Lethal Heating: 10/22/18

22/10/2018

Coal's Days Are Numbered, Top Government Adviser Says

Fairfax - Adam Carey | Cole Latimer | Nick Toscano

The federal government's top energy adviser Kerry Schott says the plunging cost of renewables will force Australia's remaining coal plants to close even earlier than planned, as mining giant BHP Billiton renewed calls for a price on carbon to urgently slash national emissions.
The Morrison government's failure to produce an emissions reduction plan for the electricity sector and general inaction on climate change have been credited with helping to drive a massive negative swing in the Wentworth byelection, which is expected to cost it the seat and force it into minority government.
The nation's energy ministers are due to meet in Sydney on Friday to discuss the Morrison government's bid to lower prices and improve reliability. Efforts to cut greenhouse gas emitted by electricity generators are not on the agenda.

Respected energy chief Kerry Schott. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The federal Coalition insists coal will remain a vital part of Ausralia's energy mix for decades, despite a major UN climate report this month calling for the industry to close down by 2050 to avert the worst climate disasters.
Energy Security Board chair Kerry Schott on Monday predicted that renewables would force many of Australia's remaining coal-fired power plants to make an early exit from the energy market, by beating them on price.
"Commercial reasons will be made about retiring coal plants and they're likely to get dropped out the door faster than their technical lives would suggest," Dr Schott said at a Committee for Economic Development of Australia event in Melbourne.
But she said the transition must be well-managed, to avoid a hasty rush to renewables pushing up energy prices.
Dr Schott predicted Australia would meet its emission reduction targets under the Paris accord, mostly through the actions of state governments.
"Australia has tried practically every emissions policy ever dreamt up and none of them has worked at a federal level," she said.
BHP Billiton on Monday renewed calls for a price on carbon to drive emissions reductions in Australia.
Speaking at a conference in Melbourne, BHP’s head of sustainability and climate change Fiona Wild said the firm accepted the latest findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the "warming of the climate is unequivocal, the human influence is clear and physical impacts are unavoidable".

Ms Schott says falling renewables prices are likely to force coal plants into early retirement. Credit: Peter Andrews

Australia and the world must act to curb climate change in line with international agreements, provide access to affordable energy, and introduce a price on carbon, she said.
"We believe there should be a price on carbon, implemented in a way that addresses competitiveness concerns and achieves lowest-cost emissions reductions," Dr Wild said.
The Morrison government has dumped its proposed National Energy Guarantee, including emissions reduction goals for the sector, but is still seeking to progress the reliability obligation on retailers to encourage investment in dispatchable generation.
Those aims will be discussed at Friday's Council of Australian Governments meeting, which comes days before the Victorian government goes into caretaker mode ahead of the November 24 state election. Victorian energy minister Lily D’Ambrosio said "we won’t be making any decisions until December."
ACT Climate Change Minister Shane Rattenbury predicted that states and territories will seek to discuss a national greenhouse gas emissions policy for the electricity sector.
"Australian politicians need to deal with climate change and the situation just becomes worse the longer they delay," he said.
NSW Energy Minister Don Harwin said his government's focus at COAG was "easing the burden on the hip pocket for our state’s households and businesses and providing certainty to the market".
Speaking at a conference in Sydney on Monday, Alinta Energy chief Jeff Dimery said the national electricity market had "shortcomings ... it isn't sustainable forever".
Frontier Economics chief executive Danny Price told Fairfax Media that without a national policy to guide investment, including emissions reduction targets, electricity prices will continue to rise.
"The National Electricity Market can't last more than a few years in its current form, it just can't cope any more," he said.
A new report by consultants Wood Mackenzie forecasts that renewables will become the main global source of energy by 2035.
"This is the point of no return, and represents a new era for the energy industry," it says.
Mr Price said though elements of the government have pushed back against this shift by supporting more coal, the change was inevitable.
"There is serious change going on and you can't stop the evolution of energy just because [former prime minister] Tony Abbott and his mates don’t want it to,” Mr Price said.

