Confidence In Renewable Energy Sector 'Evaporated' After Abbott Cut: Bloomberg

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Investment in large-scale renewable energy in Australia remains stagnant almost two years after the Abbott government began a review of the sector, according to an annual survey by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Investors spent just $15 million since February 2014 on big wind, solar or other clean energy projects that were not otherwise supported by government programs such as the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

The renewable energy industry's outlook is still clouded in Australia. Photo: Glen McCurtayne

The Abbott government's repeal of the carbon tax in July 2014 – which removed long-term price support – and a mishandled review that led ultimately to a cut of about one-fifth in the 2020 Renewable Energy Target (RET) meant "confidence evaporated" in the sector, said Kobad Bhavnagri, head of Bloomberg New Energy Finance in Australia.
"It can't be understated that the actions of the Abbott government have destroyed confidence in the renewable energy market," Mr Bhavnagri said. "Lenders in the market are almost all of the view that the political risks in the RET … have made it too risky to invest in."
The picture is not all gloomy, however, with the capacity of new rooftop solar photovoltaic systems rising in 2015.

Wind turbines stand behind a solar power park at Werder, Germany. Photo: Sean Gallup

Solar energy on rooftops is the bright spot in the Australian clean energy sector. Photo: Glenn Hunt

Other bright spots included the Australian Capital Territory's reverse auction program and grants from federal government-owned ARENA and the Clean Energy Finance Corp – two agencies still slated for abolition by the Turnbull government.
When investments related to those programs are added to the total investment, financing of large-scale renewable energy rose slightly to $1.18 billion "from the depths of the 2014 investment freeze", Bloomberg said.
Still, Australia will need to triple that amount to the annual sum of $3.6 billion needed to meet even the lowered RET goal of 33,000 gigawatt-hours of clean energy a year by 2020.
Reaching that 2020 goal "looks to very challenging" after two years in the doldrums, Mr Bhavnagri said.

A spokesman for Environment Minister Greg Hunt said investment for 400 megawatts of new capacity had been announced since the new RET target was settled.
"Significant additional investment is expected to be announced or approved over the coming 12 months," the spokesman said.
"The revised target was supported by the renewable energy sector as it is both achievable and sustainable," he said, adding the goal amounts to a doubling of large-scale renewable energy over the next five years.
The Greens, though, said the policy had been undermined by the big parties and major companies.
"The Liberal and Labor deal to cut the RET has enabled the big three energy retailers [AGL, Origin and EnergyAustralia] to prolong uncertainty for this vital industry," said Richard Di Natale, the Greens leader. "So in the first half of 2016, it's important we see some real commitment that they're serious about signing up for renewable energy projects.
"In the absence of a strong RET, the [CEFC and ARENA] are even more important, but it's still Liberal policy to abolish them both," Senator Di Natale said, adding the Greens' policy calls for 90 per cent of Australia's electricity to come from renewables by 2030.
Labor wants the renewable energy share to rise to 50 per cent by 2030.
"Australia has some of the best renewable energy resources in the world, and while the industry recognises that meeting the [RET] will be a challenge, we are up to the task," said Mark Bretherton, spokesman for the Clean Energy Council.
"Negotiating contracts to buy the renewable energy generated by major projects simply takes time, and we are expecting more projects to proceed in the first two quarters of 2016," he said, adding that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull "seems committed to restoring confidence" in the sector.

International gain
The outlook is more promising on the international front, with total investment in renewable energy rising 4 per cent in 2015 to a record $US329.3 billion ($474 billion), according to BNEF. (See chart below in US dollars.)

The rise came despite falling costs for new solar panels and a plunge in prices of fossil fuels, including a drop of 67 per cent dive in Brent crude prices over the past 18 months.
For large-scale clean energy investment, Australia ranked 12th largest in the world in 2015 behind other resource-rich nations such as Chile (11th) and South Africa (8th), Bloomberg said.
For small-scale solar, Australia was the fifth largest, with $2.17 billion, nudging ahead of Germany but trailing nations such as Britain and Japan.
Renewable energy should continue to grow even with cheap fossil fuels, particularly after the global climate agreement reached late last year, Mr Bhavnagri said.
"Paris certainly creates momentum," he said. "Paris sets the objectives and it is up to countries to set their own policies to get there."

