24/08/2021

(AU The Guardian) German Ambassador Joins Calls For Morrison Government To Take More Ambitious Climate Action

 The Guardian - 

Exclusive: Thomas Fitschen says Glasgow summit a ‘decisive moment’ with current international commitments insufficient to limit global heating to 1.5C

Germany ambassador Thomas Fitschen says the world needs stronger emissions targets from as many countries as possible ‘and that should include Australia’. Photograph: Matt Jelonek

The Morrison government faces growing calls to take more ambitious climate action, with Germany’s ambassador declaring the world needs stronger targets from as many countries as possible “and that should include Australia”.

The German ambassador to Australia, Thomas Fitschen, described the latest scientific warning on global heating as “yet another really deafening wake-up call that the time for averting a climate catastrophe is running out fast”.

Australia has not yet firmly committed to net zero by 2050, while its 2030 target remains set at the Abbott-era level of reducing emissions by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels – a stance that has attracted increasing attention from Australia’s allies and partners.

In an interview with Guardian Australia, Fitschen described the upcoming climate summit in Glasgow as a “decisive moment”.

“We will need more ambitious climate targets from as many states as possible – that should include Australia,” he said.

“Obviously industrialised states bear a special responsibility in the fight against climate change, because they are historically responsible for large shares of the emissions already released into the atmosphere.”

While Fitschen said it was not his role to advise the Australian government on its targets, he added that the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made it “abundantly clear that the current international commitments are insufficient to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees”.

“It also highlights the crucial importance of making deep emission cuts already this decade, in order to avoid reaching critical tipping points,” he said.

“But as the report also points out, it is not too late – we are at a fork in the road, but if all countries decide to take the path towards 1.5 degrees together, we may still be able to avert the worst.”

Fitschen said Germany believed “that we must take decisive action now to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions … within this decade, and of course to achieve climate neutrality by 2050 at the latest”.

Germany has committed in law to achieve net zero by 2045 – five years earlier than its original pledge. Germany sped up its emission reduction plans after a landmark ruling by the country’s constitutional court said the existing measures were insufficient to protect future generations.

The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has adopted a mantra of “technology not taxes” on climate policy, arguing the focus should be on achieving “game-changing” technological breakthroughs.

Morrison and his German counterpart, Angela Merkel, agreed on the sidelines of the G7 summit in June that “technology-led responses are critical to reducing greenhouse gas emissions while also ensuring economic growth and job creation”.

In line with the “accord” signed by Morrison and Merkel, Fitschen indicated Germany was eager to import hydrogen from Australia.

The ambassador signalled, however, that it should be produced from renewable sources – something that is known as “green hydrogen”.

“So, if we take [the IPCC report] seriously – that we have to decarbonise, that we have to bring down emissions from fossil fuels – [then] the hydrogen that we want to have as replacement should indeed be green, yes,” Fitschen said.

He said Australia was “extremely well-placed to become a major exporter of green hydrogen” while Germany aimed to be “a leader in the field of hydrogen technology and future importer of vast quantities of green hydrogen to decarbonise our economy”.

The Australian government has previously nominated “clean hydrogen” as a priority low-emissions technology that could eventually help replace fossil fuels in transport, electricity and industrial processes – but has not defined what this would mean in terms of emissions.

Australia’s low-emissions technology statement forecast the cheapest way to produce it in the short term might be to use gas or “coal gasification” with carbon capture and storage (CCS). It said production methods using renewable energy would become cheaper as demand grew.

More recently, analysts have argued “green hydrogen” made with wind and solar electricity could become cheaper much faster than expected.

In the lead-up to the Cop26 summit in Glasgow in November, the Australian government has been facing mounting pressure to step up its climate commitments, including from the British hosts of the talks.

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Morrison spoke with the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, on Thursday night, and while they mostly focused on Afghanistan, they also discussed climate policy.

The British government issued a statement afterwards saying Johnson had “underlined the importance of global action on climate change” including “setting ambitious targets for reaching net zero and increasing climate financing”.

But a statement issued by Morrison’s office had a different emphasis, saying Johnson “noted Australia’s world-leading efforts to develop technology to help reduce global emissions”.

The US and EU have also been encouraging Australia to increase its commitments.

A senior US climate official, Dr Jonathan Pershing, told Guardian Australia earlier this month that Australia’s targets were “not sufficient” and the country should be considering a 50% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, given the urgency of the climate threat.

The EU’s ambassador to Australia, Michael Pulch, said he “absolutely” hoped Australia and other developed countries embraced stronger 2030 climate targets, describing the coming decade as “crucial” in the fight against global heating.

