21/05/2020

(AU) Australia's Climate Future To Evolve As Economy Is Rebuilt

Sydney Morning Herald - Nick O'Malley | Mike Foley

Just a few months ago there had been growing consensus among scientists, activists, economists and even investors that 2020 would be pivotal in the fight to stave off the worst impacts of climate change.

Around the world global warming had become manifest in the intensity of fires and floods, droughts and storms, prompting politicians to catch up with the view of voters on the urgency of the problem.

In November, world leaders were to meet in Scotland for the 2020 United Nations Climate Change Conference to set even more ambitious emissions targets and outline concrete plans on how to meet them in the effort to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees.

Projects that will use hydrogen in transport, such as this hydrogen-power bus in France, are among those potentially eligible for the CEFC funding.

But the Glasgow meeting has been cancelled and politicians are now focused on keeping citizens alive in the face of a more immediate threat.

Rather than lose the momentum that had been growing, scientists and activists groups around the world are focusing on a campaign to ensure that economic stimulus packages being adopted around the world are green.

On Friday, the World Economic Forum released a statement in support of the European Union’s “Green Deal”, declaring that it must become the “cornerstone” of Europe’s pandemic recovery.

“Rather than rebuilding the 20th-century economy, we must focus on spending stimulus money wisely and on preparing Europe for a competitive and inclusive 21st century, climate-neutral future.”

Earlier this month, the University of Oxford released findings of a study of 700 previous stimulus packages which showed that a green stimulus created more jobs per dollar spent than a black one.

Launching the study, one of the lead authors, Professor Cameron Hepburn, told the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that he believed the decisions politicians made in coming weeks would decide how future generations experienced climate change.

“The recovery packages are vital to getting our economies going again and to putting us on a cleaner path to avoid the worst impacts of climate change,” he said.

The Oxford research was one of a wave of reports, studies and papers recently released as various groups seek to catch the attention of leaders. In one report, the World Bank suggested that tax concessions could be offered to low-carbon fuel categories while the current low prices might be an opportunity for countries to withdraw subsidies to the oil sector.

The International Monetary Fund made similar recommendations advocating for measures to modernise grids, expand public transport and support climate change adaptation projects.

The United Nations secretary general António Guterres declared that taxpayers’ money deployed in stimulus should be spent on “new jobs and businesses through a clean, green transition” and that when it was used to rescue business, it should be “tied to green jobs and sustainable growth”.

The word's first liquid hydrogen ship, the Suiso Frontier, is christened at the Kobe Works yard in Japan. Credit: Kawasaki Heavy Industries

The movement for a green recovery has some serious political backing around the world.

Alongside the EU’s moves towards green stimulus, Joe Biden, presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party, has embraced the Green New Deal championed by elements of his party as part of his election platform.

South Korea’s new government, elected in part on its environmental policies, has announced its own $US110 billion New Green Deal, designed to boost employment and meet a target of producing net zero emissions by 2050.

So far China’s efforts have been mixed, with governments backing both new coal-fired power plants as well as high-tech grid improvements that could reduce emissions.

In Australia, political signals are mixed.

Asked by the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age if the pandemic presented Australia with an opportunity to set more ambitious reductions targets, Energy and Emissions Reductions Minister Angus Taylor advocated for increasing gas use and exports, saying that countries with access to cheap liquified natural gas were able to cut emissions faster.

This is despite the increasing body of research showing gas to be as bad for the atmosphere as coal.

But Mr Taylor has also backed hydrogen, which is increasingly seen as the crucial new clean energy technology, and a potential source of employment and export dollars for Australia.

Last month, Fatih Birol, executive director at International Energy Agency, wrote that hydrogen technology today is at the same state of development and adoption wind and solar were during the crisis in 2009, when massive green stimulus packages supercharged their uptake and put them in the position of undercutting fossil fuels on costs today.

“They have the potential to be the coming decade’s breakout technologies,” he wrote.
'It is a natural for expansion.'
Professor Ross Garnaut
Mr Taylor agrees, telling the Herald and The Age “it’s not heralded much, but Japanese power generators are talking about feeding hydrogen into their old gas power systems, which creates phenomenal export potential for us in Australia, and offers a huge advantage (to generators) that they don’t have to rebuild their plants.”

But Mr Taylor has drawn criticism for backing so-called “brown” hydrogen alongside “green”.