Links

Wentworth Wipe-Out Won’t Shift Coalition Idiocy On Climate And Energy

RenewEconomy - Giles Parkinson

Phelps claims victory in Wentworth. AAP Image

The breath-taking incompetence of the Coalition government – and the Morrison chapter in particular – makes it difficult to be sure of attributing its assumed yet stunning loss of the seat of Wentworth on one particular issue.
There are so many to choose from: the ditching of the local member as prime minister; policies on climate, energy, refugees and gender; the thick-as-a-brick vote for white supremacy slogans in the Senate; and the sheer desperation of its shift on crucial foreign policy.
But what we do know is this – for the second time in as many months, a long-standing Coalition seat has been lost to an independent candidate campaigning strongly on climate change and energy.
Just over a month ago, the Liberals lost the blue-ribbon NSW state seat of Wagga Wagga for the first time since 1957 to an independent candidate called Joe McGirr – a medical doctor who puts climate change firmly at the top of his political agenda.
On Saturday, the Liberals lost, for the first time ever, the federal seat of Wentworth, to an independent candidate called Kerryn Phelps – another medical doctor who puts climate change firmly at the top of her political agenda.
Are we now turning to the medical profession to address Australia’s most terrible affliction – the failure to agree to a credible policy for climate change and energy? It’s hard to know, but one thing seems certain: As devastating a blow as this is, the Coalition has lost its mind on climate and energy, and this result is not going to change it.
There’s no doubt that Phelps tapped into the anger and frustration over the removal of Turnbull, as well as policies on refugees, gender, race, and climate change and energy.
Mostly, however, her win was a vote against stupidity, of the kind that sees its leader brandish a lump of coal in parliament and attack the science that underpins the call to action on climate and energy.
It also shows that the Coalition has lost the sensible centre, and has no idea about how to regain it. Trent Zimmerman, the Liberal who took over the seat of North Sydney from former treasurer Joe “I don’t like wind turbines” Hockey, conceded that the party needed to do more on climate change.

(AAP Image/Lukas Coch)

Former environment and energy minister, and now Treasurer, deputy Liberal leader and heir apparent Josh Frydenberg, knocked that idea on the head pretty quickly.
“The government has a settled policy on that, but we will not reduce emissions at the expense of people’s power bills,” he said on Sky News, and in a press conference with journalists.
Remember, this is a party that turfed out the leader Malcolm Turnbull, who had sworn never to lead a party that did not take climate change seriously, but did.
It is a party whose Far Right candidate to replace him, Peter Dutton, was defeated by a man who waved that lump of coal around parliament and who dismissed the recent IPCC report on climate change as nothing to do with Australia.
The “sensible centre” that some hoped would emerge under the leadership of Turnbull has long been eviscerated. For the likes of Alex Turnbull, the former local member’s son, this is an opportunity for the Liberals to renew themselves.

IMAGE

“A great day for democracy”, he Tweeted, before adding that it was a sign that progressives were learning to vote strategically, and then retweeting a Get Up promise that the next focus will be on Tony Abbott’s seat of Warringah.
Jane Caro, another woman who puts climate change at the top of her agenda has indicated she may just run in that race. It may be that it will take success at that level, and complete obliteration at the next election, for the right wing of the party to think other than this is merely proof that policies have gone too far left.
They are already calling on the “next generation” of Far Right MPs – the likes of James Patterson and Tim Wilson, formerly of the Gina Rinehart-backed Institute of Public Affairs, and the frightening Andrew Hastie, the new Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones pin-up boy – to lead the party to a new era of pig ignorance and intransigence on climate and coal.
Given the sheer idiocy of what is written on the subject by the Murdoch media and heard on talk-back radio, it is hard to see how the Coalition can shed the shackles of the Far Right.

Malcolm Turnbull wasn’t prepared to take them on, and one of the most abiding images of this government was the photo of ministers celebrating after finally trashing the carbon price. Note the sheer joy on these ministers’ faces – and most of these were presumed to be moderates.