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Power Sector Carbon Emissions Jumped 3.8 Million Tonnes In 2015: Pitt & Sherry

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Power sector emissions are rising, making carbon goals harder to hit. Photo: Paul Jones

Australia's greenhouse gases from its power sector jumped by 3.8 million tonnes in 2015, potentially making it harder to meet the country's international promises to cut total emissions.
Pollution from power stations - which account for about a third of Australia's total carbon emissions - was up 2.4 per cent compared with 2014, according to data compiled by Pitt & Sherry and The Australia Institute.
Emissions from electricity production, which was the prime target of the carbon tax, are now 5.1 per cent higher than in June 2014 - just before the scheme was scrapped by the Abbott government:

The rise in emissions is being driven in part by a switch back to coal-fired power as more gas gets diverted to offshore markets. The share of gas in the National Electricity Market, which supplies about 80 per cent of Australia's population, fell to 11.2 per cent in December, its lowest proportion since mid-2010.
Australia's total emissions rose 1.3 per cent in the year to June 2015, the first full year after the carbon tax's demise, the government reported just before Christmas.
An increase in electricity use is also nudging emissions higher, with demand for power notching the first annual increase since 2010.
A stalling in new renewable energy investments because of political uncertainty over the 2020 Renewable Energy Target has also curbed the rise of wind power. Its share in December was unchanged from a year earlier at 5.7 per cent.
In December, black and brown coal accounted for 75.9 per cent of the NEM's output.

Australia is likely to meet its 2020 target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 5 per cent of 2000 levels in large part because of surplus credits from a reduction in land clearing, particularly in Queensland and NSW.
The longer-term goal of reducing emissions by 19 per cent of 2000 levels by 2030 - as committed by the Turnbull government at the Paris climate summit late last year - will require an average annual reduction of about 11 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent emissions from now. Compared with 2005 levels, the cut is 26-28 per cent.
That target will be increasingly difficult without a change in policy, particularly towards curbing emissions from the energy sector, Hugh Saddler, Pitt & Sherry's principal consultant, said.
"Australia is still largely dependent on coal for its electricity supply and, assuming electricity demand continues to rise, Australia's carbon emissions will continue to rise," Dr Saddler said.
The 2015 increase in emissions might have been higher but for a slight rise in hydro electricity towards the end of the year.
The extra hydro input, though, will probably be hard to sustain without good rains, particularly for Hydro Tasmania.
"Tasmania ... is now facing a significant challenge as energy storage levels fell to below 24 per cent at the end of December as a consequence of an abnormally dry winter," Pitt & Sherry said in its latest Cedex report.

Link

• Investor confidence in renewable energy 'evaporated'

