Lethal Heating: 05/20/21

20/05/2021

(AU Crikey) Kurri Kurri Conflicts: New Gas Plant Is A Field Day For Party Donors

Crikey - Georgia Wilkins

A $600 million subsidy for a gas plant in Kurri Kurri makes no commercial sense for the taxpayer, but there are plenty of windfalls for Liberal Party donors.

Former Newcastle mayor and property developer Jeff McCloy (Image: AAP/Dan Himbrechts)

Has there ever been a project that so neatly fits the government’s political agenda as well as the commercial interests of its mates?

The $600 million subsidy announced for a gas plant in Kurri Kurri makes no commercial sense for the taxpayer, but there are windfalls everywhere you look for Liberal donors.

From the owners of the proposed site through to the Hunter Gas Pipeline and on to the Santos’ Narrabri gas project, there are vested interests as far as the eye can see.

Jeff McCloy

Jeff “walking ATM” McCloy stands to be one of the biggest potential beneficiaries of the plant. The former Newcastle mayor purchased the prospective site, an old aluminium smelter, with John Stevens in 2020.

At the time the pair said the purchase was the biggest of their careers and that the industrial part of the land would be ideal for either a solar farm or a gas peaking plant.

Labor’s Jenny McAllister asked officials from the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources this month whether they were aware that McCloy, a “major Liberal party donor”, owned the prospective site.

“That would be a matter for Snowy Hydro,” department secretary David Fredericks told the Senate estimates hearing.

In response to a question about what Snowy Hydro agreed to pay for the purchase of the land, Fredericks said: “That would be, firstly, a matter for Snowy Hydro; secondly, potentially subject to cabinet in confidence; and thirdly, potentially a matter of current commercial in confidence.”

Hunter Gas Pipeline

The gas for Kurri Kurri will likely come from the Santos Narrabri project, delivered via the Hunter Gas Pipeline.

According to The Centre for Public Integrity, pipeline developers Hilton Grugeon and Graham Burns have both been major donors to the NSW Liberals, donating substantial sums over previous years via Hunter Land Pty Ltd, a company they cofounded and still operate.

Santos

Santos’ Narrabri gas project would also be a potential beneficiary of increased demand for gas in the area.

Santos is a major political donor, handing nearly $2.5 million in donations to both sides of politics in the last 20 years. In 2017-18 it handed over $95,000 to Coalition branches and slightly less to ALP branches.

The company this month welcomed progress on Angus Taylor’s National Gas Infrastructure Plan, which takes in the Kurri Kurri plant.

Snowy Hydro

The government is subsidising the new gas plant through Snowy Hydro, which is fully owned, controlled and financed by the Commonwealth. Its joint shareholder ministers are Taylor and Finance Minister Simon Birmingham.

At the start of last year the government appointed David Knox, former CEO of Santos, to be the new Snowy Hydro chair.

Also on the Snowy board is former federal director of the National Party of Australia Scott Mitchell, who is registered as a lobbyist for major corporations including Rio Tinto, which has been campaigning the government on energy prices.

Rio stands to be one of the only companies affected by the shutdown of the Liddell coal-fired power station, as one of the owners of the Tomago aluminium smelter, which has been powered by it.

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(UK SMH) Climate-Proofing Impossible Without Better Models And Super-Computing

Sydney Morning Herald - Peter Hannam

Investments worth trillions of dollars to help protect people and assets in a warming world could be wasted without more powerful computer models to predict exposure to climate change.

The UK’s Royal Society on Wednesday issued a call for an international centre to develop next-generation climate models that would develop and share predictions for how the climate and extreme weather will change down to one-kilometre resolutions.

How Australia’s ACCESS-G weather model predicted the Fujiwhara effect playing out when Tropical Cyclone Seroja nears a tropical low off the WA coast. Credit: Weatherzone

The information generated would help identify areas that would become increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather and sea-level change. These include where events combine, such as heatwaves and bushfires, or hail and flooding.

“The scale of the potential investments in adaptation and the increasing vulnerability of societies across the world, together, place a very high value on more detailed and precise information about how weather and climate, and especially extreme weather hazards, are likely to change over the next decades and beyond,” the Royal Society’s briefing said.

“Detailed, location-specific climate information can safeguard the trillions of dollars’ worth of investment in infrastructure projects made over the coming decades by ensuring they are resilient to the projected impacts of climate change in terms of their location, construction and management.”

A firefighter is assisted seconds after being hit in thick smoke as fire roared through Bilpin in the Blue Mountains in December 2019. Credit: Nick Moir

The briefing noted 10 times more computing power is typically needed each time the precision of model predictions halves. Optimal resolution will require computing capable of conducting one billion billion calculations per second, a scale that will only be achieved by an international effort.

Australia’s ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes [CLEX] has backed the Royal Society’s call, noting governments have supported other global science projects, such as CERN and the Giant Magellan Telescope. Each cost more than $1 billion.

“The size of the necessary super-computing will be eye-watering,” Andy Pitman, head of CLEX, said. “It’s vastly beyond what any individual nation can do.”

From floods to bushfires and cyclones to heatwaves, the effects of climate change are predicted to get worse, increasing the need for accurate predictions. Credit: Wolter Peeters

Professor Pitman noted the federal government’s recent commitment to a national disaster recovery agency aimed at building resilience and also the decision by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority to release guidance on managing financial risks in a warming world.

Extreme weather

World’s oceans changing as currents show new patterns

“How the hell are businesses going to assess their vulnerability to something that science is still working on?” he said.

Better knowledge, for instance, could help determine whether a billion-dollar dam being considered for inland Australia would likely ever get filled.