Morrison has now surrounded himself with an energy minister, Angus Taylor, who is sharp but has spent most of his career campaigning against the very technologies that Phelps says we should adopt – renewables.
The environment minister, Melissa Price, is proving to be hopeless: not across her brief, and completely out of her depth on the floor of parliament.
She hasn’t a clue how Australia is going to reduce its emissions to meet the Paris target and admitted to not even reading the IPCC report that had been sent to the government in final draft form four months earlier, and whose summary had been scrutinised word for word by the team she sent to South Korea for a week-long review.
Price still believes that “clean coal” will emerge some time in the future, in the same way that Morrison’s Pentecostal church believes that only God can change the climate.
Morrison, Frydenberg and others harp on about Australia’s cut in per capita emissions, ignoring that it remains just about the worst in the world, after Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, while the Murdoch media simply attack the science and pretend Australia is not rich enough to pull its weight.
So, if nothing changes between now and the next election – to be held by mid-May, 2019, after the Victoria and NSW state elections – what’s the chance of progress?
Certainly, the wins of Phelps and McGirr suggest there is a growing appetite for action on climate and energy, and somebody who can put together a credible vision of a clean energy transition has a chance of winning power. The upcoming state elections in Victoria and NSW will give us some more information.
Phelps’s position on climate and energy was that the Coalition was hopeless, and the Labor target of a 45 per cent cut in emissions by 2030, and a 50 per cent share of renewables, was not ambitious enough.
Most people agree, and so do most businesses. There is an opportunity to seize the moment. Who will take it?

Links

'Ultra Rapid' Electric Car Charging Network Coming To Australia

The Guardian - Australian Associated Press

Chargefox stations will allow drivers to charge electric vehicles in just minutes

New rapid charging stations being installed across Australia will fuel electric cars in a fraction of the time of existing points. Photograph: Fiona Hanson/PA

Drivers travelling between Australia’s major cities could soon charge their electric vehicles in just 15 minutes with a super-fast network being rolled out across the country.
The 21 sites on highways between Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane will be powered entirely by renewable energy. Sites are also planned for Western Australia.
The “ultra rapid” stations will allow electric vehicles to add up to 400km of range in a fraction of the hours it takes to charge at existing points.
Australian start-up Chargefox raised $15m to start building the network, including $6m from the federal government’s Australian Renewable Energy Agency.
Arena’s chief executive, Darren Miller, said it was a “game changing” project that would help ease worries about range and encourage more people to drive electric vehicles.
“This network will help alleviate that concern by giving motorists comfort they can travel long distances,” he said on Monday.
“Electrification of Australia’s transport sector could reduce emissions and dramatically change how we use electricity.”
The first two charging sites will be in Euroa in Victoria and in Barnawartha North just outside Albury-Wodonga on the Victoria-NSW border.

Links

BHP Says Put A Price On Carbon As Wentworth Byelection Shakes Up Energy

AFR - Ben Potter

Put a price on carbon, says Fiona Wild, vice president of Climate Change and Sustainability at BHP. Jesse Marlow

As the Morrison government digs in against changes to the climate and energy policies that were rejected at the Wentworth byelection, BHP wants a price on carbon to be part of the policy mix.
Fiona Wild, head of Sustainability & Climate Change at BHP, said a landmark Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report - which called for policies to limit global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees - is a rallying cry to all industries to reduce their emissions via changes in lifestyles, technology ,finance, international co-operation and policy.
"So where does BHP sit in relation to the challenge of climate change? We accept the IPCC's assessment of climate change science that warming of the climate is unequivocal, the human influence is clear and physical impacts are unavoidable," Dr Wild told the Greenhouse Gas Technology-14 in Melbourne.
"We believe that the world must pursue the twin objectives of limiting climate change in line with current international agreements while providing access to affordable energy. We do not prioritise one over the other – both are essential to sustainable development."

Prime Minister Scott Morrison (right) and Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg have dug their heels in against changes to the government's climate and energy policies Chris Pavlich

Dr Wild said that under all current plausible scenarios, fossil fuels will continue to be a significant part of the energy mix for decades.
"As such, there needs to be an acceleration of effort to drive energy efficiency, develop and deploy low emissions technology and adapt to the impacts of climate change," she said.

Price carbon
"And we believe there should be a price on carbon, implemented in a way that addresses competitiveness concerns and achieves lowest cost emissions reductions."
BHP's support for a price on carbon to drive emissions reductions required to meet Paris climate agreement commitments is longstanding, but Dr Wild's reiteration of the stance comes as Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg dig their heels in against changes to the government's climate and energy policies in response to the IPCC report and the Wentowrth byelection.