Cancer and Climate Change

New York Times - Piers J. Sellers*

Tatsuro Kiuchi

I'M a climate scientist who has just been told I have Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
This diagnosis puts me in an interesting position. I've spent much of my professional life thinking about the science of climate change, which is best viewed through a multidecadal lens. At some level I was sure that, even at my present age of 60, I would live to see the most critical part of the problem, and its possible solutions, play out in my lifetime. Now that my personal horizon has been steeply foreshortened, I was forced to decide how to spend my remaining time. Was continuing to think about climate change worth the bother?
After handling the immediate business associated with the medical news — informing family, friends, work; tidying up some finances; putting out stacks of unread New York Times Book Reviews to recycle; and throwing a large "Limited Edition" holiday party, complete with butlers, I had some time to sit at my kitchen table and draw up the bucket list.
Very quickly, I found out that I had no desire to jostle with wealthy tourists on Mount Everest, or fight for some yardage on a beautiful and exclusive beach, or all those other things one toys with on a boring January afternoon. Instead, I concluded that all I really wanted to do was spend more time with the people I know and love, and get back to my office as quickly as possible.
I work for NASA, managing a large group of expert scientists doing research on the whole Earth system (I should mention that the views in this article are my own, not NASA's). This involves studies of climate and weather using space-based observations and powerful computer models. These models describe how the planet works, and what can happen as we pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The work is complex, exacting, highly relevant and fascinating.
Last year was the warmest year on record, by far. I think that future generations will look back on 2015 as an important but not decisive year in the struggle to align politics and policy with science. This is an incredibly hard thing to do. On the science side, there has been a steady accumulation of evidence over the last 15 years that climate change is real and that its trajectory could lead us to a very uncomfortable, if not dangerous, place. On the policy side, the just-concluded climate conference in Paris set a goal of holding the increase in the global average temperature to 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels.
While many have mocked this accord as being toothless and unenforceable, it is noteworthy that the policy makers settled on a number that is based on the best science available and is within the predictive capability of our computer models.
It's doubtful that we'll hold the line at 2 degrees Celsius, but we need to give it our best shot. With scenarios that exceed that target, we are talking about enormous changes in global precipitation and temperature patterns, huge impacts on water and food security, and significant sea level rise. As the predicted temperature rises, model uncertainty grows, increasing the likelihood of unforeseen, disastrous events.
All this as the world's population is expected to crest at around 9.5 billion by 2050 from the current seven billion. Pope Francis and a think tank of retired military officers have drawn roughly the same conclusion from computer model predictions: The worst impacts will be felt by the world's poorest, who are already under immense stress and have meager resources to help them adapt to the changes. They will see themselves as innocent victims of the developed world's excesses. Looking back, the causes of the 1789 French Revolution are not a mystery to historians; looking forward, the pressure cooker for increased radicalism, of all flavors, and conflict could get hotter along with the global temperature.
Last year may also be seen in hindsight as the year of the Death of Denial. Globally speaking, most policy makers now trust the scientific evidence and predictions, even as they grapple with ways to respond to the problem. And most Americans — 70 percent, according to a recent Monmouth University poll — believe that the climate is changing. So perhaps now we can move on to the really hard part of this whole business.
The initial heavy lifting will have to be done by policy makers. I feel for them. It's hard to take a tough stand on an important but long-term issue in the face of so many near-term problems, amid worries that reducing emissions will weaken our global economic position and fears that other countries may cheat on their emissions targets.
Where science can help is to keep track of changes in the Earth system — this is a research and monitoring job, led by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and their counterparts elsewhere in the world — and use our increasingly powerful computer models to explore possible futures associated with proposed policies. The models will help us decide which approaches are practicable, trading off near-term impacts to the economy against longer-term impacts to the climate.
Ultimately, though, it will be up to the engineers and industrialists of the world to save us. They must come up with the new technologies and the means of implementing them. The technical and organizational challenges of solving the problems of clean energy generation, storage and distribution are enormous, and they must be solved within a few decades with minimum disruption to the global economy. This will likely entail a major switch to nuclear, solar and other renewable power, with an electrification of our transport system to the maximum extent possible. These engineers and industrialists are fully up to the job, given the right incentives and investments. You have only to look at what they achieved during World War II: American technology and production catapulted over what would have taken decades to do under ordinary conditions and presented us with a world in 1945 that was completely different from the late 1930s.
What should the rest of us do? Two things come to mind. First, we should brace for change. It is inevitable. It will appear in changes to the climate and to the way we generate and use energy. Second, we should be prepared to absorb these with appropriate sang-froid. Some will be difficult to deal with, like rising seas, but many others could be positive. New technologies have a way of bettering our lives in ways we cannot anticipate. There is no convincing, demonstrated reason to believe that our evolving future will be worse than our present, assuming careful management of the challenges and risks. History is replete with examples of us humans getting out of tight spots. The winners tended to be realistic, pragmatic and flexible; the losers were often in denial of the threat.
As for me, I've no complaints. I'm very grateful for the experiences I've had on this planet. As an astronaut I spacewalked 220 miles above the Earth. Floating alongside the International Space Station, I watched hurricanes cartwheel across oceans, the Amazon snake its way to the sea through a brilliant green carpet of forest, and gigantic nighttime thunderstorms flash and flare for hundreds of miles along the Equator. From this God's-eye-view, I saw how fragile and infinitely precious the Earth is. I'm hopeful for its future.
And so, I'm going to work tomorrow.

*Piers J. Sellers is the deputy director of Sciences and Exploration at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and acting director of its Earth Sciences Division. As an astronaut, he visited the International Space Station three times and walked in space six times.

Link

• Building Visions of Humanity’s Climate Future – in Fiction and on Campus

Crop Failure and Fading Food Supplies: Climate Change's Lasting Impact

Live Science - Marlene Cimons*

As prolonged drought and extreme temperatures have taken their terrible toll on food crops in recent years, nations have tended to focus on regional episodes, such as a single drought-afflicted state or region. Now, scientists have assessed the global scale of food crop disasters for the first time — and the news is not good.
In a new study, researchers from Canada and the United Kingdom estimate that cereal harvests — including rice, wheat and maize — decreased by an average of 9 to10 percent during droughts and heat waves between 1964 and 2007, with the worst effects seen in North America, Europe, and Australia and its neighboring islands. Furthermore, the impact has grown larger in recent years. With climate change likely to exacerbate extreme weather and make it more common in the future, the study is perhaps the most comprehensive examination yet of the historic impact of extreme weather on global crop production.

Fading food supplies
The researchers' work builds on an accumulating body of research and reports that consistently warn of the devastating effects extreme weather is having on agriculture. And the effects will continue, with consequences including drastic food shortages, experts say. Studies from Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Niger have shown that children have increased wasting and stunting rates after a flood or drought, according to the United Nations World Food Programme. For example, children in Niger born during a drought are more than twice as likely to be malnourished between the ages of 1 and 2. Moreover, the U.N. food program estimates that hunger and child malnutrition could increase by as much as 20 percent by 2050 as a result of climate change. [Food Prices, Global Hunger to Skyrocket by 2030, Oxfam Warns]
Extreme weather causes crop production losses, but until now, scientists "did not know exactly how much global production was lost to extreme weather events and how they varied by different regions of the world," said Navin Ramankutty, a professor of global food security and sustainability at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia, and one of the study authors.
The researchers, whose work appears in a recent issue of the journal Nature, also include Corey Lesk, of The Earth Institute at Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, and Pedram Rowhani, a lecturer in geography and international development at the University of Sussex.

