Lethal Heating: 12/15/20

15/12/2020

(AU) Carbon Targets On Agenda At World Leaders' Summit, But What Is Business Doing To Bring Emissions Down?

ABC Illawarra | Nick McLaren

The steelworks at Port Kembla is the largest steel production facility in Australia. (ABC Illawarra: Ainslie Drewitt-Smith)

As world leaders meet in the hope of agreeing to tighter global emission targets, carbon-intensive industries operating in Australia are watching closely.

The 2020 United Nations Emissions Gap report this week found that despite a brief dip in carbon dioxide emissions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the world was still heading for a temperature rise in excess of 3 degrees Celsius this century.

That is far beyond the Paris Agreement goals of limiting global warming to well below 2C and pursuing 1.5C.

Australia has promised to cut its 2005 emission levels by 26-28 per cent before 2030 as part of the Paris Agreement and is now on track to meet those targets without the need to count carry over credits, the Federal Government said this week.

Meanwhile, there are no agreed targets for businesses in Australia, nor a mechanism to ensure they commit to meaningful targets.

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Richie Merzian from the Climate Institute says this poses a real problem.

"The Government system is pretty weak so it doesn't actually cap those emissions," he said.

"If you are a company that has very little public profile, you have no retail facing element to your company, then you could try and hide behind the barriers and try and get away with it.

"One would hope there is enough integrity, enough goodwill to do more, because the climate is only getting worse. We are seeing more bushfires, more floods, more intense storms."

As human induced global warming increases, extreme bushfires like this at Bawley Point in December 2019 will occur more often.(ABC Illawarra: Ainslie Drewitt-Smith)

Coal expansions continue to be approved

Wollongong Coal is an Illawarra-based coal miner exporting all its coking coal to India, so has little interaction with the local community.

This week it gained approval to reopen its mothballed Russell Vale mine and generate 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 emissions over five years.

As part of the approval process it was required to do little if anything to reduce emissions, and does not mention emissions at all in its environmental policy published on its website.

It was also not required to reduce carbon emissions in the final approval report from NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment (DPIE).

"The project, in isolation, is unlikely to influence global emissions and climate change trajectories," the DPIE report said.

"This increase [in emissions] is unlikely to affect Australia achieving its national mitigation targets in any material way."

Another coal mining company, South32, is seeking approval to extract 78 million tonnes of metallurgical coal from its Dendrobium mine expansion project near Wollongong up until 2048.

As well as coming out strongly to sell the benefits of ongoing employment, and coal supply to the Port Kembla steelworks, South32 is actively promoting its emission targets.

"South32 is committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050," a company spokesman said.

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The spokesman said the company supports the Paris Agreement objectives to limit global temperature rise to below 2C this century, and is working on ways to decarbonise its operations by reducing Scope 1 emissions at its Worsley Alumina mine in Western Australia and its Illawarra mines.

"At Appin Mine, our gas drainage and capture network enables the reuse of waste coal mine gas to generate power," the company said.

"In 2019, the gas captured was used to generate equivalent electricity for around 52,000 homes, or roughly 45 per cent of all homes in Wollongong."

South32 has also completed a 7,200-panel solar farm in Cannington in Queensland to offset gas consumption with solar energy.

But does this go far enough to enable to company to achieve significant carbon emission targets?

Creative accounting in emissions

Mr Merzan from the Climate Institute said commitments to offset emissions by coal mines need to be looked at carefully.

"A coal mine is a hard one to offset because you have got the emissions that come with the actual production of the coal, but then most of the emissions from coal come when you actually burn it," he said.

Scope 3 emissions refer to emissions not generated directly by the miner, but indirectly by the consumer — and often in another country.

"So are they looking to just offset the emissions they are directly responsible for? Or will they be looking to offset the emissions that come with actually producing that coal when its finally consumed?" Mr Merzan asked.

"The best practise is to offset your entire carbon footprint, that includes the Scope 3 emissions."

