20/02/2017

Turnbull Resorts To Poppycock On Renewables At Big Mining's Bidding

Independent Australia - 

John Ward investigates the misleading campaign against renewable energy by coal and oil interests using the Turnbull Government as the attacking force.
Turnbull of Abbott and climate change back in December 2009. (Image via @smh)
ARE YOU confused by the issues of alternative energy and climate change?
This is why.
The president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim MD PhD recently stated that it was crazy that governments were still driving the use of coal, oil and gas by providing subsidies.
Said the president:
“We need to get rid of fossil fuel subsidies now.”
In July 2016, Nicholas Stern estimated that tackling climate change would require investment of 2% of world GDP each year. The IMF indicates that if governments stopped world fossil subsidies of $5.6 trillions per year, it would benefit world GDP a year by 3.8%.

 How did the fossil fuel industry react to this knowledge in 1980?
The Global Climate Science Communications Plan, written with the direct involvement of fossil fuel companies including ExxonMobil (then Exxon) and Chevron, detailed a plan for dealing with climate change that explicitly aimed to confuse and misinform the public.
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How did governments and fossil fuel industries collude?
There is collusion to bring about World Government subsidies of $5.6 trillions per annum (according to the IMF calculations), to create the illusion of low costs and reliable coal generated electricity, and to manage, resist and delay the growing threat of investment in renewable energy as competition to the dominance of the fossil fuel sector.
There certainly has been a climate hoax that continues today. It is the four decades long campaign by the world’s largest fossil fuel companies to deceive the public by distorting the realities and risks of climate change.

Why do taxpayer funds subsidise the fossil fuel industry while coal and oil giants pay virtually no tax?
Malcolm Turnbull has been subsidising the fossil fuel industry with, according to IMF estimates, $1,712 per Australian a year, or $41 billion of taxpayer funds. This includes exploration funding for Geoscience Australia, and tax deductions for mining and petroleum exploration. The IMF calculates that Australians subsidisations to the fossil fuel industry account for hidden adverse costs spread out across the states and the ATO that, ultimately, permanently come out of taxpayers’ pockets.
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Why does the CEFC cause offence to the fossil fuel industry, its institutions and its front group, the IPA?
In 2013, Tony Abbott addressed the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA).
"I want to assure you," he said, "that the coalition will repeal the carbon tax, abolish the Department of Climate Change, and abolish the Clean Energy Fund. (CEFC)".
That was his intent. However, the legislature (Parliament) twice refused to allow the executive’s bill to abolish the CEFC Act to become law.
To undermine the purpose of the Act, the executive attempted for two years to alter the CEFC investment mandate by revoking a provision of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation Act 2012. The fact is any change to the CEFC Act 2012 must be to the original Act. Altering the CEFC Act to achieve the executive’s purpose can only be done by going back to the Senate.