Hydrogen emits no greenhouse gases when burned in engines or power plants, but splitting water by electrolysis to create hydrogen consumes electricity. Clean energy advocates argue that Australia has the space to build wind and solar power stations to become a green hydrogen export leader, but Mr Taylor has not ruled out a role for gas and coal.

Leading economist and renewable energy expert Ross Garnaut says Australia’s vast capacity to generate wind and solar energy could fuel not only exports but a boom in domestic heavy industry and replace petrol for transport.

“The full emergence of Australia as an energy superpower of the low-carbon world economy would encompass large-scale early-stage processing of Australian iron, aluminium and other minerals,” Professor Garnaut says.

He told the Herald and The Age that Alcoa and Rio Tinto had already signalled they did not see a long-term role for the nation’s three largest aluminium smelters in their portfolios under current electricity supply arrangements due to their high electricity cost and emissions output.

He believes that if such plants made use of Australia’s advantages in low-cost renewable energy, they could expand their output to meet demand during a global revival in aluminium demand.

Similarly, Professor Garnaut sees an opportunity in production of silicon, which is in demand for photo-voltaic cells and computer chips, and whose key ingredients he describes as high-grade sand or quartz, carbon, which can be renewable carbon from biomass, and “a huge amount of energy”.

“It is a natural for expansion,” he says.

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Coal Industry Will Never Recover After Coronavirus Pandemic, Say Experts

The Guardian -  | 



Climate activists in front of the coal-fired Jaenschwalde power station in the Lausitz region, Germany, protesting against open-cast mining in November 2019. Their banner reads: ‘Love for the Lausitz. Not for the coal.’ Photograph: Christian Mang/Reuters

The global coal industry will “never recover” from the Covid-19 pandemic, industry observers predict, because the crisis has proved renewable energy is cheaper for consumers and a safer bet for investors.

A long-term shift away from dirty fossil fuels has accelerated during the lockdown, bringing forward power plant closures in several countries and providing new evidence that humanity’s coal use may finally have peaked after more than 200 years.

That makes the worst-case climate scenarios less likely, because they are based on a continued expansion of coal for the rest of the century.

Even before the pandemic, the industry was under pressure due to heightened climate activism, divestment campaigns and cheap alternatives. The lockdown has exposed its frailties even further, wiping billions from the market valuations of the world’s biggest coal miners.

As demand for electricity has fallen, many utilities have cut back on coal first, because it is more expensive than gas, wind and solar. In the EU imports of coal for thermal power plants plunged by almost two-thirds in recent months to reach lows not seen in 30 years. The consequences have been felt around the world as well.

This week, a new report by the US Energy Information Administration projected the US would produce more electricity this year from renewables than from coal for the first time. Industry analysts predict coal’s share of US electricity generation could fall to just 10% in five years, down from 50% a decade ago.

Despite Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to “dig coal”, there are now more job losses and closures in the industry than at any time since Eisenhower’s presidency 60 years ago. Among the latest has been Great River Energy’s plan to shut down a 1.1-gigawatt thermal plant in North Dakota and replace it with wind and gas.

Rob Jackson, the chair of Global Carbon Project, said the pandemic was likely to confirm that coal will never again reach the global peak seen in 2013: “Covid-19 will slash coal emissions so much this year that the industry will never recover, even with a continued build-out in India and elsewhere. The crash in natural gas prices, record-cheap solar and wind power, and climate and health concerns have undercut the industry permanently.”

Records are falling thick and fast. By Friday, the UK national grid had not burned a single lump of coal for 35 days, the longest uninterrupted period since the start of the industrial revolution more than 230 years ago. In Portugal, the record coal-free run has extended almost two months, the campaign group Europe Beyond Coal recently reported.

A stack of coal at a power station in Geertruidenberg, Netherlands, in 2010. Photograph: Jock Fistick/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Last month Sweden closed its last coal-fired power plant, KVV6 in Hjorthagen, eastern Stockholm, two years early because the mild winter meant it was not used even before the pandemic. Austria followed suit with the shutdown of its only remaining coal plant at Mellach. The Netherlands said it would reduce the capacity of its thermal plants by 75% to comply with a court order to reduce climate risks.

More importantly, in India – the world’s second-biggest coal consumer – the government has prioritised cheap solar energy rather than coal in response to a slump in electricity demand caused by Covid-19 and a weak economy. This has led to the first year-on-year fall in carbon emissions in four decades, exceptional air quality, and a growing public clamour for more renewables.

