20/12/2017

Climate Review: Turnbull Government Will Allow Companies To Purchase Foreign Carbon Credits

Fairfax -

The Turnbull government will reverse course and allow businesses to buy overseas carbon credits to meet Australia's emissions reduction targets, a policy long questioned by climate experts and once labelled "dodgy" by Tony Abbott.
Backed by industry and some climate change observers, the move allows big businesses to purchase emissions reductions in other countries - most likely at lower prices - to offset their own carbon production.


Climate summit seeks new direction
More than 200 institutional investors with $26 trillion in assets under management said they would step up pressure on the world's biggest corporate greenhouse gas emitters to combat climate change.

Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg on Tuesday gave "in-principle" support to joining 60 other nations - including Canada, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea - in an international trading market once rules are finalised after 2020.
"Our thinking is to find the lowest-cost abatement," Mr Frydenberg said on Tuesday. "When it comes to helping the environment, it doesn't matter if you've reduced a tonne of CO2 here in Australia or in another country."
"Our thinking is to find the lowest-cost abatement": Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
That differed from the view given by Mr Abbott in 2011, while opposition leader, that overseas permits involved money "going offshore into dodgy carbon farms in Equatorial Guinea and Kazakhstan".
Mr Abbott's views were backed by the Greens on Tuesday, whose climate spokesman Adam Bandt accused the government of "outsourcing" climate policy by allowing firms to buy "dodgy permits from pig farms in China".
Many climate change campaigners have expressed concern about Australia shirking its domestic obligations in favour of cheaper overseas permits that might be fraudulent or involve double-counting of reductions.
And in a report last week, the independent Climate Change Authority recommended against Australian companies using international credits to meet domestic obligations, arguing it would slow down our transition to a lower-carbon economy. It cited a submission from energy giant AGL stating such a scheme would "effectively defer Australia's own decarbonisation".
Kate Mackenzie, a director at the non-profit Climate KIC and research fellow at the Centre for Policy Development, said buying foreign credits was a good idea but should not substitute reducing electricity emissions.
"If it's seen as being an easier or a cheaper way of meeting our emissions reduction targets, that poses the risk that the really necessary policy work won't be done," she told Fairfax Media.
The government will also wait until the market rules of the Paris Agreement are finalised to decide whether other countries can purchase Australia's mostly land-based carbon credits, fearing it could drive up the cost of domestic abatement. There is no guarantee international negotiations will finish by 2020, however, with talks mired in disagreement about how to link various schemes.
International permits will become particularly important for 140 large Australian businesses with facilities that emit more than 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. Under the "safeguard mechanism", these operations will need to keep their emissions below baseline levels or offset them using domestic and, now, international credits.
As part of the climate review released Tuesday, the government flagged those baselines could "increase with production, supporting business growth", and allowing companies to pollute more as long as they produce more.
Tony Wood, energy program director at the Grattan Institute, said the decision to allow international credits "makes an enormous amount of sense" as a way to put a "safety valve" on the price of carbon abatement, at least temporarily. At present, international permits are significantly cheaper than the cost of abatement domestically under the Emissions Reduction Fund, although overseas credits will likely become more expensive as global demand rises.
Tuesday's announcement was foreshadowed after the 2015 Paris climate conference, when then environment minister Greg Hunt said international permits would "probably be allowed. Mr Frydenberg, who took over the role after last year's election, strongly suggested the change would be made when he commissioned the climate change review a year ago.
Labor's environment spokesman Mark Butler dismissed the review as containing "no significant change" to Mr Abbott's climate change policies.
Industry groups including the Business Council of Australia welcomed the change-of-heart as a "practical" measure giving businesses flexibility. Peter Castellas, head of the Carbon Market Institute, said it was an "encouraging signal" but there would need to be more input from industry on the detail.