Steelmaking needs carbon capture and storage for the next breakthough in efficiency, BHP Billiton's head of Sustainability & Climate Change Fiona Wild says. Pictured: North Star BlueScope minimill at Delta, Ohio. North Star BlueScope Steel

Kerryn Phelps, the high profile independent candidate who threatens to wrest the rich, blue chip seat of Wentworth from the coalition after a century in the conservative fold, said on the weekend anger at the government's decision to walk away from emissions reduction targets in electricity was a major factor in the huge swing to her.
BHP has taken a leadership position in cutting emissions from the resources industry and Dr Wild said the company has now "for the first time set a longer-term of net-zero operational emissions in the second half of the century, matching the ambition of the Paris Agreement, and we are working to define a pathway towards that goal".
Dr Wild said BHP's "low emissions technology roadmap" includes battery storage, renewable energy, technologies to reduce fugitive emissions, low emissions transportation and carbon capture and storage.

Steel needs CCS
But she said carbon capture and storage still had to overcome obstacles to its acceptance, especially in the steel industry where further improvements in the efficiency of current steel making technologies yield diminishing returns and a "breakthrough" technology such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) is required.
This required overcoming CCS's image as a rival to other forms of carbon emissions reduction and gaining acceptance for CCS from a wider range of stakeholders, and advocate for policy support from governments.
"We must stimulate CCS uptake with market mechanisms such as carbon pricing, and provide the means for CCS to participate in existing markets while the technology further matures. A market-based carbon price could minimise the costs of a low carbon transition by making clear the marginal cost of reducing emissions across all sources," Dr Wild said.
"While there is no definitive pathway to 1.5 degrees outlined in the IPCC's report, all pathways rely to some extent on carbon dioxide removal. The application of CCS to power and industrial processes, and in combination with either bioenergy or direct air capture, offers the potential for large scale carbon dioxide removal."

Links

Climate Change: Nauru’s Life On The Frontlines

The Conversation - Anja Kanngieser

Nauru’s people are struggling in the face of environmental change. Anja Kanngieser, Author provided

International perceptions of the Pacific Island nation of Nauru are dominated by two interrelated stories. Until the turn of the century, it was the dramatic boom and bust of Nauru’s phosphate mine, and the mismanagement of its considerable wealth, that captured global attention.
Then, in 2001, Nauru become one of two Pacific sites for Australia’s offshore incarceration of asylum seekers and refugees. As money from the extraction of phosphate began to wane, Nauru became increasingly reliant on the income generated through the detention industry.
There is a third story that is often overlooked, one that will heavily determine the island’s future. Everyone on Nauru – Indigenous Nauruans and refugees alike – is experiencing the impacts of one the greatest social, economic and political threats faced by the world today: global environmental change.
I visited Nauru earlier this month as part of my project Climates of Listening, which amplifies Pacific calls for climate and environmental justice. I spoke with public servants, community leaders, and representatives of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) about their climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. I wanted to document the changes to the island’s reefs, lagoons and landscape, and also the community initiatives to cope with these changes.

Colonial legacy
Nauru was first colonised in the late 1800s by Germany, which aimed to exploit the island’s plentiful reserves of phosphate, a prized ingredient of fertiliser and munitions. In the early 1900s Britain brokered a deal with the German government and the Pacific Phosphate Company to begin large-scale mining, which became crucial for Australia and New Zealand, who were building up agricultural and military capacity.
After the first world war, Australia, Britain and New Zealand took over full trusteeship of the island, which served as a strategic military site and was successively occupied, costing many Indigenous lives. It was not until the late 1960s that Nauru finally regained independence and took over mining activities.
By this time there were already signs that accessible land would become an issue. Nauru is small, covering just 21 square km. The mine has taken over more than 80% of Nauru’s land, and although primary production is drawing to a close, the government is considering plans for secondary mining. That would extend extraction by around 20 years before phosphate is fully depleted and Nauru’s only exportable commodity is completely exhausted, although a possible new avenue has appeared in the form of deep seabed mining.
The mine area, called “topside” by Nauruans, is like a moonscape. Huge limestone pinnacles reach skywards, punctuated by steep gullies into which, I was warned, people have fallen to their deaths. It is unbearably hot, humid and inhospitable.