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Greg Bourne from the Climate Council is a former president of BP Australasia and believes the road ahead will vary a lot, depending on what kind of company you are.

"If you are talking steel, to move from using coking coal to make steel to eventually move to using hydrogen, or hydrogen mixed with other gases, to create steel is actually a fundamental restructuring of that part of the industry," he said.

"That's very capital intensive and very difficult, but it will happen around the world.

"Given they compete against each other it's going to be capital intensive, its going to be difficult."

The Port Kembla steelworks could increase production in response to demands for renewable energy infrastructure. (ABC News: Gavin Coote)

Paris Agreement goals

Deal to limit global warming to "well below" 2 degrees C, aiming for 1.5 degrees C
Greenhouse gas emissions need to peak "as soon as possible", followed by rapid reduction
Deal will eliminate use of coal, oil and gas for energy
Fossil fuels to be replaced by solar, wind power
Developed countries to provide $US100b a year from 2020 to help developing nations

For Bluescope Steel, Australia's largest steelmaker with extensive operations also in South-East Asia, South Asia, North America and New Zealand, the transition is underway but yet to fully ramp up.

The company supports the 2050 Paris Agreement target and has a near-term target of reducing "carbon emissions intensity" by at least 12 per cent by 2030.

Bluescope may also be working on plans to transition to so-called "green steel" and to adopt hydrogen into its energy mix.

"Climate action is now embedded in Bluecope's new corporate strategy," a company spokesman said.

The company in November this year announced a $20 million investment program in conjuction with the NSW Government to manufacture components used in wind and solar projects, but is yet to go into detail on plans for green steel.

"Watch this space as we will have a lot more to say in the new year," the spokesman said.

Hydrogen seen as a way out of coal

Either way, the use of hydrogen could be the key to bringing emissions towards zero, including offsets.

CSIRO's Daniel Roberts says Australia is seeing more large-scale green hydrogen projects in preparation to meet demand from overseas markets. (ABC News: Mark Leonardi)

CSIRO director of hydrogen energy Dr Daniel Roberts said hydrogen was still largely limited to industrial applications in Australia — fertilisers, explosives, oil refining processes and the like — but its use was becoming more widespread.

He said, in Australia, 'brown' hydrogen was usually made from natural gas, while in some locations 'black' hydrogen was made from coal.

But making both 'blue' and 'green' hydrogen opened up significant opportunities to decarbonise the smeltering process.

"The carbon credentials of using hydrogen in any process relies strongly on where you get that hydrogen from," he said.

"Hydrogen from renewables via electrolysis is one way to go, and making it from gas and storing the CO2 is also carbon neutral and could be another way to go."

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Mr Bourne from the Climate Council said it was important to keep all energy pathways open without relying too heavily on potential fixes.

"The key thing is not to use 'hydrogen as coming along' as an excuse not to do the hard graft today," he said.

"We have to do the hard graft in transport as we electrify our industries, we have to do the hard graft moving away from coal, we have to do the hard graft not bringing on new gas fields and new pipelines.

"We have to do all of that, and as we do that over this decade we will build the possibilities of a new hydrogen industry. But its not an either-or."

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(AU) 'Sacrificial Canary': Fiji Warns Australia Not To Let Pacific Sink

Sydney Morning Herald - Nick O'Malley | Bevan Shields | David Crowe

The Fijian Prime Minister has warned Australia's climate targets must increase to net zero emissions by 2050 or risk sacrificing Pacific nations, as Prime Minister Scott Morrison insisted he was not frustrated about missing a speaking spot at a global climate summit.

Mr Morrison addressed the Pacific Islands Forum about Australia's climate commitments on Friday night, but he will not speak at a larger summit in the early hours of Sunday morning after Australia was denied a spot.

