If Trump Quits, California Could Apply To Join UN Climate Talks

Climate Home - Ed King

Head of state senate says legal brains are exploring ways in which golden state could be represented if Trump pulls nation from Paris Agreement

(Pic: Kai Lehmann/Flickr - https://www.flickr.com/photos/kailehmann/28558087315/)

If  Donald Trump pulls the US out of the UN climate process in early 2017, the world’s sixth largest economy could try and fill the sizeable hole it leaves.
Asked by Climate Home on Thursday if the golden state could replace the United States, California senate leader Kevin De Leon said it was an “option that I want to keep open”.
Legal experts at Harvard and Yale were already researching if a sub-national body could join the UN climate talks he said, but added this would be a “political decision”.
“We will continue to be active in the international movement to address climate change,” said De Leon, who branded Trump’s threat to the UN process as a “jobs killer”.
“To the extent the UN wants to coordinate with work we are doing we are more than willing to take part in these discussions,” he added.
Traditionally only states have been members of the UN climate body, although there are exceptions to the rule such as the EU and the Holy See.
A spokesperson for the UN climate body appeared to nix California’s chances, telling Climate Home that “only national governments” could join.
But the UN convention on climate change appears to allow for some flexibility: “Any body or agency, whether national or international, governmental or non-governmental, which is qualified in matters covered by the Convention, and which has informed the secretariat of its wish to be represented at a session of the Conference of the Parties as an observer, may be so admitted unless at least one third of the Parties present object.”
Still, Jake Schmidt, head of international climate policy the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a leading US NGO, said Governor Jerry Brown’s administration “should definitely consider it”.
“I’m sure there are creative ways to continue US engagement since the American pubic is clear it wants climate action,” he added.
The West Coast state is the country’s second largest emitter after Texas, and has long led on pushing tough climate targets.
Last year lawmakers voted for 40% greenhouse gas cuts below 1990 levels by 2030, and are also supporting a raft of vehicle emission standards tougher than the rest of the US.
In the past week the Californian delegation met with ministers from China, Germany, Canada and Mexico said Ken Alex, head of the state’s planning and research department.
“There is exceptional interest around the world to see California, Vermont and Washington [state] to continue their efforts,” he said, referring to the three states that sent representatives to Marrakech.
According to California environment head Matt Rodriguez around 10-12 US states representing 30% of the country’s economy are set to actively oppose Trump’s plans to quash climate laws.
These include Washington state, New York state, Oregon, New England and Vermont, while a total of 36 states have already developed climate plans and renewable energy targets.
“There has been a economic transition in the US that is not changing,” he said. “Even Texas – it has the most renewables in the country – but they are not talking about it as climate change.”
“This is great time to be involved in state and regional action… we now need to be a voice of consistency,” said Deborah Markowitz, head of natural resources in Vermont.

US Secretary of State John Kerry

John Kerry made his valedictory speech to the UN climate process in his role as US secretary of state on Wednesday, telling delegates that despite Trump’s threat, support at state and city level for climate action was significant.
“It isn’t a partisan issue for mayors from New Orleans to Miami, who are already working hard to manage sunny-day floods and stronger storm surges caused by climate change,” he said.
“It isn’t partisan for liberal and conservative business leaders alike who are investing unprecedented amounts of money into renewables, voluntarily committing to reduce their own emissions, and even holding their supply chains accountable to their overall carbon footprint.”

Links

• California rewards energy users with ‘climate credits’
• California targets 40% emissions cut in boost to US climate ambition
• Schwarzenegger: California will lead US climate action
• Uncertainty on Trump climate stance overshadows UN talks 

On Climate Change Policy, Neither Time Nor Trump Are On Turnbull's Side

The Guardian - Lenore Taylor

Australia cannot hail the Paris accord as a turning point and simultaneously rejoice in a great long-term economic future for coal

A Climate Analytics report has found that developed countries will have to stop burning coal for electricity by 2030. Photograph: Dave Hunt/AAP

When Malcolm Turnbull was dumped by the Liberal party in 2009 because he refused to renounce support for emissions trading, the man now about to assume responsibility for implementing Donald Trump’s evisceration of US climate change policy was elated.
Myron Ebell, a veteran warrior against action on global warming, wrote on his “competitive enterprise institute” blog that “toppling Turnbull was a necessary step” in defeating Australia’s cap and trade scheme. And he understood exactly who deserved credit.
“A number of Liberal members have risked their careers to stop cap-and-trade, including Cory Bernardi and Nick Minchin as well as Tony Abbott. They should all be honored for their courageous stand,” Ebell enthused.
Trump, who has claimed the “concept” of global warming was concocted by the Chinese to hurt American manufacturing, has vowed to withdraw from the Paris climate change treaty, abolish the Environment Protection Authority’s climate policy role, scrap Barack Obama’s centrepiece Clean Power Plan and dismantle any curbs on fossil fuel developments.
Trump’s transition to government website says: “We will streamline the permitting process for all energy projects, including the billions of dollars in projects held up by President Obama, and rescind the job-destroying executive actions under his Administration. We will end the war on coal, and rescind the coal mining lease moratorium ... and conduct a top-down review of all anti-coal regulations issued by the Obama Administration.”
Ebell, whose organisation has had financial links to the coal industry, is widely reported to be in charge of that transition at the EPA.

