12/12/2017

Qld Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk Seeks To Veto Adani Loan

The Australian - 

Adani protesters may have just got what their hearts desired. Picture: AAP
Re-elected Queensland Labor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has written to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to veto a federal loan to the Adani coal project in Queensland’s Galilee Basin.
In one of her first acts after she was officially sworn in this morning, Ms Palaszczuk has followed through on the shock announcement she made during the election campaign to block a loan from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility to the Indian conglomerate to build a common-user rail line in the basin.
“My government provides formal notification for the Commonwealth that financial assistance should not be provided to Adani for the North Galilee Basin Rail Project,” Ms Palaszczuk’s letter to Mr Turnbull reads.
“As such, the government is exercising its veto right under section 13(4) of the Investment Facility Mandate in response to the Adani loan application.”
An Adani spokesman said the company was still committed to Queensland despite the veto, and insisted the Queensland government was still supportive of its Carmichael coal mine proposal for the Galilee Basin.
“We congratulate Premier Palaszczuk on her government’s election and look forward to working closely and cooperatively with the state and federal governments and regulatory authorities as we get on with the job of making all of our projects a reality,” the spokesman said.
“Adani Australia currently employs over 800 people and has invested over $3.3 billion in Queensland, which is one of the biggest investments by an Indian company in Australia.
“We would not be investing our time, money and energy in this manner if our projects were not viable and if we were not serious about delivering our projects which will ultimately generate more than 10,000 direct & indirect jobs across all of our projects.
“The projects are viewed in a positive light by the Queensland Government and considered as critical infrastructure investments. The projects continue to retain the support of the Queensland Government.
“Adani Australia will now fully consider and adjust to the constraints the veto of NAIF funding brings. Adani Australia is 100 per cent committed to Queensland, we have a strong regional Queensland presence. This will not change.
In response to Ms Palaszczuk’s letter to Mr Turnbull, Northern Australia Minister Matt Canavan said the Queensland government had “chosen to stand in the way of North Queensland jobs as its first official act”.
“It was the Palaszczuk Government that first asked last year that the NAIF consider a loan to the Adani Galilee rail project in a letter from the now-sidelined former Treasurer Curtis Pitt,” Senator Canavan said.
“But what the Queensland Premier has failed to say today is whether she intends to block all investment in the Galilee Basin.
“The people of regional Queensland deserve to know which jobs will be next on Labor’s hit list.
“I hope the Adani project proceeds because there are 800 people whose current jobs depend on it, and thousands of future jobs hang in the balance. If Adani does proceed it will be in spite of Queensland Labor not because of it.”
Under the constitution, the federal government funding must be facilitated by the state government to the private company.
Ms Palaszczuk said newly appointed Treasurer Jackie Trad, the state’s Deputy Premier, would write to federal Northern Australia Minister Matt Canavan to provide the same advice.
Earlier today, Senator Canavan wrote to Ms Palaszczuk about the Adani veto.
“I note an investment decision has not yet been made on Adani’s NGBR proposal but is unlikely to progress any further in the NAIF’s assessment given your announced position (during the campaign),” Senator Canavan said.
“This project is crucial to opening up the Galilee Basin and would mean economic growth, and jobs for many Queenslanders. I would appreciate if you could confirm by written notice that your government will veto the provision of the NAIF finance to this important project. Further, I would appreciate your urgent advice on whether your government intends to veto any investment proposals to the NAIF that seek to service the Galilee Basin, or more broadly in Queensland.”
During the campaign, the Integrity Commissioner wrote to Ms Palaszczuk and said she should not make any decisions about any NAIF applications, because of a conflict of interest created by Ms Palaszczuk’s partner working on Adani’s NAIF application.
However, she flouted this advice and said she would veto the loan. Ms Palaszczuk has not said what she would do for other NAIF projects, such as Aurizon’s application to build a rail line in the Galilee Basin.

Links
at No comments:

'Bastard Child': Review Of Controversial Emissions Fund Finds 'Significant Risk'

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Some of the carbon offsets operating under a controversial $2.5 billion fund set up by the Abbott-Turnbull government are at "significant risk" from bushfires, according to a review by the Climate Change Authority.
The audit of the Emissions Reduction Fund, released by the authority on Monday, released by the authority on Monday, found that evidence of systemic problems had yet to emerge, but that there were questions over whether some of the carbon stored under the scheme would have been stored anyway.


World carbon emissions on the rise
A new report has shown world carbon emissions set to reach a record high this year, with a 2 percent rise according to scientists.

The report noted the fund had so far paid out $2.23 billion for 189 million tonnes of emissions reductions, or about $11.80 per tonne. Some 26 million tonnes had already been delivered.
"Overall, this review has found that the ERF is generally performing well," the report said. "It has successfully incentivised new domestic abatement at low cost that will help contribute to Australia meeting its international target commitments."
However, critics such as Clive Hamilton – an academic at Charles Sturt University who resigned from the authority's board in February –dismissed the review as giving "a veneer of legitimacy to a discredited scheme".
"The federal government has stopped talking about the ERF," he said. "It's like bastard child whose existence no one wants to acknowledge."
Tim Baxter, a researcher at Melbourne University's Australian-German Climate and Energy College, described the report as "a light touch" that failed to address the many systemic problems with the fund.
"Pretty much in every methodology you look at there's some fundamental accountability issue," Mr Baxter said. "This is almost big enough that 30, 40, 50 per cent of the abatement you're claiming under this methodology doesn't exist."
Australia's emissions problems aren't going away. Photo: AAP
The report's release comes ahead of a review of the government's overall climate policies is scheduled to be released before the end of the year.
Josh Frydenberg, Minister for the Environment and Energy, welcomed the report's view that the ERF was "performing well".
Bushfires pose a threat to the carbon sequestered under the $2.2 billion spent so far under the Emissions Reduction Fund. Photo: Craig Abraham
"The government will carefully consider the review's recommendations and table its response in due course," he said.