Elsewhere in Asia, the picture is mixed. A few years ago, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines were expected to be the industry’s biggest growth areas, but the pandemic, falling renewable prices and a growing divestment campaign have put several major coal projects on hold.

South Korean president Moon Jae-in has been re-elected on a pledge to phase out domestic coal use, and many in his ruling coalition are pushing to end financing of overseas projects. In Japan, the big three commercial lenders and the governor of the Japan Bank of International Cooperation have recently said they will no longer accept proposals for coal generation.

Other money taps are also being turned off, as investors and finance houses respond to scientific advice and campaigns by divestment activists and school strikers such as Greta Thunberg.

“The economics of coal were already under structural pressure before the pandemic,” said Michael Lewis, the head of climate change investment research at French bank BNP Paribas. “And coming out of it these pressures will still be there – but now compounded by the impact of the pandemic.”

BNP Paribas is one of a growing list of financial institutions which have chosen to sever ties with coal. The bank said last week that it would accelerate its planned exit from coal financing to 2030 to bring its portfolio in line with the Paris climate goals sooner.

In the same week, the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund – the world’s biggest – ditched a host of coal mining and energy companies, including Glencore, Anglo-American, Vale and AGL over climate concerns. This follows coal blacklisting announcements by BlackRock, Standard Chartered and JPMorgan Chase.

The fossil fuel has fallen from favour in the eyes of many investors due to rising climate concerns, cheaper renewable energy alternatives and a public backlash against air pollution.

“The public health benefits of cleaner air will be front and centre after weeks of lockdown that have prompted blue skies and clean air in Asia’s megalopolises,” Lewis said. “This pressure from the finance sector will only accelerate going forward, pushing the cost of capital for coal projects even higher.”

Even before the pandemic, Australian coal companies said they were finding it hard to find financing for mines and port facilities due to the international divestment campaign. This is not the only economic squeeze. A near-30% fall in the price of thermal coal has made more than half of production unprofitable, prompting several firms to warn of pit closures and layoffs.

Coal mine and processing facility in Liulin, Shanxi province, China. Photograph: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The elephant in the room is China, which burns half of the world’s coal and is the biggest financier of mines and power plants in Asia and Africa – largely to provide an export market for its domestic manufacturing and engineering firms.

A few years ago, domestic coal consumption fell, prompting hopes that president Xi Jinping was committed to a shift away from dirty, high-emitting power production. But after the lockdown, the political priority is to jumpstart the economy. Provincial governments are now working on a slew of new thermal plants. But they are running at less than half of capacity because demand for coal has not returned to its previous level.

“Covid-19 has made clear that China and India have built more than they need. Even before the crisis, they had overcapacity. Now with lower demand, you can see everything is a mess,” said Carlos Fernández Alvarez, lead coal analyst at the International Energy Agency.

Alvarez said coal had been hit hardest by the pandemic, but he cautioned the decline could be temporary unless governments invest in renewables to pull economies out of the lockdown. “We have to look at this structurally. If there is high energy demand again in the future, it will probably be coal that picks up the slack because it is the marginal supplier,” he said.

While nobody is expecting coal to disappear any time soon, Ted Nace, director of Global Energy Monitor, believes the balance has shifted for good. “Coal is definitely on the downturn and this pandemic is going to accelerate that. Demand should come back to some degree next year. But there is a very strong argument that it is not going to just bounce back.”

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Causes Of Global Warming: How Scientists Know That Humans Are Responsible

Yale Climate Connections - 

It's a conclusion shared by the world's most respected scientific organizations.

Hurricane Dorian as seen from the International Space Station on Monday, September 2, 2019. (Photo credit: NASA)

You likely have heard about global warming in the news, at school or from a friend. And so you probably have questions such as, “What is causing this warming?” and “What role do humans play in that warming?” and “What’s the science behind the warming?”

According to widely cited research, more than 97% of climate scientists agree that the planet has been warming during the past several decades and that the warming is overwhelmingly the result of human activities.

That conclusion is also shared by the U.S.’s most respected scientific organization, the National Academies of Sciences, and by its counterpart organizations worldwide. The National Academies of Sciences, in a 2020 update to its “Climate Change Evidence and Causes” report, concluded that “Natural causes alone are inadequate to explain the recent observed changes in climate.”

It added that “only when models include human influences on the composition of the atmosphere are the resulting temperature changes consistent with observed changes.” Those conclusions are strengthened because they are based on observed, and not simply modeled, global temperatures.