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(SMH) Scientists Turn To Risky Plan B As The World Fails On Climate Change

Sydney Morning Herald - Nick O'Malley

In June this year Harvard scientists had planned to release a balloon from Esrange Space Centre in northern Sweden and, once it had climbed into the stratosphere, release a small vial of calcium carbonate, the sort of substance you’d normally come across in a dose of antacid.

A NASA balloon launch from the Swedish Space Corporation site.

The balloon never took off. The scientists, whose experiments were to have informed the development of new technologies that might rapidly cool the Earth by reflecting heat from the sun back into space, bowed to protests from activists appalled by the implications of their work.

Some fear a future world addicted to an unnatural method of regulating the climate and the potential of terrible unintended consequences. Some even fear living under a sky whose hue is artificially whitened.

Despite such fears, in the wake of the UN report published last Monday showing that even if the world quickly and massively reduces emissions we are still likely to see warming of 1.5 degrees in the coming two decades, some attention is returning to controversial technological climate fixes, particularly in the field known as solar geoengineering.

Simon Nicholson, an associate professor of international relations at American University who specialises in laws governing emerging environmental technologies, says he believes the report will help overcome the taboo around that research.

Call to end coal renewed as world leaders address UN climate report
In its simplest terms, the process the Harvard team are researching may one day involve flights of specialist aircraft regularly dumping powder into the stratosphere, where it would linger for months reflecting a portion of inbound sunlight.

Types of solar geoengineering have proven attractive to researchers because they appear to be physically and economically viable and rapidly scalable.

We know for example, that when Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines exploded in volcanic eruption in 1991, it cooled the planet by 0.6 Celsius for about 15 months due to the particulate matter it disgorged into the atmosphere.

 Modelling suggests it would cost billions of dollars to maintain a fleet of aircraft to mimic that effect - yet that is small change compared with the sums typically bandied about in climate debates.

Increasing cloud cover to help cool the Great Barrier Reef is one type of geoengineering being considered for testing. Credit: Photo: Bloomberg

The arguments against the process are compelling too.

Nicholson notes that many of those engaged in the climate movement want to educate humans to live within natural limitations. “Anything that seems to smack of the type of hubris that got us into this mess in the first place, like heavily industrial, highly capitalist types of pathways forward, tend to be viewed sceptically.”

A second concern is the “moral hazard” such technologies may present by diverting research and attention from efforts to curb emissions and present industry with a continued licence to pollute the planet.

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Opponents also point out that if such technology was deployed the world may become dependent on it, meaning we would need to keep feeding the atmosphere with cooling particles without fully understanding the long-term effects.

Michael Mann, one of the world’s leading climate scientists and communicators, and Oxford physicist Ray Pierrehumbert, likened the process to “climate methadone” in a recent column in The Guardian newspaper.

“When it comes to a system we don’t understand perfectly, the principle of unintended consequences reigns supreme,” wrote Mann in his recent book The New Climate War. “If we screw up the planet with botched geoengineering attempts, there is no ‘do-over’.”

Nicholson believes the new climate report suggests we no longer have the luxury of not investigating geoengineering. “We’re in a position now where it’s not just the risks of solar geoengineering versus a world where climate change has been dealt with in other ways,” he says.

“That’s not what the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report is putting on the table for us. Instead what the IPCC is saying is climate risk is going to get worse moving forward, even if we do everything that the IPCC is recommending to reduce emissions.

“I think we may reach a point down the road where solar geoengineering is going to be one of the most just things that can be done to help those who are most vulnerable to climate change.”

Given that, he believes proper research and protocols should be developed now when it can be controlled, before the climate crisis escalates.

He believes the argument that existing international law makes the research illegal is a misreading of the relevant treaties. “I’m in the group of people who thinks that the time has come to stop the fighting over whether small-scale investigation into solar geoengineering is necessary. I think it actually is required at this point.”

In March this year, before the Harvard team abandoned its test flight, Dr Dan Harrison of Southern Cross University led a team of scientists on a live-aboard barge onto a section of the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Townsville to test specialised new equipment that might one day help cool the reef and avert coral bleaching.

Harrison’s team is exploring a process known as cloud brightening, technically a form of solar geoengineering, though on a far smaller and less controversial scale.

It involves blasting seawater high into the air using specialised pumps and nozzles to create a mist of ultra-fine particles. Once airborne the droplets evaporate, leaving behind billions of salt crystals that can form the nuclei of cloud droplets.

These in turn would make clouds brighter and more dense, cooling the reef below by reflecting more of the sun’s rays and through evaporation.