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Little wonder that his “honored” friends in Australia are elated.
Abbott declared Trump’s election would “put climate change into a better perspective” and diminish the “moral panic” about global warming. Presumably the better perspective is one where we don’t do very much about it, and the “morality” not worth panicking about is the idea that we should not leave our children a world experiencing dangerous and irreversible change.
And since the Liberal party dumped Turnbull the first time, some new conservatives have arrived who would also probably earn Ebell’s praise.
One of them is the man Turnbull has now appointed as resources minister, the Liberal National party senator Matt Canavan.
From the moment he took up the portfolio, Canavan has talked up the “uncertainties” of climate science.
And soon after Trump’s election, Canavan was hailing it as a budgetary boon for Australia, in part because coal mining would be able to continue unconstrained.
“Donald Trump is good for fossil fuels, good for steel and good for Australia,” he told the Australian.“President-elect Trump was very clear in his support for the coal mining sector, whereas President Obama had taken steps to restrict expansion of the coal industry,’’ he said.
“The newly elected president has said he’ll rescind those regulations and that’s having an effect on world markets.”
But at exactly the same time, Turnbull was announcing that Australia would go ahead and ratify the Paris agreement, despite some of his own backbenchers declaring that Trump’s victory had rendered the deal “cactus”.
The Paris pact, Turnbull declared, was “a watershed and a turning point”.
Problem is, it’s only a turning point and a watershed if nations do what they promised – that is, constrain global warming to “well below 2C”, which requires them not only to meet the greenhouse emissions reductions already pledged but also to increase them over time to actually meet that aim.
And that requires the phasing out, over time, of coal.
The latest world energy outlook from the conservative International Energy Agency shows that under the scenario necessary to meet the existing Paris targets (still not enough to limit warming to 2C), fossil fuels decline from 67% of the energy mix to 24%, and 16% of that 24% is carbon capture and storage, the viability of which remains uncertain.
A Climate Analytics report has found that developed countries will have to stop burning coal for electricity by 2030, China by 2040 and the rest of the world by mid-century in order to meet commitments made in Paris.
To underline the obvious, we really cannot simultaneously hail the Paris agreement as a turning point and rejoice in a glorious long-term economic future for the coal industry. Except that is exactly what the Turnbull government is doing.
There are many difficult choices facing Australia as a Trump administration upends the existing world order.
And the Turnbull government was already stretching credulity with its insistence that it could meet the Paris targets, despite the emissions reduction fund probably running out of money next year and its suggestion that a looming policy review won’t impose any new requirements on industry.
But, as in so many other ways, the ascent of Trump is polarising things, forcing a choice between the agenda of Ebell and Abbott, and the ever more urgent efforts to do something about global warming. We cannot keep pretending.
Back when Ebell celebrated his ousting, we knew where Turnbull stood. He wouldn’t lead a party that wasn’t as committed to action on global warming as he was. Now he does, but those who overthrew him believe that despite his return to the leadership, they have him tamed. Time is running out for him to prove otherwise. And Trump’s radical reverse gear on climate makes it even harder for his government to continue its obfuscation.

Links

• Australia being 'left behind' by global momentum on climate change
• Trump administration could roll back US environmental protection, critics fear
• Once the storm settles, the real picture emerges of government's energy goals
• Letter signed by 154 Australian experts demands climate policy match the science
• Climate change: John Hewson accuses Coalition of 'national disgrace'
• In regional Australia, messages about fairness can't drown out the three-word slogans
• Saving Great Barrier Reef from climate change should be central election issue, says Tim Flannery
• Shorten: Coalition rightwingers forcing Australians to 'pledge loyalty' to coal
• Malcolm Turnbull's rhetorical dance around coal reveals extent of his constraint
• Prominent Australians ask world leaders to consider ban on new coalmines

IEA Says Australia’s Coal Plans Don’t Match Climate Realities

Renew Economy - Giles Parkinson

The International Energy Agency has again questioned Australia’s commitment to extract thermal coal from huge new reserves in Queensland, saying the economics of these remote projects are “increasingly questionable”.
In its latest World Energy Outlook, the conservative Paris-based organisation says it is clear that thermal coal demand in China peaked three years ago and is declining, and the fate of new Australian thermal coal provinces are increasingly dependent on what happens in India.
Under the IEA’s central policy scenario, which assumes that the world does nothing more to address climate change, coal demand in India is expected to rise.
But if the Paris climate change agreement to keep average global warming below 2°C is met, then the IEA says India’s power system mix will change rapidly: Solar will become the biggest single source of electricity by 2035, and the share of unabated coal-fired generation will shrink from more than 75 per cent now to just 7 per cent.