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At A Glance: Australia's Climate Change Policy Review

The Turnbull government's review of climate change policies has confirmed Australia is on track to reduce emissions by 5 per cent below 2000 levels as part of the Paris agreement, but faces a tough task reaching its goal of a 26-28 per cent reduction by 2030.
The review, released on Tuesday, outlines Australia's international and national efforts to address climate change, including contributions to several major projects and initiatives, research and collaboration with global partners and the integration of climate change action through overseas aid.


Climate summit seeks new direction
More than 200 institutional investors with $26 trillion in assets under management said they would step up pressure on the world's biggest corporate greenhouse gas emitters to combat climate change.

But the review also acknowledged policy improvements are needed to keep up with technological changes, and the rest of the world.
Six expected policy changes are:
  • 1) Introduce a 'review and refine' cycle 
Australia must update emission reduction targets every five years under the Paris Agreement. A 'review and refine' cycle will be introduced, allowing policy and goals to be considered and renewed as each yearly update is complete.
  • 2) Examine electricity generation
Consultation with stakeholders over the so-called National Energy Guarantee will begin early in 2018, with the COAG energy council using feedback to consider the best design and implementation methods to reach emission reductions. The scheme requires energy retailers and big polluters to commit to a reliability guarantee, which is expected to commence from 2019, and an emissions guarantee, which is due in 2020.
  • 3) Change the Safeguard Mechanism
The Safeguard Mechanism allows the biggest business polluters to measure, report and manage their emissions, with the Clean Energy Regular setting the baseline often off historical data.The government will move to keep baselines up to date and reflective of "individual business circumstances" with changes due to take effect for the 2018-19 financial year.
  • 4) Trade international units 
The government will allow companies to offset their carbon emissions by buying international permits subject to a global system being finalised after 2020. Former prime minister Tony Abbott has been a strong critic of such a policy in the past.
  • 5) Review the transport sector 
Measures to support a low-carbon transport sector have been considered, including a potential fuel efficiency standard for cars. This could save motorists $237 to $519 per year in 2025 for fuel, and net benefits to the economy could range from $8 billion to $13.9 billion over 20 years.
  • 6) Plan a long-term climate change strategy
The government will consult the public and experts to develop long-term goals for emission reduction to be completed by 2020.The Grattan Institute's energy expert Tony Wood said this was the "most noteworthy" part of the review.

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Climate Change Will Displace Millions In Coming Decades. Nations Should Prepare Now To Help Them

The Conversation - 

Pakistani commuters travel on a flooded street following a heavy rainfall in Karachi, Aug. 31, 2017. AP Photo/Shakil Adil
Wildfires tearing across Southern California have forced thousands of residents to evacuate from their homes. Even more people fled ahead of the hurricanes that slammed into Texas and Florida earlier this year, jamming highways and filling hotels. A viral social media post showed a flight-radar picture of people trying to escape Florida and posed a provocative question: What if the adjoining states were countries and didn’t grant escaping migrants refuge?
By the middle of this century, experts estimate that climate change is likely to displace between 150 and 300 million people. If this group formed a country, it would be the fourth-largest in the world, with a population nearly as large as that of the United States.
Yet neither individual countries nor the global community are completely prepared to support a whole new class of “climate migrants.” As a physician and public health researcher in India, I learned the value of surveillance and early warning systems for managing infectious disease outbreaks. Based on my current research on health impacts of heat waves in developing countries, I believe much needs to be done at the national, regional and global level to deal with climate migrants.


The U.S. government is spending US$48 million to relocate residents of Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana, because their land is sinking.