Forest issues
Among the issues the report did highlight was the fact 139 million tonnes of the abatement paid for was in vegetation and soil, and at "significant risk" of reversal.
"[T]he Authority recommends that scheme participants submit plans to the Clean Energy Regulator (CER) outlining how they will maintain carbon in their projects and deal with the risk of fire," it said.
Of the vegetation projects, 75 per cent were located in the Cobar Peneplain and Mulga Lands of south-west Queensland and western NSW.
The current buffer of 5 per cent "may need to be reviewed to take into account increasing risk of natural disturbances, particularly if sequestration projects are geographically concentrated", it said, adding any changes should not affect existing projects to avoid creating investment uncertainty.
Mr Baxter also questioned the discounting by only 25 per cent projects that were earmarked to run for 25 years compared with those meant to store carbon for a century.
The discount rate seemed more to do government borrowing costs rather than natural processes.
"A 25-year permanence period is very, very different - and a lot more than a 20-25 per cent difference - to a 100-year permanence period in terms of emissions," Mr Baxter said.
"The odds of a government stepping in and purchasing that future abatement…if one project fails through from fire or drought …seem pretty slim."

Landfill issues
Similarly, he queried the report's findings that landfill projects had met the "additionality" conditions even when ample evidence existed –such as reported by Fairfax Media – that many such ventures would have happened without the ERF.
Almost all landfill operators had joined the bidding for funds even though they got money from the Renewable Energy Target, didn't have to comply with the newness requirement, and "a decent percentage are required by law in their home state" to deal with emissions, Mr Baxter said.
"You've got things like that which are really, really problematic," he said.
Another issue raised in the report was the market concentration. Just two firms – GreenCollar and Corporate Carbon – control 55 per cent of the abatement supplied by Carbon Service Providers.
The authority did not recommended any specific steps to address the domination of a few companies.
It did, however, call for the government to seek to amend the Carbon Credits Act 2011 so that agents be required to pass a fit and proper test to address concerns such as those raised by the National Farmers' Federation about CSPs "behaving unscrupulously".
By international standards, the ERF was "reasonably good" and had problems that could be fixed if governments were serious, Mr Baxter said.
"There are loopholes there you can drive a truck through but they can be closed over time," he said.

Political view
Adam Bandt, the Greens climate change spokesman, though, said the previous Labor/Greens program had resulted in "real emissions cuts with polluters paying the public $24 a tonne".
"Under the Liberals, pollution is rising and taxpayers are paying $12 per tonne for forest schemes that might go up in smoke," Mr Bandt said. "Real climate policy shouldn't be reversible.
"We can plant all the trees in the world but until we cut pollution from coal and petrol, we won't stop climate change and the bushfires it will bring," he said.

Links
at No comments:

Defence Warns Of Climate Change Peril For Food, Energy And Peace

The Australian - 

The Defence ­Department has laid out what it sees as the national security consequences of human-induced ­climate change.
Man-made climate change could increase competition for food, resources and arable land, placing a greater burden on our defence forces who must respond to an ­increased risk of conflict.
In an official submission to a Senate inquiry, the Defence ­Department has laid out what it sees as the national security consequences of human-induced ­climate change, warning that dealing with the fallout from ­global warming could increase the burden on Australia’s military.
It paints an uncertain, yet bleak, picture: climate change intensifying natural disasters and the mass movement of people across the region. It features as a kind of wildcard that could tax the capabilities of soldiers and imperil Australia’s energy markets, upon which defence relies heavily.
Defence describes human-­induced climate change as a “threat multiplier’’ which will intersect with existing problems of population density, poor governance, poverty and ethnic rivalry for food, water and resources. It will also increase the frequency, and intensify the effects, of natural disasters, potentially obliging ­Defence to devote more of its resources to disaster relief among Australia’s neighbours.
“Many of the states in Australia’s region face some or all of these challenges, in addition to being vulnerable to climate change impacts such as temperature and sea level rise,’’ Defence says. “Unmitigated, climate change could exacerbate the potential for conflict and the consequence of any climate change-related threats could lead to an increase in the demand for a wide spectrum of Defence response.’’
It is “too early” to say precisely what resource pressures will be placed on Australia, but it warns “the current most likely forecast climate changes may require higher levels of commitment that may create concurrency pressure for Defence from as early as the middle of the next decade, or earlier if climate change related impacts on security threats accelerate”.
“Although the full range of impacts are not yet able to be determined, there is potential for climate change to exacerbate existing threats and future governments may increase demands on the ADF to impose new commitments. These impacts could include an ­increase in illegal, unreported, or unregulated fishing or irregular maritime arrivals to Australia.”
Citing conflicts in Syria and Africa, Defence argues climate change could exacerbate ethnic or other social grievances in Australia’s region, fostering terrorism or cross-border conflict.
“Climate change may also contribute to greater irregular migration pressure in vulnerable counties to Australia’s north, potentially becoming a substantial security threat for Australia.”
Defence says climate change “will exacerbate storms of increasing severity that will continue to impact national electricity infrastructure”.
“A more secure power system will be resilient to the integration of new technologies and resistant to the threat of natural disasters and cyber security attacks.”
It says the transition from fossil fuels to renewables is likely to ­“redefine national energy supply chains’’ and warns reliable energy generation is essential for the ­military.
“As an end user of energy ­sources Defence must ensure that it retains undisrupted access to ­appropriate sources of energy.”
It argues its training facilities could become less usable “due to work health and safety factors such as extreme heat” and notes that rising sea levels could make some defence facilities more expensive to maintain or “unviable to operate’’.

Links
at No comments: