The COAG Energy Council was a missed opportunity to start developing a
coherent approach to the transformation to a net zero emission energy
sector.
The initiatives announced by COAG are worthy but piecemeal.
If
COAG will not take a strategic approach, it's now more important than
ever that the national government does so.
In the lead-up to the 2017
review of national climate policies the Minister urgently needs to set
in train a comprehensive investigation into how the electricity system
can deliver on security, affordability and net zero emissions before
2050.
The COAG communique notes that work on the integration of energy and
climate policy will now also include consideration of the impacts of
state and territory emission reduction policies.
This is inadequate
In considering the impact of climate and clean energy developments on
the electricity system, we need to think beyond the current 2030
emissions target to deliver a well-managed transition to zero emission
electricity.
The objectives of the Paris Agreement are to limit global temperature
rise to below 1.5-2C by reducing emissions to net zero or below.
Starting in 2018, the Agreement's framework requires countries to
progressively strengthen their targets every five years.
So the current
2030 target of 28% is the absolute least that the sector could expect.
Prudent policy-making needs to take into account the net zero objective
and the best pathway towards it.
The number of uncertainties about future energy is multiplying. But
policy uncertainty is well within governments' power to resolve.
Australia has committed internationally through the Paris Agreement to
consider a long-term emissions goal through the 2017 climate policy
review.
This is an opportunity to provide businesses who are making 30
year investment decisions with clear signals on future policy direction.
One other certainty is that Australia's highest-carbon generators, our
ageing coal burning power stations, will need to exit over the next
15-20 years if we are to deliver on our commitments.
As we saw in South
Australia, disorderly, unplanned closures can have bad consequences for
the local community, energy users, and the stability of the market as a
whole.
An orderly transition, whereby 1-2 GW of coal capacity is
withdrawn every year, with enough foresight and predictability for the
right replacement energy services to be delivered at the right time and
in the right place, is the best prospect for achieving our climate goals
and a well-managed transformation of our power supply.
We urge the national government to set up a truly comprehensive and
strategic review of the electricity system to work through these issues
and integrate this with the 2017 review.
Stephen Miles says targets harder to reach as Climate Council, WWF and Wilderness Society predict ‘panic clearing’
The Climate Council, WWF and the Wilderness Society are expecting a new
surge in clearing after the defeat of the Palaszczuk government’s bill
that attempted to restore controls on deforestation.
Photograph: Auscape/UIG via Getty Images
Australia’s prospects of meeting its climate change targets have suffered a crucial blow with the failure of land-clearing reforms in Queensland, the state’s environment minister and conservationists say.
A renewed surge in clearing is expected after Thursday’s defeat of the Palaszczuk government bill
that attempted to restore controls on deforestation. The defeat has
also dashed hopes of tackling the nation’s fastest-rising source of
carbon pollution.
However, Josh Frydenberg, the federal environment minister, insisted
Australia was “on track to meet and beat” the first hurdle of its Paris
climate pact commitments, a 5% cut in emissions by 2020.
Frydenberg’s optimism contrasts with a study released in February
showing emissions from clearing in Queensland, after the former Newman
government axed controls in 2013, had already wiped gains made under the
federal government’s emissions reductions fund.
The Climate Council, WWF and the Wilderness Society all predict
further bouts of “panic clearing” by graziers before the Palaszczuk
government’s bid to pass controls in its next term if re-elected.
And a growing rate of remnant vegetation clearing is expected to
drive a rise in carbon emissions, they say, further eroding progress
towards targets pledged by the federal government in Paris last
December.
The legislative defeat has also set the Palaszczuk government on a
renewed course of lobbying Unesco not to revisit its decision to keep
the Great Barrier Reef on its world heritage list, which was made in part because of assurances that runoff from clearing would be curtailed.
The ERF – the centrepiece of the federal government’s bid to cut
emissions by 5% by 2020 and by 26-28% by 2030 – has invested mostly in
buying back clearing permits from farmers.
Previous clearing laws in Queensland were instrumental to the former Howard government meeting carbon cut targets under the Kyoto protocol.
But
their axing has led to a doubling in clearing rates to almost 300,000
hectares a year, suggesting the creation of 108m tonnes of carbon over
the last three years, including 35.8m tonnes in 2014-15.
The ERF to date has allocated $1.7b to purchase 143m tonnes of
carbon, 98m tonnes of which relates to “vegetation projects” – mostly
buybacks of clearing permits from landholders.
Steven Miles, the Queensland environment minister, said unabated
clearing in the state made national climate change targets “that much
harder” with deeper cuts required in other sectors.
“Given it more than wipes out the ERF, it leaves the commonwealth
without a tool to achieve their targets,” he told Guardian Australia.
“If you assume that billions of dollars of ERF money just get wiped
out from land clearing, how are you achieving the cuts that they need
and they’ve committed to across the economy?
“When you’re clearing at this rate, you’re behind the eight ball when
you start doing the economic transition [to a low-carbon economy].
Drone footage shows significant land clearing in Queensland
“It’s running in the wrong direction. When your last resort for
emissions that you can’t minimise is to offset them primarily by
planting trees, they cut against each other, don’t they?”
However, Frydenberg said the ERF was “working effectively to achieve low-cost abatement”.
“Australia remains on track to meet and beat its 2020 emissions
reduction target,” he said. “The latest estimate by the Department of
Environment shows we are on track to exceed the target by 78m tonnes.”
Lyndon Schneiders, the national director of the Wilderness
Society, said emissions from clearing in Queensland would now worsen and
further eclipse ERF gains.