This graph above illustrates the difference in effort between the IEA’s central policy scenario (upon which the Australian government appears to rely) and the 450 Scenario that Australia and the rest of the world have signed up to as part of the Paris accord.
It is not the first time that the IEA has questioned the economics of the vast coal projects in the Galilee and Surat Basins.
Back in 2013, the IEA said low coal prices raised concerns about the economic feasibility of projects in the Galilee Basin and said “coal in its current form is simply unsustainable.”
Now, little more than a week after the Paris agreement came into force, the IEA’s analysis suggests that the only hope for Australia’s coal mines is if the world ignores that global pact.
But even then it has caveats. Coal imports, it notes, are politically unpopular in India and policy-makers – such as the country’s energy minister – have repeatedly stated their intention to reduce or eliminate coal imports.
And coal is now creating huge pollution issues in Indian cities, just as it did in China, which has now cut back significantly on coal use and all but halted imports.
“A scenario in which India successfully and persistently reduces its imports cannot be discarded,” the IEA says, even of its central “new policies” scenario, where no further action on climate change is taken beyond the pledges already made.
“In light of the declining import trend in China, the need to tap new deposits in Australia’s Surat and the remote Galilee Basins becomes increasingly tied to the trajectory foreseen for coal imports in India,” the IEA notes.
“A tapering of India’s imports would make the economics of remote projects that require infrastructure development increasingly questionable.”
In its 450 scenario, where the world does take action to limit warming to 2°C, the use of thermal coal in India power stations is dramatically reduced – falling to 10 per cent of total generation from its current levels of 75 per cent.
By 2040, renewable energy accounts for 57 per cent of total generation (solar 15 per cent, wind 15 per cent), despite the fact that overall demand will have tripled as the economy grows and all houses are connected to the grid.
Gas makes up most of the remainder. Around 130GW of fossil fuel capacity – almost entirely coal-fired generators – is retired by 2040.
Interestingly, because of the falling cost of solar, daytime prices will be below $30/kWh – far below current prices for coal power. Around one-third of the solar is located on rooftops.
Such a scenario, of course, is at complete odds with the Australian government outlook.
Its future energy plans are based on the Energy White Paper prepared by the Abbott government, under the auspices of former energy minister Ian Macfarlane, who now heads the mining lobby in Queensland. Despite supposedly framing an energy plan out to 2040 and beyond, it took no account of climate change.
Indeed, at the current climate conference in Marrakech, and barely one week after Australia ratified the treaty, energy minister Josh Frydenberg was lobbying US energy minister Ernest Moniz about the actions of big US donors to environmental groups in Australia fighting the Galilee projects.
The Coalition government – and the Queensland Labor government for that matter – argues that environmental groups are the biggest threat to the coal projects, and is introducing a series of laws in an attempt to combat their influence, including rules about their funding and spending, and curbs on their ability to take legal action.

But as the IEA report illustrates, the biggest threat to the project economics are the realities of the global coal trade, and the need to combat climate change, and for India to maintain clean air in its cities.

“The lesson here for governments and investors is simple – that those who exit fossil fuels and embrace solar and wind will reap financial rewards and avoid major stranded-asset risks,” says Tim Buckley, senior energy analyst with IEEFA.

“This will remain so regardless of recent political upheaval in the US.

“In the unlikely event that short-term tailwinds for the US coal sector continue and a slowdown sets in on renewable energy deployment as a result of the new presidential administration, the IEA analysis shows that emerging economies are now well placed to assume global low-carbon technology leadership.”

The IEA view on coal is not the only embarrassment to the Turnbull government. As we reported on Wednesday, the IEA made a mockery of Australia’s scare campaign against renewable energy, saying it was likely that renewables would account for nearly 60 per cent of total electricity generation around the world by 2040.

The Turnbull government has argued that policies aiming for 50 per cent renewable energy by 2050 are “reckless” and unattainable. But the IEA trajectory shows that is exactly where a solar and wind-rich country like Australia will need to be.

If the world is to reach its ambition of capping global warming by 1.5°C, then the transition will need to be even quicker and all “unabated” fossil fuel generation will need to be retired by 2040.

Australia this week was ranked among the worst performing countries on climate change policies by at least two different independent analyses.

Links

• IEA casts doubt over future of Queensland mega coal mines
• IEA makes mockery of Turnbull’s renewable energy scare campaign
• Australia named and shamed for “unambitious, uninspired” climate policies
• IEA says Australia’s coal plans don’t match climate realities
• Marrakech COP22: IEA issues a Paris reality check
• ABC still linking renewable energy to South Australia blackout
• China tells Trump – no climate conspiracy here