Prime Minister of Fiji Frank Bainimarama and Prime Minister Scott Morrison during a signing ceremony in September 2019. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Speaking with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age hours before the start of Friday night's Pacific Islands Forum on urgent climate action, Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama welcomed news Australia would not use Kyoto credits to reach emissions targets, but called for more ambitious action.

"When it comes to climate change, I'm fond of saying every nation is in the same canoe. Currently, that collective canoe is taking on water and there are too few of us trying to patch the holes," he said.

"I am glad the Australian government has recognised you cannot fix those leaks with Kyoto credits.

"Every nation must put forward more ambitious emissions reduction targets by 2030 as part of a net zero commitment by 2050, and not one day later."

Likening Pacific island nations to a canary in a coal mine, he said he refused to allow "Fijians and our Pacific Island sisters and brothers to be some sacrificial canary for coal-burning countries and high-emitting companies."

"We must not stand idly by and watch the world's most vulnerable countries suffer, only to warn other, wealthier nations that their own fate will soon follow."

Mr Morrison dismissed the suggestion he was frustrated over this weekend's global summit, and he emphasised his message to Pacific Island Forum leaders about Australian help in dealing with climate change.

"We're committed to achieving net zero emissions as soon as possible," he said. "Our long term emissions reduction strategy to be launched ahead of COP26 will provide the necessary detail on our plan.

"We believe the what and the why are really no longer the issue. I think we're well beyond that now. Unless we can actually understand the how, then these things won't be achieved and achieving them is what matters.

"The how is so critically important and that's where Australia is focusing our efforts."

But government officials are privately furious and much of their anger is directed towards British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is hosting the conference in partnership with the UN and France.

Mr Johnson invited Mr Morrison to speak at the December 12 summit several weeks ago but walked away from the offer this week amid a behind-the-scenes diplomatic tussle over whether Australia's climate change policies were insufficient to warrant a speaking slot.

The Prime Minister had planned to use his speech to announce Australia would drop its controversial plan to use Kyoto carryover credits to achieve its 2030 emissions reduction targets.

Selwin Hart, the special adviser to UN secretary-general António Guterres on climate action, said Australia had not met the threshold needed to speak.

"The three co-hosts – the UN, UK and France – provided all member states with very clear guidance from the outset that speaking slots would go to countries and other actors who show the most ambition right now," he said.

He repeated the UN's position that countries should sign up to achieving net zero emissions by 2050 ahead of a major climate summit in Glasgow next November.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was also excluded from the list of nearly 80 world leaders given permission to address Saturday's summit.

China, which is building dozens of new coal-fired power plants but has committed to net zero emissions by 2060, was given a spot.

"Rather than focusing on those countries that are not on that list as of now, we really should be celebrating those that have decided to come forward this early - many of them from the developing world who despite the challenges of the pandemic, [are] on the frontlines of the climate crisis including many countries in the Pacific - to make bold and ambitious commitments around net zero," Mr Hart said.

"Some have brought these commitments forward and I think we should celebrate those leaders who have come forward and decided to take this ambitious step before COP26.

"We have a long way to go before Glasgow and we hope that this coalition around net zero by mid-century will grow."

Mr Johnson offered Mr Morrison the chance to speak even though France, the UN and other supporting partners like Italy and Chile had a say on who made the final list.

The government is furious that Mr Johnson was unable to guarantee the promise. There had already been tensions between the UK and Australia over climate in the weeks since Downing Street publicly claimed Mr Johnson had urged Mr Morrison to take "bold action" during a phone call on October 28.

"He has thrown us under the bus," one government official said on Thursday.

Suega Apelu bathes a child in the lagoon in Funafuti, Tuvalu. The low-lying South Pacific island nation of about 11,000 people has been classified as extremely vulnerable to climate change by the United Nations Development Programme. Credit: Mario Tama

Diplomatic sources not authorised to speak publicly said Britain's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office was determined to not let Australia speak.

Japan, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru and Cambodia are the only countries in the Asia-Pacific region given a speaking slot.