Nauru’s ‘topside’ is an inhospitable moonscape after decades of phosphate mining. Anja Kanngieser, Author provided

Shrinking habitable land means that most of Nauru’s growing population is clustered along the edges of the island. Around the north, coastal erosion eats away at the beach, leaving families with nowhere to go. While sea walls protect some areas, they push the waves onto others, meaning homes are flooded either way. Periodic king tides cover the only road running around the island, limiting accesses to services and resources.
Salt from the sea leaches into the groundwater supply. The water table is already contaminated with rubbish, mining effluent, and even leaks from cemeteries. While most of Nauru gets its water from the desalination plant, the delivery of the water can take a long time and when something goes wrong, experts have to be flown in to fix it. Rainwater is another option, but not everyone has a tank to catch it, and severe droughts are increasingly common.
Despite the successful establishment of kitchen gardens, which feed several families, many people on the coast feel their soil is not adequate for growing food. Food is largely imported and I was told that there are long queues whenever a shipment of rice is due to arrive. In one supermarket, cucumbers sell for A$13 each, and a punnet of cherry tomatoes costs A$20. Most Nauruans cannot afford to buy fresh produce.
Compounding food insecurity are the depleting reef fish stocks, which the government is hoping to address through the eventual establishment of locally managed marine areas. There is a plan to rebuild milkfish supplies in people’s home ponds, a species endemic to the island. However, as the groundwater is contaminated, the fish will also become contaminated. If people use the fish to feed livestock, the contamination is passed up the food chain.
Dust from the mine still causes major respiratory issues. It covers houses near the harbour, where the phosphate is processed and shipped. Locals refer to it as “snow”.

A monument to boom and bust. Anja Kanngieser, Author provided

Many people commented to me about how much hotter Nauru seems to be now, and fondly recalled the more clement weather they remembered from childhood. Today’s children don’t want to walk to school in the heat, and when they arrive their classrooms are not air-conditioned.
I was also told that the combination of mining, heat and erosion, as well as possible coral bleaching, is taking a toll on the island’s wildlife diversity. Usually, in the tropics, there is a cacophony of birdsong at dusk. But at one mine site I heard a single bird, despite an abundance of trees and shrubs.
Environmental officers further recounted that in early 2018 the reef was littered with sick fish, and that Nauru’s noddy birds – a popular food source – had contracted a mysterious and deadly virus. Curiously, there have also been recent sightings of orcas and a beached dugong, despite Nauru not being on any known migratory path.
The many issues on Nauru add up to a grave threat to the island’s land, water and food security. While the idea of rehabilitating topside has been broached many times, there are no firm plans in place. This rehabilitation may be Nauru’s lifeline, given its precarious economic situation.
In order to fully understand the situation in Nauru, the climate impacts that everyone on the island is facing need to be addressed. The environmental disregard of wealthy nations hits frontline communities like Nauru first and, oftentimes, hardest.
The lives of those incarcerated on Nauru and of Indigenous Nauruans are all being detrimentally affected by choices that we, in Australia, make. This is true both in terms of allowing for human rights violations against asylum seekers and refugees, and in our continuing support for our national fossil fuel industry which is a massive contributor to global warming.
Australia plays a major role in the ongoing colonisation of the Pacific through aid, economics and security policies. It is our responsibility to push our governments to change Australia’s activities, and to support regional calls for self-determination and environmental justice.
We need to remember that Nauru wasn’t always like this. We helped make it what it is today.

Links

Wentworth Byelection Backlash Reignites Tensions Inside The Morrison Government Over Climate Policy

Fairfax - David Crowe | David Wroe

A ferocious voter backlash has inflamed the Morrison government’s internal row on climate change as Liberal MPs call for stronger policies to assure voters that Australia can meet the Paris agreement to cut carbon emissions.
The government is reeling from a savage swing in the Wentworth byelection, sparking renewed argument over decisions including a sudden shift in foreign policy on Israel, and deepening fears of a wipeout at the federal election due by May.
As Parliament resumes on Monday, the Liberal Party was on track to lose Wentworth to independent candidate Kerryn Phelps, with an update on Sunday night giving her almost 51 per cent of the vote.

