15/12/2017

Audit Office Slams Australia’s Dud Investments In “Clean Coal”

RenewEconomy - 

Alpha Males and the Lump of Coal.
Clean coal may be a marketing term that you can still read in the Murdoch press and hear on the ABC, but the technology remains nothing more than a fantasy – and a point of distraction and a lacquered prop for the fossil fuel industry and its proponents.
The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has published a damning assessment of Australia’s carbon capture and storage program, noting that more than $450 million has been invested by the government over the past decade, and nothing achieved.
Not a single tonne of CO2 has been saved, no technology is ready for deployment, and the ANAO report slams the government for having no strategic direction, no oversight over the projects, and little accounting for the spending.
Australia’s CCS programs were launched by former prime minister Kevin Rudd in 2007 and 2009 as part of his climate package, and the vision then – despite enormous skepticism that the technology was a crock – was to have 20 plants up and running  by 2020, so Australia could “lead the world”.
The technology was championed by Labor energy minister Martin Ferguson and the Coalition’s Ian Macfarlane. Ferguson warned the “lights would go out” without it. Both Ferguson and Macfarlane now work for major fossil fuel lobby groups and are still campaigning relentlessly against renewables.
The ANAO report focuses on two of the federal government’s “clean coal” initiatives – the Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Flagships program, and the National Low Emissions Coal Initiative (NLECI).
“Key performance measures for the programs provide limited insight into the extent to which the programs are achieving the … strategic objective of accelerating the deployment of technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” ANAO notes.
Indeed, at one point, the only performance measure monitored by the department of science and industry was the number of programs, not what the programs were actually doing or, as it turns out, not doing.
The NLECI was assigned $500 million and given the task of demonstrating “clean coal” technologies, including CCS, by 2015, and making them available for commercial deployment by 2020.
It spent $233 million, but nothing happened, and it was a farce from the get-go. ANAO notes it had no program guidelines or risk management plans in place.
Three of the five initiatives didn’t happen because of technology and cost issues; there was no clear rationale in selection of replacement projects and there is no detailed assessment of what, if anything has been achieved.
The CCS Flagships program fared little better. The government originally proclaimed it would result in “at least 20 large-scale, integrated CCS demonstration projects” being launched globally by 2010, for broad deployment of CCS by 2020.
It was initially promised $2 billion, but this was gradually wound back, presumably as successive governments recognised what a complete boondoggle the technology was.
CCS Flagships ended up spending $217 million and another $42 million is committed. According to ANAO “none of the CCS Flagships projects met the original timeframe or reached the stage of deployable technology as originally envisaged in the program design.
“It is therefore unclear whether the program is capable of delivering on its strategic policy objective as the program is due to close in 2020 and all funding is currently committed.”
Nearly every paragraph of the report is a damning assessment of what is clearly government and bureaucratic incompetence.
Some examples:
  • “Program guidelines were not subsequently developed to provide advice to departmental staff on project selection, decision making processes, and applicant requirements.”
  • “Specific conflict of interest arrangements were not in place at the commencement of the program.”
  • “Despite the program being in operation since 2008, the first risk management plan for the program was not completed until the first quarter of 2011–12.”
Projects in NSW were closed early because, farcically, it turns out there were no storage options.
On the flagships, the government must have had a sense that most projects would fail, so it wanted to fund as many as possible. Some $4 billion was considered before being reduced to $2 billion.
In the end, a fraction of that was spent, there was “no over-arching strategy”, and nothing succeeded.
The projects funded, including the notorious Zerogen project, have all failed. “None of the projects have met the original timeframe of the program. Reasons for this include: technical feasibility; absence of suitable storage options; and financial feasibility,” ANAO notes.
The most extraordinary part of the report goes to the assessment of whether it was all worthwhile. Clearly not, but you wouldn’t know that from the program details.
As ANAO notes:
Currently, there is no transparent framework in place to publicly report program outcomes. The department has established one performance measure for each program, related to the number of projects supported (NLECI) and the number of companies supported (CCS Flagships). However, these measures provide limited insight into whether the program is achieving its strategic policy objectives.
Amazingly, the department is congratulated for having “exceeded” this, the one and only key performance indicators, because it supported more projects than it planned. Little matter that they were all complete duds.
“As shown in Table 4.7, for the period 2014–15 to 2015–16, the department has met, and for the CCS Flagships program in 2015–16 exceeded, the performance targets set for the program,” ANAO notes, before going on to suggest that the number of projects may not provide insight enough.
“The CCS Flagships program has not been evaluated despite over eight years of operation,” it notes.
That’s not surprising. It is probably too much to expect of the government department to admit – like many coal industry executives – that clean coal is a myth, and a waste of everyone’s time and money.
It takes the breath away.