Keeping food on the table
While shortages don't necessarily spell extinction for your morning bowl of cornflakes, cereal could end up costing you a lot more. More important, because cereal grains are a staple of the global diet, the situation could have a catastrophic impact on farmers and the world's hungry.
"I think most Americans are relatively able to withstand food price shocks," said Lesk, first author of the study. "But the most vulnerable people, both in the United States and elsewhere, can be forced into dangerous situations by these disasters. I think it's important for Americans to keep these people in mind, especially because these disasters are likely to become more common in the future."
Those crises could mean lost income for American commercial farmers, as well as food shortages for poorer subsistence farmers, who rely on their crops to feed themselves and their families, Lesk said.
Food insecurity still persists in the United States; an estimated 14 percent of American households (17.4 million), were food "insecure" in 2014, meaning they had difficulty at some point during the year providing enough food for their families due to a lack of resources, according to a recent report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The findings from the new research may help guide agricultural priorities in international disaster risk reduction, as well as adaptation efforts. "We can avoid a worsening food-security situation if we invest in adapting our crops to these extremes immediately, and especially if we step up and make solid commitments to avoid further climate change," Lesk said.

Harvesting the data
Lesk and his colleagues analyzed national agricultural-production data from the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization for 16 cereals in 177 countries. They also examined 2,800 international weather disasters from 1964 to 2007.
They found that cereal harvests decreased due to both droughts and extreme heat, and production levels in North America, Europe and Australasia dropped by an average of 19.9 percent from droughts alone — roughly double the global average.
Moreover, the average impact of recent droughts — those between 1985 and 2007 — was a 13.7 percent loss, which is 7 percent greater than the 6.7 percent impact during droughts that occurred earlier, between 1964 and 1984. The reasons for this are not clear.
"We found that the average impact of drought disasters on crops has gotten worse," Lesk said. "But it is still debated whether droughts themselves have gotten more severe, so another explanation could be that crops have gotten more susceptible to drought over the decades. That could mean, speculatively, that we're already on the wrong path with regard to adapting our crops to a changing climate.
"The thinking is that, if crop responses to drought have gotten bigger, but there is no clear signal that the droughts have gotten worse, then that supports the alternative explanation that crops themselves have gotten more sensitive," he added. "And if they have gotten more sensitive already, that bodes ill for future crop performance in a world of worse droughts."

Crop failure
The researchers found that production losses due to droughts were associated with a reduction in both harvested area and yields, whereas extreme heat mainly decreased yields.
Harvested area refers to the planted cropland area that is harvested in a given year.
"It takes time, energy and money to harvest crops from a field, and if crops are severely enough damaged, then farmers may choose not to harvest at all," Lesk said. "You could call this a 'total crop failure,' and it shows up in the data as a drop in harvested area. Yield is the mass of grain harvest per unit area harvested — in other words, the productivity of the crops on an area basis. If a crop fails completely and is not harvested, then it doesn't end up in the yield calculations, so you have to consider both metrics to get a full picture."
The scientists concluded that droughts caused partial and total damage to crops, resulting in drops in both yield and harvested area. Heat waves, in contrast, only resulted in yield declines. "Droughts can cause more complete crop failures, possibly because they can last so long and damage crops so severely that farmers don't bother harvesting," Lesk said. "Another aspect is that longer droughts might discourage planting altogether, possibly because farmers have run out of water for irrigation or money for seeds."
The scientists did not specifically analyze any price or trade effects, but they have "come up with a quick, rough estimate for the 9 to 10 percent in annual dollar terms," Lesk said. "About $10 billion worth of crops per year, globally, has been lost to drought and heat waves," Lesk said.
The researchers did not find any impacts from floods or extreme cold. Also, in one optimistic result, their analysis found that extreme weather events had no lasting impact on agricultural production in the years that followed the disasters.
Nevertheless, the work provides another compelling argument "to start scaling up the myriad climate change mitigation strategies that already exist — green subsidies and investment, carbon taxes and markets, and especially ending fossil fuel subsidies," Lesk said. "Climate change poses a colossal economic risk to the world — tens to hundreds of trillions of dollars in damage, by some estimates. Spending now to avoid it is truly an excellent investment."

*Marlene Cimons is a Washington, D.C. based freelance writer who specializes in science, health and the environment. Her work frequently appears in, among other outlets, The Washington Post, Microbe Magazine, and Climate Progress. She also writes for Climate Nexus, a nonprofit that aims to tell the climate story in innovative ways that raise awareness of, dispel misinformation about and showcase solutions to climate change and energy issues in the United States. She contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

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