Liberal Party candidate Dave Sharma faced questions during the campaign about the government's commitment to climate change policies. Credit: Christopher Pearce

Dr Phelps had a lead of 1626 votes in the update posted by the Australian Electoral Commission at 6.45pm on Sunday. Even the best postal vote scenario for the Liberal Party over coming days would still see the independent win Wentworth.
The result represents an extraordinary 18 per cent swing against the federal government, one of the biggest in Australian history, but the Australian Electoral Commission is yet to count thousands of postal votes that could favour Liberal candidate Dave Sharma.
Government ministers and backbenchers told Fairfax Media they believed one lesson from the Wentworth result was to develop a stronger message on cutting emissions in order to win back voters concerned about climate change.
“I think we will, by the time of the next election, have to have a more credible answer on how we meet our targets,” one minister said.
“I don’t think it’s viable to remain silent on this between now and the next election.”
Liberal MP Trent Zimmerman said the Liberal Party's own research showed climate change and the removal of Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister were the two biggest concerns for Wentworth voters.
“The challenge the government faces is that following the demise of the National Energy Guarantee, there is a strong feeling that we don’t have a climate change plan. We need to address that alongside our justifiable concern about bringing prices down,” Mr Zimmerman told Fairfax Media.
“We are going to have to go to the next election with a clear plan to meet our Paris targets.”
Mr Zimmerman said emissions were coming down in the energy sector but there was more to be done in other parts of the economy. He said there was case to be made for putting more funding into the government’s Emissions Reduction Fund, which started with about $2.5 billion but has just $250 million left.
Liberal MP Craig Laundy also highlighted the Emissions Reduction Fund in calling for a stronger message on climate and energy.
“It’s definitely a policy issue that impacts one way or another in every electorate,” he said.
“The challenge that we have … is how to find something that is palatable across the breadth of the difference of views inside the party room.”
Mr Laundy believed there was more policy to come from Mr Morrison and Energy Minister Angus Taylor.
Environment Minister Melissa Price left the door open last week to put more money into the Emissions Reduction Fund.
“Of course, as you would expect, our responsible government is looking at its full suite of policies, which will include the ERF. That’s not a matter for me to talk about today. It’s a matter for cabinet,” she told Parliament.
The scale of the investment is certain to be contested within government as some ministers and backbenchers insist the Paris targets will be easily met on current settings, a claim disputed by scientists and environmental groups.
The government believes the latest advice from the Energy Security Board is that generation from wind and solar will grow by 256 per cent over the next three years.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says Labor's 50% renewable energy target will increase power prices.

Mr Taylor is seeking to increase reliability and reduce prices in the belief that these will be greater challenges than reducing emissions.
Resources Minister Matt Canavan cautioned against drawing national lessons from a byelection that reflected a small part of the country.
“There is no doubt the government has had a tough few months but I’m confident that our focus on creating jobs, lowering taxes and protecting our security can put us in a position to win next year,” Senator Canavan said.
NSW Liberal MP Craig Kelly said it would be wrong to over-analyse the result or change approach to energy and climate change.
“To suggest that more people would have voted for Dave Sharma if we had passed some version of the NEG is a fantasy,” Mr Kelly told Fairfax Media.
“And to appease the green left by greater virtue signalling on ‘climate change’ costs us votes – it doesn’t win them.”
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg brushed aside suggestions the Morrison government needed to overhaul its climate policies, saying they were “settled” and were enough to “meet and beat” Australia emissions reduction pledges.
“It’s clearly an important issue for the people of Wentworth, but our policies have been settled for some time,” he told the Sky News.
An exit poll of 985 Wentworth voters commissioned by the left-leaning Australia Institute on Saturday found that climate action and replacing coal with renewable energy was the top issue that decided how they voted.
Among people who had abandoned the Liberal Party since the last election in 2016, the top reason why was the toppling of Mr Turnbull at 40 percent of voters, but climate change came second at 31 percent.

Links