“I just think every bulldozer in Queensland will be out knocking down
bush at accelerated rates because that’s what happens,” he said. “The
only thing that’s keeping that 5% target [by 2020] even in the show has
been that the economy’s tanked.
“The only place where emissions have been going through the roof is around land clearing.
“I’m sure the national government does not want to just throw $2b
down the toilet in buying back emissions but they seem to be almost
powerless to do anything about what’s happening at the state level.”
Martin Taylor, a scientist for WWF, said there had already been
“massive amounts of panic clearing” in the lead up to the state
government’s ill-fated push for controls.
Tayor said WWF researchers using satellite data had identified “two
huge episodes” of 5,000 hectares and almost 7,000 hectares of remnant
forest in central Queensland cleared since the last state land and tree
cover survey.
“They’re running bulldozers through, tearing down everything except
leaving a few sticks behind and calling it ‘thinning’,” Taylor said.
“We’re discovering now that that is the main way that the Newman
government axed the ban on broadscale clearing.”
This was separate to high-value agriculture permits issued by the
former LNP government, some of which have since been frozen by the
commonwealth for assessment under the Environmental Protection and
Biodiversity Conservation Act.
Commonwealth intervention under those laws has been applauded as a
hopeful sign by conservation groups but criticised by Queensland
Coalition senators such as Ian MacDonald.
Miles
said the commonwealth intervention could help arrest the rate of some
inappropriate large-scale clearing. But their scope for cracking down
was limited to piecemeal individual cases under the EPBC laws and did
not relate to their implications for emissions.
“Short of them legislating their own tree-clearing laws, like federal
Labor said they’re going to do if elected, it really comes down to
Queensland,” Miles said.
Comment was sought from Frydenberg’s office.
The Climate Council’s chief executive, Tim Flannery, said the failure
of land-clearing legislation to pass in Queensland was “going to have a
big impact” on Australia’s efforts to meet its Paris targets.
“We may yet see a spike in land clearing following this,” Flannery
said. “Whenever farmers feel something is going to change in the future,
they clear like crazy before what they see as the axe falling.
“It’s such a pity because Queensland is just such a biodiverse place
and the sort of stuff that’s being cleared, often these bottle tree
scrubs and dry rainforest communities, are particularly significant.”
Flannery separately called for the federal government to “hammer down
on the use of fossil fuels” and stop using “biological carbon”
emissions as a “smokescreen for a lack of performance” in cutting
transport and energy sector emissions.
The tree-clearing study by environmental services company CO2
Australia also suggested the federal government’s bid to meet climate
change targets could be undermined by its under-recording of emissions
from clearing.
A federal government report last December projected that emissions
from land clearing would rise 24% from 2013 levels, from an average 37m
tonnes to an average 46m tonnes a year up to 2020 and 44m tonnes a year
between 2020 and 2030.
But Queensland government data also released last year suggested a
rate that would take national land clearings emissions to 55m tonnes a
year between 2020 and 2030.
Clearing would then emit an extra 118m tonnes of carbon next decade, a
blowout of more than 10% on reductions pledged by the commonwealth in
Paris.
Humans have changed the Earth to such an extent that some scientists say we have entered a new geological epoch?
Human activity might have pushed us into the Athropocene epoch [EPA]
There is growing evidence that human activity has changed the Earth’s
system to such an extent that we are now in a new geological age.
This is according to members of the Anthropocene Working Group who
will present their findings to the 35th International Geological
Congress, which kicks off on August 27 in Cape Town, South Africa.
If they announce that a new geological era, or epoch, has begun, this
would pave the way for a formal declaration that could happen in just
two years.
This would be a major announcement, highlighting the dramatic changes that humans have caused to the Earth.
It would confirm that the changes caused by humans are as big as
those that occurred at the end of the last Ice Age nearly 12,000 years
ago.
In fact, the rate of change of gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere are even greater.
Climate change: Fact or fiction?
Our new geological epoch would be called the Anthropocene, a word which comes from anthropo for 'man', and cene for 'new'.
It would bring an end to the Holocene, which began at the end of the last Ice Age.
'Welcome to the Anthropocene'
A number of recent studies argue that we are already in the Anthropocene, but the definition is fairly drastic.
Earth scientists define the Anthropocene as “the very recent rupture
in Earth’s history arising from the impact of human activity on the
Earth system as a whole”.
In order to officially mark the beginning of a new epoch, changes
must be apparent in the atmosphere, the water cycle, in plants and
animals, and in rocks.
Thanks to the dramatic increase of carbon dioxide and methane in the
atmosphere, reaching some of the aforementioned criteria will be easy.
Global temperatures have increased by an average of one Celsius in a little over a century.
Glaciers have melted, the temperature of the oceans has risen and their acidity has altered.
A number of animal and plant species have become extinct, and corals have suffered a number of devastating bleaching events.
Plastic rubbish, widely used nitrogen fertilisers and smoke from the
burning of fossil fuels will remain visible within the Earth's rock
formations for millions of years.
The idea that we are now living in the Anthropocene has been gaining
ground in recent years, and soon we will discover if geologists agree
that the new epoch has truly begun.
The start of a new geological age, however, is not a time to
celebrate. As Clive Hamilton, professor of public ethics at Charles
Sturt University in Canberra, Australia, told Nature magazine:
“Some scientists even write: 'Welcome to the Anthropocene'. At first I
thought they were being ironic, but now I see they are not. And that’s
scary. The idea of the Anthropocene is not welcoming. It should frighten
us. And scientists should present it as such.”