Harrison’s hope is that one day equipment like this could be moored at key points along the reef and deployed on what he calls “ships of opportunity” - vessels that already ply the reef, as well as carefully placed barges - to cool the reef as heat waves approach, sparing the delicate coral below.

As with the Harvard team’s stratospheric aerosol injection, cloud brightening has already been observed in the field by chance, caused by the wakes of ships tracking across the ocean.

So far, he says, the group’s two field trials - the first in which such technology has been deployed outside a laboratory - suggest it could work.

In March the team showed that each of the 300 nozzles it deployed produced around 3 trillion droplets per second and drones detected the plume created 12 kilometres from the blasters.

Harrison doubts a process like this is viable to cool the Earth, but the team’s results suggest it may help protect the reef. “I view it as life support or something, treating the symptoms while hopefully the cause is taken care of,” he says.

“Emissions reductions to reduce climate change aren’t going to happen quickly enough to save the reef, which is why we have this whole program now.”

Harrison believes the argument that such technologies might distract from efforts to combat climate change is “nonsense”: “We haven’t had these geoengineering solutions to hand with any real chance of working or any proof of their efficacy, and yet we’ve done very little to reduce our carbon emissions or change the trajectory of climate change.”

In the face of the speed of climate change, he says, scientists have a responsibility to explore all the options we have that might help us fight it. “It’s now a risk versus risk equation,” he says.

“The question of whether we should implement any of these ideas is one for wider society, but the scientists need to do the research to be able to provide the right information to allow that debate to occur.

“You need knowledge as a foundation, instead of speculation.”

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(AU The Guardian) Solar Power In Australia Outstrips Coal-Fired Electricity For First Time

The Guardian - 
For a fleeting moment on the weekend more than half the nation’s electricity generation came from solar power, but experts say Australia is still a long way from peak renewable energy
Solar briefly provided the majority of Australia’s electricity generation on the weekend, overtaking coal-fired power for the first time. Photograph: David Trood/Getty Images
Solar briefly provided the majority of Australia’s electricity generation on the weekend, overtaking coal-fired power for the first time.
The national electricity market reached a new milestone on Sunday, with solar power outstripping energy generation from coal for the first time since the market was set up two decades ago.

The crossover point lasted for only a few minutes, as low demand and sunny skies on Sunday meant the contribution from coal dropped to a record low of 9,315MW just after noon, while solar provided the dominant share with 9,427MW.

 Dylan McConnell, a research fellow at the University of Melbourne’s climate and energy college, said that for a brief moment renewable energy represented 57% of national electricity generation.

“This is what I unofficially call ‘record season’,” McConnell said. “It’s actually still pretty early in the season [to get these numbers] but in spring or the shoulder seasons you have the combination of low demand, because there’s no heating or cooling, and then nice weather on the weekend.

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“Those factors combine, and you get these giant shares of renewable energy that generally push out coal.”

While McConnell said it was only “fleeting” and that “Australia was a long way from peak renewable energy”, energy prices also went negative on Sunday from 8.30am through to 5pm.

Though the exact price differed by jurisdiction, it means producers were getting paid to consume, or energy producers were paying to keep running.

Unlike more nimble solar and wind producers, coal generators are particularly hurt when prices turn negative. The costs associated with shutting down and restarting coal generators are prohibitive, meaning operators will choose to keep running even at a loss.

According to datalogger NEMlog, South Australia had 100% of its energy needs met by wind and solar while Victoria would have met 102% of state demand had operators not been forced to switch off during the period of negative prices.

Energy analyst Simon Holmes à Court said the overall proportion of renewable energy – solar, wind and hydro – would have been higher in the energy mix but wind producers chose to shut down to avoid the price hit.

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“There was a significant amount of curtailment,” he said. “What it shows is that there’s already more renewables that could have gone into the grid if the coal plants were more flexible and transmission was upgraded.”

The development coincides with calls from the Clean Energy Investor Group (CEIG) – an 18-member body that advocates for investors in large-scale renewable energy projects – for financial reforms to “align Australia with international markets” and “unlock” new investment.

Modelling conducted for the group by Rennie Partners found that Australia needs 51GW of renewable energy generation by 2042 if it is to meet its commitments under the Paris Climate Change agreement but that only 3GW of new wind and solar projects have been committed, leaving a 48GW shortfall.

Simon Corbell, the chief executive of CEIG, said governments and regulators should bring Australia’s investment guidelines into line with global markets.

“Clean energy investors currently face significant risks in the NEM, which is holding back the capital needed,’’ Corbell said.

“To unlock an investment pipeline worth $70bn we need effective market reforms and policy certainty, which could also save up to $7bn in capital costs, or up to 10% of the cost of Australia’s clean energy transition.”

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