NSW Set To Fall Short Of Climate Targets But Victoria On Track

Sydney Morning Herald - Nicole Hasham

NSW and Queensland appear set to fall short of their self-imposed targets for cutting greenhouse gas pollution and phasing out fossil fuels, as responsibility for climate action in the electricity sector increasingly falls to the states.
But analysis by research and advisory group Green Energy Markets found Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania are on track to hit their climate goals.

NSW and Queensland must make up ground to meet their climate targets in the electricity sector, analysis has found. Credit: Michele Mossop

Electricity is considered the most cost-effective sector of the economy in which to slash greenhouse gas pollution, largely because zero-emission wind and solar technology already exists.
However, Australia's renewable energy target peaks in 2020 and since the collapse of the National Energy Guarantee last year, the Morrison government has not had a major policy to cut emissions in the sector. This leaves state policies as the key driver of investment in renewable energy generation.
Green Energy Markets examined progress on climate targets by the five eastern-most states that make up the national electricity market.
It found the most populous state, NSW, was not on pace to meet its target of net-zero emissions from the electricity sector by 2050.
On current trends, renewables would comprise 28 per cent of NSW's total electricity use by 2030, based on expected rooftop solar uptake and new wind and solar projects. This was well below the 46 per cent renewables share needed by 2030 if NSW was to meet its 2050 target, the report said.
NSW needs almost 5000 megawatts of new renewable energy projects over the next decade to bridge the gap.
Green Energy Markets director Tristan Edis said there had been commitments to construct 2800 megawatts of renewables projects in NSW over the past three years, so the state's catch-up task was "readily achievable" by 2030.
The Queensland Labor government wants renewables to make up 50 per cent of the electricity mix by 2030. However, the state is currently tracking towards a 29 per cent renewables share, based on existing wind and solar commitments and expected rooftop solar growth.

Hydro Tasmania's Devils Gate Dam spill. The state is tracking well to meet its target for 100 per cent renewable energy, including hydro power, by 2022.

If all states achieved their targets, enough construction jobs would be created to employ 32,000 people for a year, the analysis showed.
Victoria was already close to achieving its goal of 40 per cent electricity generation from renewable sources by 2025, the report found. It required just 2000 megawatts of new projects to reach its target of 50 per cent renewables by 2030.
South Australia was on track to meet its goal that renewables comprise 73.5 per cent of electricity consumption by 2030, and Tasmania did not need any new projects to reach its 100 per cent renewables goal by 2022.
A spokeswoman for the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment said the state was “reducing emissions at one of the fastest rates in Australia”.
“The government is supporting record investment in solar and wind and, in the last five years, energy generation from these sources has tripled in NSW,” she said.
Between 2018 and 2022 the NSW government will spend $1.4 billion to drive investment in renewable energy, emerging technology and climate action.
Queensland Energy Minister Anthony Lynham said the Palaszczuk government was on track to meet its 50 per cent renewable target by 2030, citing a recent report by the Clean Energy Council that described the state as "the renewable energy construction capital of Australia".
"Despite the lack of any coherent or consistent energy policy from the commonwealth government, Queensland continues to embrace a renewable future," Dr Lynham said, adding that the states "have been left alone to do the heavy lifting on tackling climate change".

Links

• Green Energy Markets
• Renewable Energy Index
• Australia Is Counting On Cooking The Books To Meet Its Climate Targets
• Australia’s Carbon Emissions Highest On Record, Data Shows
• Australia Not On Track To Hit Paris Emissions Goals, As UN Warns Global Efforts Must Increase
• Australia To Miss 2030 Emissions Target By Massive Margin
• Scientists Slap Down Australia Government Over Fake Climate Claims
• Australia Quizzed By EU And China On Whether It Can Meet 2030 Paris Climate Target
• Scott Morrison's Pea-And-Thimble Trick
• 'Problem in waiting': why natural gas will wipe out Australia's emissions gains
• Australia's emissions still rising, says report withheld in defiance of Senate order

Action Now’: The Farmers Standing Up Against ‘Wilful Ignorance’ On Climate

The Guardian - Gabrielle Chan

The challenge for farmers is how to discuss global warming without scaring people out of food production

Farmers across Australia are trying to deal with increased risk by finding new income streams, and changing their cropping and stock management plans. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian 