Mr Hart said the UN wanted to see more commitments on climate financing and appeared to take a swipe at Australia for not doing more to help its Pacific neighbours.

"Ten years ago developed countries promised to mobilise $US100 billion per year in new climate finance to support mitigation and adaptation in the developing world," he said.

"That goal has not yet been met."

Mr Morrison last year pledged to redirect more than half a billion dollars in foreign aid towards renewable energy projects and disaster relief throughout the Pacific.

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(AU) The Liberal Minister Forcing Action On Climate Change

Saturday Paper - Mike Seccombe

In his first major interview since passing a landmark energy package, NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean outlines his philosophy for a new kind of politics.

NSW Energy and Environment Minister Matt Kean. Credit: AAP Image / Dean Lewins

When Matt Kean was made minister for Energy and Environment in the New South Wales government last April, he says, his first thought was: “I must have upset the premier. What have I done?”

He was only half joking. While he was “excited” at the opportunity to make his mark in the new portfolios – he has had a lifelong concern for the environment and his father worked for decades in the energy sector – Kean was also “filled with trepidation”.

“You know,” he tells The Saturday Paper, “this is a contested space in Australian politics. It has brought down three prime ministers, it’s torn down governments.”

Kean had good reason to fear the people who had torn down those leaders and governments – fellow Liberals and Nationals, the vested interests in the fossil fuel sector and reactionary media. They have come after him, and are still coming.

Nonetheless, he took the role determined to “fly the flag for the brand of liberalism that I believed in and that I felt that my community supported”. He says, “That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do.”

At the end of last month, Kean saw through the state parliament legislation to support a plan to build 12 gigawatts of large-scale renewable energy generation – about as much as currently exists in all of the country – along with two gigawatts of storage, largely pumped hydro, over the next decade. It is anticipated it will attract $32 billion in private investment, create 6300 construction jobs and 2800 operational jobs, mostly in regional areas, and cut power bills by an average $130 per household and $440 per small business, per year.

It took a while to get through the parliament: more than 30 continuous hours of debate in the state’s upper house, largely due to the spoiling tactics of One Nation’s Mark Latham, who put up 249 amendments.

But while Latham’s nitpicking made the process protracted, it made no dent in the multipartisan backing Kean had brought together in support of his package. The Greens voted for it. So did the Christian Democrats’ Fred Nile, the left-leaning minor parties and independents, and Labor.

Most significantly, all the Liberals and Nationals endorsed the ambitious plan. In so doing, they endorsed Kean’s view that there is nothing radical about taking strong action in response to climate change, that it is not just an environmental imperative but also an economic one, and not at all in conflict with the tenets of political conservatism.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

“For me,” says Kean, “it was always confusing as to why there were elements of the Liberal Party that were sort of anti-environmental or anti taking action on climate change.

“I mean, conservatism is about conserving those things that are important … and I can’t think of anything more important than our environment.

“So, you know, I’m looking to take action on climate change, not in spite of the fact I’m a conservative, but because I’m a conservative. I’m looking to protect our environment, because I believe that conservatives have an obligation to hand our planet to our kids better than we found it.”

Kean points to conservative governments elsewhere in the world, such as in Britain, where Boris Johnson’s Tories have committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 68 per cent by 2030, and Germany, where Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union is pushing a cut of 50-55 per cent by 2030, not just for her country but for the whole European Union.

He continues to reel off examples: “Just recently, we’ve seen a new conservative prime minister of Japan commit to net zero emissions by 2050. So these guys are not doing it in spite of the fact they’re conservatives, they’re doing it because they are conservatives.”

Simple prudence, an important conservative value, would dictate serious action to cut greenhouse emissions.

“Seventy per cent of our two-way [trade] is now with countries that have committed to achieving net zero emissions by mid-century. So if we don’t get ahead of the curve, then our ability to continue to export products into those international markets is going to be massively curtailed,” Kean says.