 Millions displaced yearly
Climate migration is already happening. Every year desertification in Mexico’s drylands forces 700,000 people to relocate. Cyclones have displaced thousands from Tuvalu in the South Pacific and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean. Experts agree that a prolonged drought may have catalyzed Syria’s civil war and resulting migration.
Between 2008 and 2015, an average of 26.4 million people per year were displaced by climate- or weather-related disasters, according to the United Nations. And the science of climate change indicates that these trends are likely to get worse. With each one-degree increase in temperature, the air’s moisture-carrying capacity increases by 7 percent, fueling increasingly severe storms. Sea levels may rise by as much as three feet by the year 2100, submerging coastal areas and inhabited islands.
The Pacific islands are extremely vulnerable, as are more than 410 U.S. cities and others around the globe, including Amsterdam, Hamburg, Lisbon and Mumbai. Rising temperatures could make parts of west Asia inhospitable to human life. On the same day that Hurricane Irma roared over Florida in September, heavy rains on the other side of the world submerged one-third of Bangladesh and eastern parts of India, killing thousands.
Climate change will affect most everyone on the planet to some degree, but poor people in developing nations will be affected most severely. Extreme weather events and tropical diseases wreak the heaviest damage in these regions. Undernourished people who have few resources and inadequate housing are especially at risk and likely to be displaced.
People displaced by drought in Somalia queue to register at a refugee camp in neighboring Ethiopia, July 26, 2011. UK-DFID, CC BY
Recognize and plan for climate migrants now
Today the global community has not universally acknowledged the existence of climate migrants, much less agreed on how to define them. According to international refugee law, climate migrants are not legally considered refugees. Therefore, they have none of the protections officially accorded to refugees, who are technically defined as people fleeing persecution. No global agreements exist to help millions of people who are displaced by natural disasters every year.
Refugees’ rights, and nations’ legal obligation to defend them, were first defined under the 1951 Refugee Convention, which was expanded in 1967. This work took place well before it was apparent that climate change would become a major force driving migrations and creating refugee crises.
Under the convention, a refugee is defined as someone “unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.” The convention legally binds nations to provide access to courts, identity papers and travel documents, and to offer possible naturalization. It also bars discriminating against refugees, penalizing them, expelling them or forcibly returning them to their countries of origin. Refugees are entitled to practice their religions, attain education and access public assistance.
In my view, governments and organizations such as the United Nations should consider modifying international law to provide legal status to environmental refugees and establish protections and rights for them. Reforms could factor in the concept of “climate justice,” the notion that climate change is an ethical and social concern. After all, richer countries have contributed the most to cause warming, while poor countries will bear the most disastrous consequences.
The low-lying Pacific island nation of Kiribati is extremely vulnerable to climate-driven sea level rise and storm surges. DFAT, CC BY
Some observers have suggested that countries that bear major responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions should take in more refugees. Alternatively, the world’s largest carbon polluters could contribute to a fund that would pay for refugee care and resettlement for those temporarily and permanently displaced.
The Paris climate agreement does not mention climate refugees. However, there have been some consultations and initiatives by various organizations and governments. They include efforts to create a climate change displacement coordination facility and a U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Climate Change.
It is tough to define a climate refugee or migrant. This could be one of the biggest challenges in developing policies.
As history has shown, destination countries respond to waves of migration in various ways, ranging from welcoming immigrants to placing them in detention camps or denying them assistance. Some countries may be selective in whom they allow in, favoring only the young and productive while leaving children, the elderly and infirm behind. A guiding global policy could help prevent confusion and outline some minimum standards.

Short-term actions
Negotiating international agreements on these issues could take many years. For now, major G20 powers such as the United States, the European Union, China, Russia, India, Canada, Australia and Brazil should consider intermediate steps. The United States could offer temporary protected status to climate migrants who are already on its soil. Government aid programs and nongovernment organizations should ramp up support to refugee relief organizations and ensure that aid reaches refugees from climate disasters.
In addition, all countries that have not signed the United Nations refugee conventions could consider joining them. This includes many developing countries in South Asia and the Middle East that are highly vulnerable to climate change and that already have large refugee populations. Since most of the affected people in these countries will likely move to neighboring nations, it is crucial that all countries in these regions abide by a common set of policies for handling and assisting refugees.
The scale of this challenge is unlike anything humanity has ever faced. By midcentury, climate change is likely to uproot far more people than World War II, which displaced some 60 million across Europe, or the Partition of India, which affected approximately 15 million. The migration crisis that has gripped Europe since 2015 has involved something over one million refugees and migrants. It is daunting to envision much larger flows of people, but that is why the global community should start doing so now.

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