Australian involvement in any international effort could help reverse what Professor Pitman described as a dramatic decline in the country’s fundament modelling capability compared with other nations. “I’d like to see Australia not sitting back and watching it happen,” he said.

The Royal Society said improved computer modelling would also help nations understand the consequences of failing to achieve the necessary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

“Only with the best possible climate models can we show what is at stake, what might be lost,
and what the future climate damage and costs of inaction will be,” it said.

A gigantic, powerhouse winter storm in 2017 that stirred up the North Atlantic and funnelled unusually warm air into the high Arctic. Credit: NERC Satellite Receiving Station, Dundee University, Scotland

Other Royal Society climate briefings included how to scale-up new technologies such as hydrogen, improving energy efficiency and better ways to manage food systems as the population heads towards 10 billion people.

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(AU The Guardian) Australia Urged To Drop Coal And Gas Plans After Global Energy Agency’s Warning

The Guardian - Adam Morton

International Energy Agency report says countries like Australia need a no-emissions electricity grid within 14 years to reach net zero by 2050

The International Energy Agency’s report on a path to net-zero emissions by 2050 comes as federal and state Coalition and Labor politicians continue to back the expansion of coal mines and gas fields. Photograph: Ashley Cooper/Alamy

Australian politicians and companies are being urged to abandon plans for new coal power, gas and oil investments after a major report by the world’s leading energy agency found fossil fuel expansion must end now if the planet is to address the climate crisis.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) found a “narrow and extremely challenging” pathway to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – a target set by more than 100 countries, and which the Morrison government says it would “preferably” like to achieve – would require advanced economies such as Australia to have a zero-emissions electricity grid by 2035.

It suggested wealthy countries should phase out coal-fired power plants by the end of the decade, the sale of new petrol and diesel cars should be banned by 2035 and global investment in clean energy should more than double to US$5tn (A$6.4tn) a year by 2030.

‘People are sceptical’: why mining giant BHP wants to get to net zero and how it plans to do it. Read more

Its executive director, Fatih Birol said the transition to a clean future would be a net benefit to the economy, not an economic burden as regularly framed in political debate.

The report, titled Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector, comes as the prime minister, Scott Morrison, backs a “gas-fired recovery” from the coronavirus pandemic, and federal and state Coalition and Labor politicians continue to back the expansion of coal mines and gas fields.

The Morrison government announced on Tuesday night it would spend $600m on a new gas-fired power plant in New South Wales despite the head of the Energy Security Board, Kerry Schott, warning it made little commercial sense.

Erwin Jackson, the director of policy with the Investor Group on Climate Change, said it was the IEA’s first document that aligned with the goals of the Paris agreement signed in 2015.

He said it showed that improving energy systems, accelerating existing technologies and lifting research and development could rapidly decarbonise the energy system, boost economies and “create good jobs”.

“[It] puts a nail in the coffin of the claim that companies and governments should be continuing to expand the fossil fuel industry,” Jackson said. “Companies and governments need to focus much more on winding down legacy fossil fuel assets and ensuring support for communities heavily exposed to the … irreversible transition to zero emissions.”

The report is particularly noteworthy because previous IEA analyses have been cited by the gas industry to claim new gas developments were consistent with the goals of the Paris agreement.

No new oil, gas or coal development if world is to reach net zero by 2050, says world energy body. Read more

Climate-focused shareholder activists said it strengthened their case that ASX-listed companies must drop all new fossil fuel projects.

Dan Gocher, from the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, said it had “enormous implications” for companies involved in oil and gas production such as BHP, Origin, Santos and Woodside, power plant owners such as AGL and Origin, and fuel refiners Ampol and VIVA Energy.

“Those oil and gas projects that have yet to be sanctioned, including Woodside and BHP’s Scarborough project, Santos’ Narrabri project and Origin’s Beetaloo project, are simply not consistent with a net-zero-by-2050 pathway,” he said.

A spokesperson for Woodside said the IEA report was “a valuable insight into how the world could accelerate its energy transition to net zero by 2050”, but the pathway it laid out was the “most ambitious end” of plans that could align with the Paris agreement.

“Woodside is working with its customers, all of whom are in countries that have committed to net zero, to ensure we can supply them with the energy they are seeking in order to achieve their decarbonisation pathways.”

Bruce Robertson, a gas analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said it was noteworthy that the IEA report was reviewed by major oil and gas companies, including Shell, ENI and BP. “So it is certainly not overly biased against fossil fuels,” he said.

Robertson said it suggested the trade in global liquefied natural gas would fall by 60% between 2020 and 2050.

Gocher said: “The IEA report makes a mockery of the Australian government’s so-called gas-fired recovery, as well as its recently announced subsidies for fuel refineries, and its do-nothing electric vehicle policy.”

A spokesperson for the emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, did not directly address the IEA’s call on fossil fuels, but said Birol had been correct to point out there had been a growing gap between “rhetoric and what’s happening in the real world” on climate.

Australia’s first fully renewable ‘hydrogen valley’ slated for NSW coal heartland. Read more

“Australia’s track record is one of delivery and meeting and beating our commitments,” the spokesperson said. “Many countries with very ambitious targets do not have the same record of delivery.”

A recent analysis found Australia was on track to have the most carbon-intensive economy of any major developed country in 2030 after other developed nations significantly increased their commitments to cut emissions this decade.

Labor did not respond to a question about the IEA report before publication.

The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, said the report was a “a code red alarm call” to Liberal and Labor to phase out coal by 2030.

“In balance of power after the next election, the Greens will kick the Liberals out and rely on this report to push Labor to phase out coal, oil and gas,” he said.

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