Australia Leads The G20 Nations' Pack In Aid For Coal-Fired Power

Sydney Morning Herald - Peter Hannam

Subsidies for coal-fired power production almost tripled in the three years to 2016-17 among G20 nations, with Australia providing among the largest support, an international study has found.
The report by UK think tank, the Overseas Development Institute, found aid for such power stations soared from US$17.2 billion ($24.7 billion) in 2013-14 to $US47 billion in the most recent year. It's in contrast to pledges made by the 20 biggest economies in 2009 to phase out subsidies to reduce the risks of climate change.
Total support for coal, including production, was US$63.9 billion in the 2016-17 year, the report found. Of that, about US$3.1 billion went to fiscal aid for communities to transition off coal.

Exhaust plumes from cooling towers at the Jaenschwalde brown coal-fired power station in eastern Germany. Credit: Sean Gallup

The highest amounts of total support to coal consumption were identified in Indonesia at US$2.3 billion per year, Italy and Australia, both about US$870 million, the US at US$708 million, and the UK with US$682 million, it reported."These tens of billions of dollars a year of G20 support to coal are not just locking in the high-carbon
economy and leading to stranded assets, they are also a missed opportunity to support a clean energy transition and to achieve other sustainable development objectives," the study said.
Those subsidies, which count public support for coal such as China's US$9.5 billion to annual aid construction of plants and mining in other nations - were likely an underestimate.
The report noted the G20 nations indirectly support the coal industry "by failing to charge companies for the health and climate damages they cause". A separate report out last month from the International Monetary Fund estimated fossil fuel subsidies by all nations for coal, gas, oil and other fossil fuels totalled US$5.2 trillion in 2017.
Comment was sought from Energy Minister Angus Taylor and the Minerals Council. A spokesman for Resources Minister Matt Canavan noted the most recent report from the Productivity Commission on trade assistance found tariff and budgetary assistance for mining to be "negligible."
The ODI paper comes as leaders of the G20 nations including Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison are due to gather in Osaka, Japan, on Friday and Saturday.
According to the Financial Times, the summit hosts have bowed to pressure from the Trump administration to downplay climate change.
The draft communique will omit the words “global warming” and “decarbonisation” and diminished the importance of the Paris climate accord compared with previous summits, the paper said.

'Ecological crisis'
Jamie Hanson, head of campaigns at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said Australia was in an "ecological crisis driven by climate change".
"Coal is the primary cause of the climate damage that is causing extinctions all over the country, drought and fire that has torched ancient rainforests, and that has killed half the Great Barrier Reef in the last five years," he said.
"Climate-destroying government handouts to the coal industry defy all logic - especially now, when we know that clean renewable energy is the cheapest form of new power."
Separately, Australia's climate ambassador Patrick Suckling has argued at a United Nations conference in Bonn, Germany that the country's carbon reduction efforts were "having a positive effect".

Links

• REPORT G20 coal subsidies: Tracking government support to a fading industry (pdf)
• IMF: Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Remain Large - An Update Based on Country-Level Estimates
• Federal Government: Australia - progress to meeting our 2020 target (pdf)
• Australia's greenhouse gas emissions up for four years in a row
• 'Huge gamble': Coalition faces $18b hole if climate plan trips up
• City of Sydney officially declares 'climate emergency'