To figure out the causes behind rising global temperatures, scientists start with what is known: They know based on scientific evidence that the planet is warming, and they have long known that greenhouse gases warm Earth’s atmosphere. They know too that humans emit large quantities of those same heat-trapping gases – most importantly including carbon dioxide – by burning fossil fuels and the release of the resulting emissions to the atmosphere.

To explain how gases like carbon dioxide are heating up the planet, climate scientists and communicators often use blankets as a metaphor. As humans burn fossil fuels, heat-trapping emissions accumulate in the atmosphere. Adding more of these gases to the planet’s atmosphere is like adding layers of blankets on top of a bed.

How scientists know the Earth is warming

Climate modeler Tom Knutson, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, explains that scientists can see that the planet is warming by observing surface and satellite temperature data over time.

In the mainland U.S., for instance, annual average temperature increased by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit from 1901 to 2016. Most of that increase has occurred since 1986. Globally, temperatures have increased at the same rate.



Surface temperature data is available in the U.S. as far back as 1885 thanks to an observatory founded on a hill outside of Boston.

Satellite temperature data, which documents the temperature of Earth’s atmosphere, is available from the late 1970s on.

Scientists also gather paleoclimate records, which provide clues to what the world’s climate was like before human records began. Such clues are stored in tree rings, glaciers, corals, and ocean and lake sediments. For example, by analyzing the dust particles and air bubbles stored in glacial ice cores, scientists can create a picture of what the climate was like in the past. For the U.S., paleoclimate data has shown that the most recent decades are the warmest in the past 1,500 years.

Scientists know that heat-trapping gases exist in the atmosphere

Heat-trapping gases in Earth’s atmosphere prevent some energy, or heat, from escaping out into space. That advantageous “greenhouse” effect is what makes Earth habitable for humans and all the life on the planet.

Scientists first began to realize that certain gases might trap heat in the 1820s, theorizing that the atmosphere retained heat, keeping the planet warm. In 1856, American scientist Eunice Foote published the results of an experiment describing how carbon dioxide trapped heat from the sun. Three years later, Irish scientist John Tyndall found that certain gases, including carbon dioxide, can retain and transfer heat.

In the late 19th century, Swedish scientist Svante August Arrhenius suggested that the burning of fossil fuels could become a large source of carbon dioxide emissions. In his later work he studied the effect that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide would have on the global climate. He concluded that temperatures would warm.

Without these greenhouse gases, Earth’s average temperature would be below freezing. But as people have added more of the heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere, the planet has warmed more than it could naturally. And as the levels of the carbon dioxide and other gases increase, average global temperatures increase.

Scientists know there are more heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere

Since 1958, researchers at the Mauna Loa Observatory on the island of Hawaii have been recording the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Charles Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California led this work, and the daily record of global carbon dioxide is known as the Keeling Curve.

In addition to carbon dioxide, atmospheric concentrations of the heat-trapping gases nitrous oxide and methane also have increased.

“We are reaching levels that we have never seen in nearly a million years,” notes Ilissa Ocko, a climate scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization.



Scientists know humans release these heat-trapping gases

Humans’ burning of coal, natural gas, and oil for transportation and electricity has led to releases of heat-trapping gases. Industrial processes and agriculture also emit heat-trapping gases.

Carbon dioxide – which, importantly, has a very long lifespan in the atmosphere – is the principal gas of concern to the science community, comprising the majority of global emissions. Since 1970, carbon dioxide emissions have increased by about 90%.

“This rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations is just unprecedented,” Knutson says.



The scientific community has also found a “smoking gun” link between human activities and rising carbon dioxide emissions. National Academy of Sciences member and geologist Richard Alley of Penn State University, in a brief video, explains that carbon isotopes show that human emissions are the source.

“It’s us,” Alley concludes.



The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations group charged with analyzing research about climate change, in its 2018 Special Report, confirmed that view, saying that “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.”

In addition, the report said, human activities are “extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” That carefully chosen “extremely likely” terminology indicates the reviewers’ highest level of scientific confidence in their findings.

For Ocko of the Environmental Defense Fund, these findings are actually somewhat reassuring.

“I’d be a lot more scared if this was completely natural, the sun was growing, the sun was moving closer to the Earth, and we had to resort to crazy, blockbuster movie scenarios to save ourselves,” she said. “Yes, it’s very hard to address, but at least we know how to do it. It’s a good thing that we know it’s humans, because that means we know how to fix it.”

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