“We’ve already seen some moves towards trade barriers. For example, in the EU, they’re looking to put tariffs in place for goods that are carbon intense.”

But Kean would rather focus less on these threats than on the opportunities presented by de-carbonisation.

“We’ve got to bust the myth that being good custodians of our planet comes at the expense of our prosperity. It doesn’t,” he says.

The economics of energy have shifted in the past 10 years, and shifted even more in the past five, he says. The cost of generating and storing renewable energy has plunged.

“Today the cheapest way to generate electricity is not coal, gas or nuclear; it’s a combination of wind, solar, pumped hydro and batteries.

“And that’s not me saying that. It’s the CSIRO saying it. It’s AEMO [the Australian Energy Market Operator, set up by the Council of Australian Governments to plan our energy future] saying it. It’s the market saying that.

“There is now an economically rational argument, which is what the Liberal Party has traditionally been focused on: the economics of free markets.

“And that’s provided a bridge for a lot of those conservatives that previously campaigned against taking action on climate change to walk across.”

To those concerned about climate change, this observation from a Liberal Party insider is encouraging. But when Kean expressed that same view almost a year ago, it caused him considerable grief.

The circumstances were these: with the fires of what was to become known as Australia’s Black Summer burning out of control, some people stated the scientifically obvious reality, subsequently restated in the findings of the royal commission into the fires, that climate change was a major factor.

Kean was one of those people. Speaking at an energy conference on December 10 last year, he said what was happening was “exactly what the scientists have warned us would happen”, which was “longer drier periods, resulting in more drought and bushfire”.

“If this is not a catalyst for change, then I don’t know what is,” he said.

A number of senior conservative politicians, most notably Scott Morrison, responded by saying it was “not the time” for such things. The prime minister suggested offering prayers instead.

But Kean did not stop repeating the unpalatable truth, and on January 19 he went further, saying some members of the Morrison cabinet favoured a stronger policy response to the climate crisis.

Morrison came down on him like a ton of bricks.

“Matt Kean doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” the prime minister said. “He doesn’t know what’s going on in the federal cabinet and most of the federal cabinet wouldn’t even know who Matt Kean was.”

This response prompts two observations.

First, Kean didn’t say he knew what was going on inside cabinet, only that some cabinet ministers wanted the government to do more, which was correct. One of them, Josh Frydenberg, had actually proposed doing more when he was previously Environment minister, before pressure from the government’s climate sceptics forced a backdown, and shortly thereafter the removal of Malcolm Turnbull from the prime ministership.

Second, it is quite implausible that most cabinet ministers did not know of Kean, a leader of the moderates in NSW.

In any case, Morrison’s response and the wide reporting it prompted of the Coalition’s divisions served to raise Kean’s profile as a climate realist. And now, almost a year down the track, there is no doubt at all that everyone in the federal Coalition, not just in cabinet, knows who Matt Kean is. He and his plan to massively expand renewable generation and storage were major issues of debate within the Coalition party room at its two most recent meetings.

The federal government’s internal fossil fuel lobby, led by Queensland Nationals senator and former Resources minister Matt Canavan, attacked Kean’s clean energy road map, urging Morrison to pull out of a $2 billion energy agreement struck earlier this year between the federal and NSW governments, and calling for a new coal-fired power station in the Hunter Valley.

Three weeks ago, Angus Taylor, the federal minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, also defended coal generators, this time at an energy and climate summit sponsored by The Australian Financial Review.

“I’m concerned about models and analysis including unrealistic assumptions that don’t translate into the real world,” he said. “… We shouldn’t see models that assume large coal generators stay in the market despite policy changes that seriously undermine profitability and commercial sustainability. If policymakers want to force out coal generators prematurely, they should say that upfront.”

And at the same conference, Kean fired back: “I’m on the side of the public, I’m not on the side of the vested interests who want to drive up prices and make the mums and dads of NSW pay for it.”