The last election may have left the impression with voters that farmers and rural people in general do not accept climate science because there was no seismic shift of seats.
Yet this week the agricultural thinktank, the Australian Farm Institute, gathered farmers and their advocacy groups to talk about the impacts of global warming on the already risky business of farming.
Speaker after speaker described how their businesses were trying to deal with increased risk by finding new income streams, changing their cropping and stock management plans and still sometimes being blindsided.
Australia’s largest and oldest continuing pastoral company, AACo, owns 7m hectares of land or roughly 1% of Australia’s land mass.
After the loss of 43,000 head of cattle in record flooding in the Gulf of Carpentaria, AACo boss Hugh Killen’s message to the audience was clear.
“The direct effects of climate are real for us – we come to this discussion with first hand experience and a commitment to find a way forward comes from the heart,” Killen said.
“Slight changes to fire, flood and drought patterns can shift a very delicate balance. Increased flood, drought and fire can disrupt everything we do in their own right, as with risks we have seen in the gulf.
“Changing patterns can also tip the balance in favour of harmful flora and fauna and it can tip the balance away from replenishment of nutrients in the soil.”
He decried the tribal nature of politics and then he urged the room to act and engage on the subject, in spite of the noisy political debate.
“Those who call themselves believers demand action now,” Killen said. “We need to show them we share their conviction about the dangers that we all face.
“They need to know that we care, we take the science seriously and that we are taking action where we can to manage climate risks daily.”
It was an unusual conference because since Tony Abbott dismantled the carbon price in 2013, the largely conservative industry has tiptoed around the issue – a point recognised by the National Farmers’ Federation president, Fiona Simson, last year when she declared climate change was making drought worse.
Long-time climate campaigner and Boggabilla farmer Pete Mailler said there was a “widespread wilful ignorance” about climate change and that was creating the impasse on public policy responses.

Pete Mailler says ‘I can’t stand by and let people glibly talk up agriculture if they are not prepared to start tackling the hard issues now’.

“There’s this big issue that says we can’t really admit to climate change because that means we have to change all these other things and that’s really hard, we don’t really want to shut down coal-fired power stations,” Mailler said.
“The reality is I can’t stand by and let people glibly talk up agriculture if they are not prepared to start tackling the hard issues now. Because if we set the next generation up to walk off into the sunset and say ‘here you go’, it’s a great opportunity and if we don’t start to tackle these problems now we are setting them up to fail.”
Yet the challenge for farmers and their representative bodies is always how to discuss global warming without scaring people out of food production.
Verity Morgan-Schmidt, of Farmers for Climate Action, said no farmer wanted to be intentionally negative but there was a need to stare the challenges “in the face”.
“It’s a huge step forward for the industry to have such a trusted respected research organisation actively engage on the issue and raise the challenges,” she said. “We all want the industry to have vibrant future but we don’t want to sell people up the river.”
The National Farmers’ Federation chief executive, Tony Mahar, said climate change was increasing risk to the sector through more intense and severe droughts, high water prices, increased volatility of farm income, loss of productive land and relocation of industries.
The NFF declared its “priority ask” was a $1bn eco-systems services fund, following on from a $30m biodiversity stewardship fund announced in the federal election that would develop a framework to pay farmers to improve landscape and capture carbon.

National Farmers’ Federation CEO Tony Mahar, centre, says climate change is increasing risk to the sector through more intense and severe droughts, high water prices, increased volatility of farm income, loss of productive land and relocation of industries. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Mahar echoed the Craik report, which also recommended the government introduce “market-based” National Biodiversity Conservation Trust fund for eco-services.
“We are talking about this as the new Landcare and being a system that will recognise, reward, and put a value on some of the systems and services and land management processes that farmers undertake every day, every year, and have done for decades but haven’t been able to get an income stream from that.”
The World Wildlife Fund has backed has backed the principle of paying farmers for good environment practices.
The WWF’s Ian McConnel said farmer payments for eco-system work would be an important driver for positive change.
“We need to reward people when they are adopting practices, especially when those practices don’t come as a win-win to production,” McConnel. “We need to prove there’s a biodiversity measurement. There’s a whole range of challenges around that, but we need to have very good models based on data that says if you do this practice, we see this improvement.”
McConnel said the WWF had already designed farm practices applicable to Germany where farmers could choose from a range of works from restoring wetlands to vegetation connectivity and get paid a premium.
McConnel said while planting and retaining trees was certainly “the easier way” to improve environmental outcomes, capturing soil carbon was potentially a longer term solution for farmers.
The NFF’s $1bn target was “absolutely” achievable, he said, and could come from a mix of government funding and private investors.
“The world needs pretty large-scale investment if we are going to turn the head on biodiversity loss and carbon so we are going to have to see some pretty big investment in that space and I think the willingness is there from both the public and private to invest,” McConnel said.

Links

• Act Now On Emissions Says Farmers For Climate Action 
• 'He Will Fail Farmers': Morrison Pressured To Tackle Climate Change As Part Of Drought Pledge 
• The Future Of Farming In The Era Of Climate Change 
• Farmers Asked To Share Their Climate Change Experience 
• Farmers Challenge Nationals' Claim Drought Unrelated To Climate Change 
• Drought-Stricken Farmers Challenge Coalition's Climate Change Stance In TV Ad 
• Farmers For Climate Action Say A Unified Parliament Needed To Address Looming Crisis 

Australia Won't Reach Paris Target Without Action On Transport, LNG And Coal, Expert Says

The Guardian - Adam Morton

Morrison government urged to address where greenhouse gas emissions are rising substantially

Emissions released during LNG processing and coalmining have jumped 55%, which will impact Australia’s Paris target, an Australia Institute report says.

