'New Energy Future': Minister Touts Australia At Climate Summit

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Australia is moving "towards a new energy future", powered by unprecedented investments in renewable energy, Environment Minister Melissa Price has told a summit in Poland even as the country earned a "fossil of the day" award for its poor climate policies.
In a speech on Wednesday at the COP24 climate talks in Katowice, Ms Price said Australia was "committed to the Paris Agreement" and the development of a "robust rulebook" to implement the global pact agreed in 2015.

Melissa Price, the environment minister, spoke overnight at the COP24 climate talks in Poland. (Seen here in Canberra earlier this month.) Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

"The clear message from the dialogue is that we must act, and act together, because climate change affects us all, and Australia must play its part," Ms Price said.
"Our clean energy finance corporation, the world’s largest green bank, has leveraged nearly $20 billion in low-emissions technology investment," she said, adding that Australia would also help "fuel the battery storage revolution" with its large reserves of lithium.
Australia was also implementing its $1 billion commitment in climate finance to 2020, focused on "building resilience in the Pacific, one of the most vulnerable regions in the world," she said.
Richie Merzian, a climate researcher with The Australia Institute, said Minister Price's speech "relied almost entirely on policies her government tried to kill-off or water down".
He also criticised the climate finance pledge, saying Prime Minister Scott Morrison "had trashed and cut support for UN’s key climate finance body, the Green Climate Fund".

'Fossil of the Day'
Australia's policies also copped flak from The Climate Action Network, an alliance of 1300 environmental groups, which declared the country "fossil of the day" for its four years of rising greenhouse gas emissions.

No cop out: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, right, talks to UN climate conference president, Poland's Deputy Environment Minister Michal Kurtyka, after flying back to the event to urge more effort from the negotiators. Credit: AP

The network also raised the issue, first reported by the Herald, that Australia had "remained silent" about whether it planned to use any surplus from the Kyoto Protocol period - possibly 400 million tonnes worth - to count against its Paris target.
Ms Price's Labor counterpart, Mark Butler, has also continued to not rule out the use of any Kyoto credits for its post-2020 targets.
"It's not clear whether the so-called rulebook for the Paris Agreement will allow a carryover," Mr Butler told Radio National on Thursday.
"If it does, we would have to consider any conditions about that," he said, adding, "my bias is to steer very clear of cop-outs and accounting tricks when it comes to climate change policies."

Former US vice president and climate activist Al Gore makes a speech on acting for climate to participants at the Katowice summit. Credit: AP

Greens climate spokesman Adam Bandt said: “It is disappointing that Mark Butler has left the door open to cooking the books to meet their Paris commitment. The analysis is clear that up to a quarter of Labor’s target could be met by fake Kyoto credits if they follow the Coalition and pull the same dodgy accounting tricks.”

Links

• They're back and still bad -- it's Australia!
• Arctic is in even worse shape than realised
• New Zealand rules out using 'Kyoto credits' for Paris, Australia shtum
• Trump's climate adviser sparked protests, but he found a receptive audience in Australia
• 'Fake action': Australia's secret path to hitting Paris climate goals
• Protesters march as UN climate talks hit fossil fuel snag
• Colossal Fossil and a Special Ray of the COP