What is the CEFC?
The CEFC was set up by the Gillard Government in 2012.
It mobilises capital investment to facilitate increased flows of finance into the clean energy sector in renewable energy, low-emission technology and energy efficiency in Australia.
The corporation operates like a traditional financer, working with co-financers and project proponents to seek ways to secure financing solutions for the clean energy sector.
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Was the aim to change the law or maximise confusion and demoralise the alternative energy participants?
Coalition ministers have schemed with coal and oil corporations to support coal generation of electricity, and attacked alternative energy by removing all possible funds from the CEFC.
Treasurer Hockey created a disruption so great that the alternative energy industry collapsed by 88%, mirroring a similar executive incursion into the car manufacturing sector. Prime Minister Turnbull caused similar disruption during the 2016 election campaign by pledging a total amount of $6.5 billion, left in the CEFC account to other non-climate change related LNP causes.
As the PM reallocates funds, he is disrupting and ignoring the directly expressed objectives of the Act — that the CEFC invest to increase the flow of finance into the clean energy sector.
Also ignored were the CEFC’s constitutional functions relating to external affairs powers (section 51(xxix) of the Constitution) — that is, giving effect to Australia’s obligations under the United Nations Climate Change Convention, by investing in the development of renewable energy and low-emission technologies that could reasonably be expected to control, reduce or prevent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases.
Recently, the cabinet created a third investment directive to modify the intent of the CEFC Act and, in so doing, has exceeded its authority, ignoring the need to return to the Parliament to get the required authority from the legislature. By doing so they are committing misfeasance, by benefitting the coal and oil energy sector, but causing a deficit to the alternative energy sector.
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Expressed or implied, which is it?
Ministers Hunt and Cormann have claimed that the power to issue new investment mandates is implied in section 64(1) of the Act, what they continue to ignore are the express limits placed on them by section 65. As responsible ministers, they cannot issue direction that has the purpose or that is likely to have the effect, of directly or indirectly requiring the board to, or not to, make a particular investment that is inconsistent with the CEFC Act – (including the object of the Act), which is:
'The Object of this Act is to establish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to facilitate increased flows of finance into the clean energy sector.'
When will the correct interpretation be made to sweep away this manufactured confusion?
The level of malfeasance, and misfeasance and corruption, in Federal and state governments must be addressed by courts as a matter of urgency. The High Court and Federal Courts are ultimately the only judicial bodies with the constitutional authority to address these executive levels of wrongdoing.
The fundamental rule of interpretation is that a statute is to be expounded according to the intent of the parliament that made it and that intention has to be found by an examination of the language used in the statute as a whole. It is abundantly clear that the Parliament that produced the Clean Energy Finance Corporation Act 2012 intended that the Act not be easily diverted or altered by new directives inimical to its purpose.
As former Chief Justice Murray Gleeson said in his ABC Boyer Lecture ‘The Rule of Law’:
The High Court is given jurisdiction in matters in which a writ of mandamus or prohibition or an injunction is sought against an officer of the Commonwealth. This jurisdiction cannot be altered or taken away by Parliament. It confers on the High Court the power, by making certain forms of order that historically followed judicial review of executive action, to compel officers of the Commonwealth to act according to law. The expression 'officer of the Commonwealth' includes the Prime Minister and Ministers, and all public servants. The effect of the provision is, no one is above the law. Thus government officials must exercise their powers according to law. If they do not, then, in the last resort, the High Court may order them to do so The Constitution, which is the basic law, itself declares that the government must obey the law, and gives the High Court the jurisdiction to compel such obedience.
That jurisdiction cannot be removed or modified except by constitutional amendment.
Parliament, if acting within the limits of the powers assigned to it by the Constitution, may change the law. The executive government must obey the law. That is what the rule of law means.
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Comical Coal-ition Is A Dunce On Renewable Energy

Fairfax - Crispin Hull

In the past fortnight, I've been reminded of "Comical Ali", Iraq's former information minister, Mohammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, whose broadcasts and media conferences denied the presence of US troops and tanks in Baghdad even as they could be seen behind him. The delusional in denial.
What reminded me of him, of course, were all the climate-change deniers spouting their nonsense while high-temperature records were broken and bushfires raged across the country.
Coal salesman? Mohammad Saeed al-Sahhaf ignored the tanks, just as many conservatives can't see that the climate has already changed. 
America's tanks are in Baghdad. The climate has already changed. But still they want to open new coal mines and build new coal-fired power stations.
How do you explain it? Perhaps we're looking at these people the wrong way. We assume they don't think climate change is happening, therefore it's fine to continue to mine and burn coal. But it seems to me that it's the other way around. They first want to continue to make money by mining and burning coal (or receive donations from those who do) and therefore they must deny that climate change is happening, even in the face of overwhelming evidence and appalling economic and health costs.
Renewable blame game
The Liberal Party has been accused by Labor of lying about the reason for South Australia's blackouts by blaming renewable energy, something Malcolm Turnbull rejects. Courtesy ABC News 24.