The challenge the Morrison government faces in meeting future climate targets without new policies is underlined by an analysis that breaks down how significantly greenhouse gas emissions are increasing from transport, natural gas and coalmining.
Since 2005, the year against which the government has chosen to benchmark its Paris target, Australia’s emissions from transport are up 23%.
Pollution from burning fossil fuels – mainly natural gas, but also coal – in manufacturing, construction and domestic heating has risen 30%. “Fugitive” emissions released during liquefied natural gas (LNG) processing and coalmining have jumped 55%.



Other parts of the economy are getting cleaner – emissions from electricity generation, which is still the biggest chunk of national emissions at about a third, are down 10%. There have been smaller cuts from agriculture, waste and industrial processes.
But the analysis of government data by Hugh Saddler, an energy consultant and ANU honorary associate professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy, suggests Australia cannot meet the target it set at the Paris climate summit without policies to address where emissions are rising substantially.
He said at the moment the government does not have any.
“They absolutely don’t have any policy to stop emissions rising from transport and in the other areas such as LNG and coal exports the policy is to actually encourage them to grow – the government would like to think they would keep going up and up,” Saddler said.
The data is contained in Saddler’s latest national emissions audit, which is published by progressive research and lobby group the Australia Institute.
Australia’s total emissions are now estimated to be 12.7% less than they were in 2005. They have increased each year since 2015, when they were 14.5% below the benchmark year. The Coalition’s target is a 26-28% cut by 2030.
Saddler said it showed why the Morrison government was pushing hard to use what are known as carryover credits to meet its Paris target. The credits represent the amount Australia expects to finish ahead of its 2020 target under the previous climate deal, the Kyoto Protocol.
Several countries – notably members of the Association of Small Island States such as Tuvalu – challenged Australia at United Nations climate talks in Bonn, Germany last week over its plan to use carryover credits. The European Union and New Zealand are among others opposed to their use.
Opponents say using carryover credits would effectively reduce Australia’s 2030 target to a 16% cut.
They say carryover credits are merely a reflection that Australia set easy-to-meet targets under the Kyoto Protocol – a pollution increase between 1990 and 2010, then a 5% cut between 2000 and 2020 – and that all countries will need to drop accounting tricks and make much deeper cuts if the world is to limit global heating to as close to 1.5C as possible.
Richie Merzian, the Australia Institute’s climate and energy program director, said using carryover credits was the most egregious example of the Coalition government’s contempt for the international climate system. “Australia is isolated as the only OECD country pushing to exploit this loophole,” he said.
A recent policy brief by the Investor Group on Climate Change says carryover credits were included in the initial Kyoto deal as an incentive for ambitious countries to go beyond their formal targets. In reality, it has just rewarded countries that set weak targets, such as Australia and Russia.
It is still unclear how carryover credits will be treated under the Paris deal. Countries are expected to explain how they will meet their targets and – unless there is a unanimous agreement to ban carryover credits – they could technically just include them. But they would be likely to face increasing criticism.
The Paris agreement also says countries will become more ambitious over time and that their commitments will reflect their “highest possible ambition”. Opponents say carryover credits do not fit this definition as they transparently weaken a target.
When asked about carryover credits, the government says Australia has made “responsible, achievable and balanced commitments” to reduce emissions and has a strong track record in meeting and beating its targets.
The minister for emissions reduction, Angus Taylor, has also argued that the growth in emissions from Australia’s rapidly expanding LNG industry should be seen as a positive as the gas would be reducing the amount of coal burned in Asia. The Saddler report suggests this makes little sense given the government is also supporting a significant expansion of coalmining in Queensland.
Saddler said there was a possibility that emissions could be reduced where they are currently growing through state government and city-based policies and changes in technology and on international markets. He gives the example of electric vehicles, which are expected to be cost competitive with petrol cars by 2025.
“One of the things we can hope for is that technological change comes along in the absence of any government policy,” he said.
A government policy document released before the election estimated by 2030 about 100m tonnes of emissions reduction would come from unspecified “technology improvements and other sources of abatement”.
Other trends in the report include:

• Queensland has the highest emissions in the country. Emissions grew in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory between 2014 and 2017 while falling everywhere else.
• National emissions would have been expected to increase even more this year were it not for the devastating drought and floods in eastern Australia that killed huge numbers of sheep and cattle.
• Diesel fuel emissions surged 50% between 2011 and 2018, increasing significantly both on the road and in power generation at mining sites.
• But diesel use has fallen each month since December despite no obvious change in policy. If that continues for the rest of the year, it will be the first time it has happened since 1990-91 – the low point of Australia’s last economic recession.

Links

• Australia Is Counting On Cooking The Books To Meet Its Climate Targets
• Australia’s Carbon Emissions Highest On Record, Data Shows
• Australia Not On Track To Hit Paris Emissions Goals, As UN Warns Global Efforts Must Increase
• Australia To Miss 2030 Emissions Target By Massive Margin
• Scientists Slap Down Australia Government Over Fake Climate Claims
• Australia Quizzed By EU And China On Whether It Can Meet 2030 Paris Climate Target
• Scott Morrison's Pea-And-Thimble Trick
• 'Problem in waiting': why natural gas will wipe out Australia's emissions gains
• Australia's emissions still rising, says report withheld in defiance of Senate order