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To Fight The Catastrophic Fires Of The Future, We Need To Look Beyond Prescribed Burning

The Conversation - James Furlaud | David Bowman

AAP Image/ Darren Pateman
California is burning – a sentence we’ve heard far too often this year. Sydney is currently on bushfire alert, as firefighters battle a fire in the Hunter Valley region and temperatures are set to top 40℃.
A cocktail of factors, from climate change to centuries of ignoring indigenous burning practises, means that catastrophic fires are likely to become more common.
One of Australia’s favourite fire prevention measures is prescribed burning – using carefully controlled fires to clear out flammable materials. We’re almost obsessed with it. Indeed, it seems the outcome of every major inquiry is that we need to do more of it.
The Royal Commission inquiry that followed Victoria’s 2009 Black Saturday fires recommended that 5% of all public land in Victoria be treated per year – a doctrine that was subsequently dropped due to impracticality.
Yet our research, published today in the International Journal of Wildland Fire, modelled thousands of fires in Tasmania and found that nearly a third of the state would have to be burned to effectively lower the risk of bushfires.
The question of how much to burn and where is a puzzle we must solve, especially given the inherent risk, issues caused by smoke smoke and shrinking weather windows for safe burning due to climate change.

Why use computer simulations?
The major problem fire science faces is gathering data. Landscape-scale experiments involving extreme fire are rare, for obvious reasons of risk and cost. When a major bushfire happens, all the resources go into putting it out and protecting people. Nobody has the time to painstakingly collect data on how fast it is moving and what it is burning. We are therefore restricted to a few limited data sources to reconstruct the behaviour and impact of fire: we can analyse the scar on the landscape after a fire, look at case studies, or run simulations of computer models.
Most research on the effectiveness of prescribed burning has been at a local scale. We need to start thinking bigger: how can we mitigate the effect of multiple large fires in a region like Tasmania or Southeastern Australia? What is the cumulative effect of different prescribed burning strategies?
A large fuel reduction burn off on Hobart’s eastern shore. Flickr/Mike Rowe, CC BY-NC
To answer these questions, we create models using mathematical equations to simulate the behaviour of fires across actual landscapes. These models include the effects of vegetation type, terrain and fuel loads, under specific weather conditions. If we simulate thousands of these fires we can get an idea of where fire risk is the highest, and how effective prescribed burning is at reducing that risk.
The island of Tasmania offers the perfect study system. Self-contained, with a wide array of vegetation types and fire regimes, it offers an ideal opportunity to see how fire behaves across a diverse landscape. Perhaps more interestingly, the island contains large areas of flammable landscape surrounding globally unique ecosystems and numerous towns and villages. Obviously, we cannot set fire to all of Tasmania in real life, but computer simulations make it possible!
So, encouraged by the Tasmanian Fire Service, who initiated our research, we simulated tens of thousands of fires across Tasmania under a range of prescribed burning scenarios.

Prescribed fire can be effective, in theory
The first scenario we looked at was the best-case scenario: what happens if we perform prescribed burning on all the vegetation that can handle it, given theoretically unlimited resources? It is possible this approximates the sustained and skillful burning by Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples.
Wildfire simulations following this scenario suggested that such an approach would be extremely effective. Importantly, we saw significant reductions in fire activity even in areas where prescribed burning is impossible (for example, due to the presence of people).
Unfortunately, this best-case approach, while interesting from a theoretical perspective, would require prescribed burning over more than 30% of Tasmania in one year.
We also analysed the effects of 12 more realistic scenarios. These realistic plans were less than half as efficient as the best-case scenario at reducing fire activity.
On average, 3 hectares of prescribed burning would reduce wildfire extent by roughly 1ha in grasslands and dry forests.
In other flammable Tasmanian vegetation types like buttongrass sedgelands and heathlands, the reduction in wildfire was even smaller. This is obviously better than no prescribed burning, but it highlights the fact that this is a relatively inefficient tool, and given the costs and potential drawbacks, should be used only where it is most needed.
This is a fundamental conundrum of prescribed burning: though it is quite effective in theory, the extent to which we would need to implement it to affect fire behaviour across the entire state is completely unachievable.
Therefore, it is imperative that we not just blindly burn a pre-ordained fraction of the landscape. Rather, we must carefully design localised prescribed burning interventions to reduce risk to communities.

We need a multi-tool approach
Our study has shown that while prescribed burning can be quite effective in certain scenarios, it has serious constraints. Additionally, while we analysed these scenarios under bad fire weather, we were not able to analyse the kind of catastrophic days in which the effect of prescribed burning is seriously reduced, with howling dry winds and stupefying heat.
Unfortunately, due to climate change, we are going to see a lot more catastrophic days in the future in Tasmania and indeed globally.
In Hobart this is of particular concern, as the city is surrounded by tall, wet eucalypt forests that have had fifty years grow dense understoreys since the 1967 Black Tuesday fires. These have the potential to cause some of the most intense fires on the planet should conditions get dry enough. Prescribed burning is impossible in these forests.
To combat fire risk we must take a multi-pronged approach that includes innovative strategies, such as designing new spatial patterns for prescribed burning, manually removing fuels from areas in which prescribed burning is not possible, improving the standards for buildings and defensible spaces, and most importantly, engaging the community in all of this.
Only by attacking this problem from multiple angles, and through close collaboration with the community and all levels of government, can we effectively face our fiery future.