We've seen it before. People wanting to make money by selling tobacco must deny that it causes lung cancer, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
Unfortunately, therefore, it doesn't matter if – climate change aside – there are other reasons for stopping the mining and burning of coal. Those, too, will be ignored.
This is what we've seen recently. There are solid reasons, based on economics and energy technology, to stop mining and burning coal for electricity generation. But this government is ignoring the obvious.
Let's look at technology. We have an existing technology that works quite well. Let's call it coal, or taxis, or hotels, or vinyl records, or CDs or books. Then something comes along that delivers to consumers what they want more efficiently, and cheaper.
Cartoon: Alan Moir
Usually governments play a role. They have regulatory regimes, taxes and other mechanisms that usually help the status quo against the newcomer, at least for a while. But invariably the new technology wins. Horse and buggy gives way to car. CDs, tapes and vinyl give way to MP3. Coal power stations give way to solar, wind and batteries.
So it's going to happen, and these things have a history of happening very rapidly. Battery technology will become cheaper and more effective. And governments need to deal with it.
But the Coalition (let's call it the Coal-ition) has gone backwards, starting in late 2016, when it ruled out a carbon-intensity trading scheme for electricity generation, against the chief scientist's advice, just because then Coal-ition senator Cory Bernardi said it was "economic suicide". In fact, not implementing it would be economic suicide. Kowtowing to Bernardi has proven to be futile, now he has left the Coal-ition.
Compare this to the good sense put out by then environment minister Greg Hunt in 2015, when he said: "Australia has the highest rate of household solar in the world. This makes Australia an ideal place to develop storage and battery technology."
That's where we are with electricity generation in Australia: as mad and irrational as Americans with their guns.
In fact, Australia has 1.6 million Australian households with rooftop solar already installed and most of them say they intend to install battery storage. They are saying this for several reasons. Electricity is very expensive in Australia and looks like it will get more expensive. Many have a moral conviction that we should reduce carbon emissions.
Further, like all humans, they like getting something for free. Once the capital equipment is installed, the sun and wind are free. So it's galling to see the paltry amounts electricity generators pay for household-generated surplus electricity, at least outside the ACT.
How much better to store that excess and use it later, perhaps even to charge the electric car and cut fuel bills.
The market and technology are all pointing one direction, and it's not down a publicly subsidised railway line to coal mine or to a coal-fired power station.
But if you start from a position "I want coal" (or, to use a US analogy, "I want a gun"), no rational economic or health and safety argument has a chance. And that's where we are with electricity generation in Australia at present: as mad and irrational as Americans with their guns.
This government is allowing Australia to fall behind on technology and exposing us to trade sanctions if we don't meet our Paris targets.
There's a further point about the government not embracing and encouraging battery technology. People will go it alone if necessary as the financial cases for household batteries gets inevitably stronger. If that happens, the government will lose what should become a very important grid-security mechanism.
With government regulation and incentives, you can ensure that household battery systems are open to the grid, not just the excess off the roof after the batteries are fully charged, but a full-scale system of households selling some or all of the power in their batteries at times of peak demand.
In the long run, that will be a far cheaper and easier way of easing the strain on the grid than using coal.
Ultimately, real energy security can only come through renewables. Financiers and businesses realise this. This week, they joined environmentalists in crying out for sensible energy policies. Even without those policies, financiers are not going to put long-term money into a technology that will be priced out of the market.
So the question for our politicians is not, childlike, to go vermillion in the face (Barnaby Joyce) nor, stuntlike, to bring a lump of coal into the parliamentary chamber (Scott Morrison). It's to deal with the market. Coalition governments are supposed to be masters of the market. But on renewable energy they are dunces.
(A footnote: my rooftop solar system is now four years old and has generated 25,000 kilowatt hours of electricity worth about $7000. The system cost $9000. I thought it would take nine years to pay for itself, allowing for forgone interest and lower prices for power sent back to the grid. But with the rising cost of electricity, it now looks like it will be less than six years.)

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Climate Change A 'Material' Risk For The Financial System: APRA

Fairfax - 

Australia's powerful financial regulator has revealed it views climate change as a "material" risk that it will be watching much more closely in its monitoring of banks, insurers and wealth managers.
Geoff Summerhayes, an executive board member of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, on Friday made the first detailed comments from a domestic regulator on how they are responding to financial risks created by global warming.
Geoff Summerhayes says APRA will keep a close eye on climate change risks. Photo: Jessica Hromas
As global regulators also turn their sights to these risks, Mr Summerhayes signalled APRA would be looking more closely at how the financial system may be affected by a move away from carbon-intensive energy.
It also expects big companies to carefully consider these risks, and warned that company directors could be liable if they failed to do so.
Mr Summerhayes said climate change was often seen as a "future problem" or a "non-financial" one, but APRA did not view it this way.
"Some climate risks are distinctly 'financial' in nature. Many of these risks are foreseeable, material and actionable now," he said.
"Climate risks also have potential system-wide implications that APRA and other regulators here and abroad are paying much closer attention to."
Specifically, he emphasised the financial risks created by changes in laws or technology, as opposed to physical changes in the environment.

The world is moving closer to catastrophic peril, scientists say
Scientists have moved the hands of their metaphorical 'Doomsday' clock closer to midnight, warning of the increasing threats of nuclear weapons and climate change.

The transition towards less carbon-intensive forms of energy could trigger a "significant repricing of carbon-intensive resources and activities and reallocation of capital," he said.
He said APRA was "keenly aware of potential systemic implications," but it was not possible to properly understand these risks and how they could be averted, unless companies were disclosing enough information and talking about these risks.
Companies should be including climate change in their internal risk management processes, he said, highlighting that Australia was a signatory to the Paris Climate Agreement, a pledge to limit global warming to a temperature increase of no more than 2 degrees.
He also referred to a legal opinion from barrister Noel Hutley SC that found company directors could be personally liable if they fail to properly consider and disclose climate related risks they could have foreseen.
Climate risks also have potential system-wide implications that APRA and other regulators here and abroad are paying much closer attention to.
Geoff Summerhayes
It comes after a business taskforce working under the Financial Stability Board in December recommended new guidelines pushing for listed companies to disclose more information on how they were handling the risks of climate change.

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