He said he was confident of the modelling, and that his plan would not force the early closure of coal-fired generators. Rather, it was intended to cope with the imminent closure of elderly, unreliable stations.

Speaking to The Saturday Paper this week, Kean was animated, sitting in front of a portrait of his political hero, United States Democrat president John F. Kennedy. He elaborated further on why NSW had been forced into unilateral action to address the climate and energy crisis.

Of course, he says, it would have been better had there been a clear national framework to give the private sector the certainty it needed to invest in the inevitable transition away from fossil fuels.

“But there’s been several attempts to achieve that and they’ve fallen over,” he says. “Now, I can’t sit on my hands and wait for them to find a pathway forward in Canberra. I’ve got a responsibility to the citizens and businesses in NSW.”

Four of the state’s big coal-fired power stations are slated to close between 2028 and 2035, says Kean, “and my job as the minister for Energy in NSW is to make sure that when they close, that there’s something there to replace that capacity”.

Otherwise, there will be blackouts and price spikes. He points to what happened when Victoria’s Hazelwood Power Station shut with little warning in mid-2016: “Consumers in NSW saw 60 per cent increases on their bills.”

The lead times for building the replacement infrastructure are long and the costs are high. The first step to getting the necessary investment, he says, “is to make sure that the market signals and settings are right” and that the rules won’t change “every time there’s a change in government or change of leader within a government”.

This is exactly what has happened in Australian federal politics: there was a good policy under Labor, which was dismantled by the Abbott government, which Malcolm Turnbull, whom Kean greatly admires, tried and failed to restore, and which the Morrison government has done little about, because of internal resistance.

“I’ve been watching this car crash of public policy for over a decade,” says Kean. “And the key learning for me was that we need to find areas of common ground, we need to find the things that unite us if we’re going to move forward.”

Hence his assiduous efforts in putting together the grand coalition that passed his bill last month. “I went out and tried to understand what the different constituencies, what the different parties were concerned about.”

For the Nationals, he says, there was the promise of $58 billion worth of investment and thousands of jobs by 2042, plus an expected $1.5 billion in rent for landholders for hosting new infrastructure in the three earmarked regional “renewable energy zones”.

For Labor and its union constituency, the plan was amended to include another REZ, in the Hunter region, where coal is now a big employer. Plus, Kean says, “we mandated local content … a priority to build our energy system using Australian manufacturing, done by Australian workers”.

And for the Greens: “We supported their amendments to provide money for the hydrogen industry.

“It was about building the coalition as broad as possible, so it couldn’t be attacked by the vested interests and the political opportunists that have held our country back for so long,” he says.

“When you’ve got Mark Latham and the big energy companies lining up to protect their super-profits, you know you’re on the right side of the debate.”

But it’s not just Latham, of course. It’s also a significant cohort of Coalition members in Canberra. The irony is that even as Taylor and Morrison complain about Kean’s plan, they need it to work.

The prime minister has lately flagged a move away from his government’s previous, dodgy plan to use so-called carryover credits to meet Australia’s very modest commitment to a 26-28 per cent reduction in greenhouse emissions by 2030, made under the Paris Agreement. That shift has been made feasible because of the skyrocketing installations of rooftop solar panels by businesses and households, and by a reduction in energy demand – and thus emissions – due to the Covid-19 recession.

But if Australia is to make any improvement on its target in the next round of greenhouse reduction negotiations, it will rely on the states, all of which now have set more ambitious targets. In the case of NSW, the target is 35 per cent by 2030. All states and territories are now committed to net zero by 2050.

Talking to Matt Kean, you wouldn’t credit that he took his portfolio “filled with trepidation”. His confidence in a future powered by wind, solar, pumped hydro, hydrogen, batteries and, maybe short-term, a little gas, is infectious. As is his belief in Australia becoming a “renewable energy and economic superpower”.

He is a self-described “evangelist”, not only for the new technology but also for a new politics not dominated by “fear and division”.

If only his federal counterparts would catch the fire.

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