30/10/2021

(AU The Conversation) Labor Doesn’t Have A 2030 Target Yet Either – What Do We Know Of The ALP’s Climate Policy So Far?

The Conversation - 

Lukas Coch/AAP

Author
is a Lecturer, Australian National University

This week, the Morrison government finally released its plan to get Australia to net-zero emissions by 2050.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese was quick to dismiss the Coalition policy, describing it as a mere “vibe” with “nothing new” in it. His climate spokesperson Chris Bowen added
I’ve seen more detail in a fortune cookie.
These are fair comments. But Labor’s climate policy is also light on detail and the party won’t announce its full climate plan until after international climate talks in Glasgow, which finish on November 12.

What do we know about Labor’s policy so far? Will it be environmentally effective and fair?

No 2030 target

Global warming cannot exceed 1.5℃ this century if we hope to avoid catastrophic climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change) predicts global warming is on track for 2.7℃. We really do need to act fast.

Labor is not due to announce its full climate plan until Glasgow is over. Lukas Coch/AAP

Yet the ALP has no current plans to increase Australia’s 2030 emission reduction target. The party took a target of 45% below 2005 levels to the 2019 election. But this was short of what scientists have been calling for.

The Climate Council’s estimate for an appropriate climate target for Australia at the time was a 65% reduction. Today, they argue we can, and should, reach for a 75% reduction by 2030.

Australia’s 2030 target is important because “net-zero” is vague in the abstract – it basically means a managed balance between sources and sinks of carbon. We need to know what parts of the carbon cycle, and which industries, technologies, and groups of people are involved, and how.

Towards a green industrial strategy

The ALP has been signalling it wants to focus on labour issues at the heart of decarbonisation. As Bowen frequently observes, “good energy policy is good employment policy”.

After the tortuous carbon price debate of the Rudd-Gillard years and Labor’s shock defeat at the 2019 election, Albanese has announced a renewed focus on policies to promote a green “industrial revolution”.

More recently, he has joined labour economists in arguing the pandemic exposes the Australian economy to fragile global supply chains.

Labor has proposed a A$15 billion national reconstruction fund for economic diversification and advanced manufacturing, including renewables.

Energy transition involves job losses in fossil-fuel based electricity generation and related mines and transport. There are significant opportunities for new employment in new green tech industries, but they don’t magically appear in the places jobs are being lost.

So any shift to a green industry policy should be meticulously planned and targeted to specific locations.

Supporting transitions in electricity and transport

Thanks to the renewable energy boom, electricity market decarbonisation is underway. Labor says it’s committed to underwriting the transition.

The ALP’s “rewiring the nation” policy commits A$20 billion to rebuild and modernise the grid, in line with a plan by the Australian Energy Market Operator.

Labor is also proposing a public institution called Rewiring the Nation Corporation that may reintroduce some public ownership in the sector.

For households and distributed energy off the grid, it promises more support for community batteries.

Labor has pledged $200 million over three years to make electric cars more affordable. Mick Tsikas/AAP

The ALP has also committed to more vocational training and a scheme for apprentice electricians to gain renewable energy skills. But we need more detail on how they propose to govern transition in the most affected regions.

It’s unclear if Labor still intends to create the Just Transition Authority announced under Bill Shorten’s leadership. These kinds of independent authorities are important for negotiating redundancy and retraining programmes and economic diversity initiatives in hard hit regions.

Transport systems are on the verge of a major transition too. The ALP has a tariff removal policy to make electric vehicles more affordable. It proposes to work with the unions and the sector to develop manufacturing capacity.

But it could be doing more, for instance, through pollution standards or mandating large manufacturers meet targets for electric vehicle sales.

What about food and fuel?

All of this makes sense. But if net-zero is to become more than just a slogan, emissions reduction is urgently needed in other sectors such as agriculture and mining.

Decarbonising these sectors will be challenging in an economic, practical and political sense.

Agriculture contributed about 15% to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2019. Trevor Collens/AAP

Labor’s policies to reduce emissions in the agriculture sector have focused on land carbon offsetting.

Under this approach, farmers are encouraged to maintain vegetation and adopt farming practices that lead to more carbon being stored in soil and plants. This activity could be rewarded in the form of “credits” sold to polluting firms looking to compensate for (or “offset”) their ongoing emissions.

The Gillard government established the Carbon Farming Initiative as a voluntary land offset scheme linked to the short-lived compliance emissions trading scheme. This continued under the Coalition’s Direct Action Plan as a combined competitive grant programme and way to offset emissions under the Safeguard Mechanism which which sets a (loose) limit on the most polluting firms in Australia.

Both Labor and Coalition’s approaches to land carbon are a light touch. Offsets should not be heavily relied on to reach net-zero.

Meanwhile, Labor has never properly addressed the future of our export mineral and energy industries. Australia’s coal and gas exports will be exposed as trading partners such as South Korea, Japan and China pursue net-zero emissions targets.