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'Last Year I Gave The Kids Briquettes And Everyone Yelled At Me!' Christmas With Ian

The Guardian - 

 Ian the Climate Denialist Potato surprises his loved ones with a festive report on climate emissions. Or would they rather get an inflatable Greg Hunt doll?



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Judges Appear Ready To Allow Youth Climate Trial To Move Forward

Mashable - Andrew Freedman

A group of youth plaintiffs prepare to march to a news conference outside the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Dec. 11, 2017. Image: Eric Risberg/AP/REX/Shutterstock
A landmark case involving a group of 21 young Americans who are suing the federal government for its failure to protect them from the adverse consequences of climate change is inching closer to a trial date.
The case, known as Juliana v. United States, was  scheduled to go to trial in Oregon beginning on Feb. 5. That court date has been postponed due to a rare request from the federal government to have an Appeals Court step in and halt the proceedings.
On Monday, a panel of judges from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments regarding the Trump administration's move to squash the case using a little-used legal tactic known as a writ of mandamus. If granted, the writ would have the Appeals Court review a 2016 U.S. District Court decision not to dismiss the case. If the Appeals Court grants the writ, it could halt the case in its tracks, preventing a trial by declaring that the District Court made one or more errors in its consideration of the case.
However, questions from the three-judge Appeals Court panel to the Justice Department indicated they are skeptical of the need to review the District Court's decision. The Justice Department argued that this case, which seeks a remedy involving government action to address global warming, is "unprecedented" for its claims and broad scope, among other factors.
The case already broke new legal ground when a District Court judge declared the plaintiffs have a constitutional right to a stable climate.
Among the issues to be determined at trial is whether the government's actions — including its use of federal lands for energy extraction over the past several decades (the years when scientists' understanding of global warming solidified) — violated the plaintiff's constitutional rights.
Global average temperature anomalies from 2012-2016, compared to the 20th-century average.
The case asks the judicial branch to help determine the remedy to ensure the plaintiff's rights are no longer being violated. This could mean that the courts tell the government what its climate policy should be, which traditionally is the purview of the legislative and executive branches of government, not the courts. (That breach is one of the arguments put forward by the Justice Department to halt the case.)
"This court is on a collision course with the Executive Branch," said Eric Grant, a deputy assistant attorney general.
However, Julia Olson, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs who works for Our Children's Trust, an advocacy group, rejected that argument. She was accompanied in the courtroom by her co-counsel, as well as 18 of the 21 plaintiffs.
“Plaintiffs seek a judicial safeguard against the continued degradation of their rights," she said — but this safeguard could come from the appropriate branch of government, meaning that the plaintiffs are not asking the courts to set climate policy. Rather, a possible remedy would be for the court to demand that the government enact policies to cut global warming pollutants, leaving the specific details up to Congress and federal agencies.
“What the complaint alleges is that the federal defendants collectively and through the fossil fuel energy system are affirmatively depriving these young people of their rights to life, liberty, and property,” Olson said.
In response to judges' questions about whether the plaintiffs have legal standing to sue on the basis of being deprived of a stable climate, Olson said yes, because they will experience a rapidly deteriorating climate system for the rest of their lives unless action is taken soon.
“Children are disproportionately experiencing the impacts of climate change,” Olson said. She noted that children will bear the brunt of the impacts of global warming, giving them standing in their case.
“Your honor, these children will live far longer than you, they will live till the end of the century, when the seas are projected by these federal defendants to be 10 feet higher,” she said.


Eighteen of the 21 youth-plaintiffs who were before the 9th Circuit in San Francisco challenging the U.S. Government for not protecting them from climate change.

“The significance of the harm, the monumental threat that these injuries pose to these plaintiffs is very distinguishable from the rest of the country.”
Once the Ninth Circuit rules on the writ of mandamus, the case will either proceed to trial in District Court in Oregon, or head down another unprecedented path.
Many experts have consistently underestimated the likelihood that this suit would reach this far, considering how other judicial approaches to address climate change have failed.
If the 21 young people succeed in getting a judge to order the Trump administration to alter its pro-drilling, climate denial policies, they will have succeeded where no environmental activists or international allies have, simply by alleging a constitutional violation of their rights.
While this is an unlikely outcome, it gets more and more plausible with each passing legal proceeding.

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