s really around small-scale local generation. I think for large-scale co-generation in coal-fired power stations the reality is timber is heavy and expensive to transport. “If we’re looking at our operations in East Gippsland we’re talking about several hundred kilometres to transport that material. I can’t see how economically that would stack up for us. Read More here The CEOs of the European oil giants Shell, BP, Total, Statoil, Eni and BG Group, with a combined revenue of $US1.4 trillion – although notably not the US giants Chevron and Exxon – sent letters last Friday to the head of the UN climate negotiations, Christiana Figueres, and Laurent Fabius, France’s Foreign Affairs and International Development Minister who will also lead the Paris climate talks later this year. Read More here 12 March 2018, Climate News Network, Alberta’s oil exports face ocean of trouble. Alberta’s oil exports are at serious risk. Last month the first supertanker capable of holding two million barrels of oil sailed for the first time from America’s newly upgraded – and only – terminal able to handle crude-carrying giants of this size: the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP). She was bound for China, and her maiden voyage signals a major shift in global oil shipping patterns, economics, and the highly competitive oil refinery business. The LOOP terminal is deep in the Mississippi Delta. A 29-kilometre pipeline stretches across the shallow Gulf of Mexico coastal shelf to a point deep enough to allow similar Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) to unload their vast tonnages. Nearby a complex of salt caverns and surface tanks stores both oil imports headed for US refineries and fast-increasing volumes of oil bound for export. The LOOP terminal is a speculator’s venture on steroids. Built with private capital, it is North America’s first oil port dedicated to the planet’s largest crude tankers, handling two-way oil flows. It’s designed to thrive on fierce global fights over not just oil supply and demand, but the multi-billion dollar bets corporate oil traders and hedge funds place, hoping to buy low and sell high – now or years hence. Two cargoes at once. Any VLCC from any country can now unload or load oil at the LOOP. They can carry it – two million barrels at a time – to ports across the globe, at a price lower than smaller tankers. That will probably prove fatal to the plans of the Canadian province of Alberta to expand unrefined bitumen exports by either the proposed Trans-Mountain pipeline to the British Columbia coast or the planned Keystone XL pipeline to Texas. Bitumen, or asphalt, is the feedstock which tar sands and oil sands producers remove from the ground, thick enough to require mining, not pumping. It then has to be diluted with light crude oil or other chemicals before it can go through a pipeline (hence the term diluted bitumen). Read More here 12 March 2018, Carbon Brief, New maps pinpoint the potential for BECCS across the US. Models developed to explore how the world might limit future warming to the “well below 2C” target of the Paris Agreement on climate change typically employ large amounts of “negative emissions” later in the century. The majority of these “energy system” models employ a technology called bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) at a massive scale. BECCS involves growing plants, absorbing CO2 in the process, then converting the resulting biomass into energy. The carbon emissions are captured and buried underground, both removing CO2 the atmosphere and producing energy at the same time. But the areas where large volumes of biomass can be grown and CO2 can be stored do not necessarily overlap. A new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), examines the areas of the US that might fit both criteria – and whether BECCS can be implemented at the scale assumed in the energy models. The researchers find that there are enough suitable areas of the US to remove around 110m-120m tonnes (Mt) CO2 from the atmosphere by 2020 and 360-630MtCO2 by 2040. This is similar to what energy models assume will be deployed across the US in a world where warming is limited to well below 2C…..There are also large uncertainties about the long-term economic viability of BECCS not addressed in this study, as well as the land, water and fertiliser that would be required at the scale suggested for the end of the century. Other negative emissions technologies not included in the IAMs may also play a role, potentially reducing the amount of BECCS needed in the future to meet a target of limiting warming to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels while minimizing costs to society.. Read More here 8 March 2018, The Conversation Why aren’t Australia’s environment laws preventing widespread land clearing? Australia has national environment laws – the Environment Protection Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act). Yet given the staggering rates of land clearing taking place, resulting in the extinction and endangerment of plants and animals in Australia, these laws are clearly not working. About 395,000 hectares of regrowth and old growth vegetation were cleared during 2015-16 in Queensland. Australia is set to clear up to 3 million hectares of native forest by 2030, and more than 1,800 plant and animal species are currently listed as threatened nationally. Read more: Turnbull wants to change Australia’s environment act – here’s what we stand to lose. When the EPBC Act was first implemented in 1999, the idea was for it to provide reinforced federal environmental protection to areas of national environmental significance. But in reality, many projects that come within the ambit of the Act are not rigorously evaluated for their environmental impact. Why isn’t the EPBC Act working? Read More here 8 March 2018, Bloomberg, Why Environmentalists Want to Tell It to the Judge. Efforts to fight climate change are going nowhere in the U.S. Congress, and President Donald Trump has vowed to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. So environmentalists are turning to the courts. A March 7 ruling that allowed one case to proceed — a charge that the federal government helped enable climate change — has buoyed environmentalists. But they’ll still have to overcome a host of legal obstacles and lawyers for oil and gas companies before the question of who’s responsible for global warming can be weighed in court. 1. What are environmental activists doing? Some are suing on behalf of local governments, claiming that energy companies denied scientists’ findings on climate change despite knowing the “grave risk” posed by the use of fossil fuels. New York City has filed suit against six oil and gas producers claiming they’re the world’s largest contributors to climate change. Attorneys general in Massachusetts and New York are investigating Exxon Mobil Corp., the biggest U.S. oil company, for defrauding shareholders and consumers by covering up information on climate change. Others blame the government for failing to act against global warming. The case that moved forward on March 7 is a 2015 suit by a group of 21 Oregon children and teens that claimed the federal government has failed to take actions necessary to limit greenhouse gases, violating their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property. Read 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.