And Labor will be under ongoing pressure from environmentalists and Indigenous groups who have long been calling for major reforms to both cultural heritage and environmental protection laws.

Capping pollution

Labor has said it will not seek an economy-wide carbon price instrument, like it had during the Gillard government. This means it will need other ways to legislate and regulate for emissions reductions.

One possibility is to strengthen the existing “safeguard mechanism” without building a carbon market. In its current form, the mechanism has allowed big polluters to increase their emissions, but that could be changed.

If Labor went down that route, it would also need a separate policy to deal with emissions from agriculture. Effective climate policy doesn’t have to be top-down economy-wide carbon price. Sector-by-sector industrial policy and regulation could be a more realistic way to create incentives for innovation.

Looming election

The federal election due early next year is shaping up as another “climate election”.

We urgently need a government with vision for what jobs and livelihoods will look like in a decade of green industrial transformations.

Labor is offering some new industrial details, but the emissions target and plans for mining and regional communities are vague.

We need the details in Albanese’s climate policy fortune cookie soon.

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(BBC) Climate Change: Fossil Fuel Production Set To Soar Over Next Decade

BBC - Matt McGrath

Coal mining in China has increased in 2021. VCG
Plans by governments to extract fossil fuels up to 2030 are incompatible with keeping global temperatures to safe levels, says the UN.

The UNEP production gap report says countries will drill or mine more than double the levels needed to keep the 1.5C threshold alive.

Oil and gas recovery is set to rise sharply with only a modest decrease in coal.

There has been little change since the first report was published in 2019.

With the COP26 climate conference just over a week away, there is already a huge focus on the carbon-cutting ambitions of the biggest emitters.

But despite the flurry of net zero emission goals and the increased pledges of many countries, some of the biggest oil, gas and coal producers have not set out plans for the rapid reductions in fossil fuels that scientists say are necessary to limit temperatures in coming years.

Earlier this year, researchers from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned of the dangers for humanity of allowing temperatures to rise by more than 1.5C this century. To keep under this threshold will require cuts in carbon emissions of around 45% by 2030 based on 2010 levels.

An oil rig sets sail - oil production is set to increase over the next decade. VCG
But instead of curbing carbon, many of the biggest emitting countries are also planning to significantly increase their production of fossil fuels, according to the UN.

The production gap report finds that countries plan to produce around 110% more fossil fuel than would be compatible with a 1.5C temperature rise by the end of this century. The plans are around 45% more than what's needed to keep the temperature rise to 2C.

According to the study, coal production will drop but gas will increase the most over the next 20 years, to levels that are simply incompatible with the Paris agreement.

The report profiles 15 major production countries including Australia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the US and UK.

Most governments continue to provide significant policy support for fossil fuel production, the authors say.

Fracking has seen huge increases in oil and gas production in the US. PAUL RATJE

"The research is clear: global coal, oil, and gas production must start declining immediately and steeply to be consistent with limiting long-term warming to 1.5C," says Ploy Achakulwisut, a lead author on the report from the Stockholm Environment Institute.

"However, governments continue to plan for and support levels of fossil fuel production that are vastly in excess of what we can safely burn."

While countries have devoted far more of their recovery spending after the Covid pandemic towards fossil fuel activities, there are some positives when it comes to financing.

Funding for oil, coal and gas from multilateral banks has decreased significantly in recent years - and also from some of the richer nations.

"This report shows, once again, a simple but powerful truth: we need to stop pumping oil and gas from the ground if we are to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement," said Andrea Meza, Costa Rica's minister for environment and energy.

"We must cut with both hands of the scissors, addressing demand and supply of fossil fuels simultaneously. That is why, together with Denmark, we are leading the creation of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance to put an end to the expansion of fossil fuel extraction, plan a just transition for workers and start winding down existing production in a managed way."

'I care about the climate but my dad works in the oil industry'

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(The Guardian) World Is Failing To Make Changes Needed To Avoid Climate Breakdown, Report Finds

The Guardian - 

Pace of emissions reductions must be increased significantly to keep global heating to 1.5C

A coal plant near Luetzerath, Germany. Photograph: Martin Meissner/AP

Every corner of society is failing to take the “transformational change” needed to avert the most disastrous consequences of the climate crisis, with trends either too slow or in some cases even regressing, according to a major new global analysis.

Across 40 different areas spanning the power sector, heavy industry, agriculture, transportation, finance and technology, not one is changing quickly enough to avoid 1.5C in global heating beyond pre-industrial times, a critical target of the Paris climate agreement, according to the new Systems Change Lab report.

No indicators are on track to meet targets necessary to limit warming to 1.5C by 2030
Status of 31 key indicators by sector, nine with insuffcient data not shown.
Guardian graphic. Source: State of Climate Action 2021: Systems Transformations Required to Limit Global Warming to 1.5°C.
The dangerously sluggish pace of decarbonization, made plain just days before the start of crucial UN climate talks in Scotland, further highlights how the world is badly off track in its attempts to curb climate breakdown.

Atmospheric levels of planet-heating gases hit a new record high last year, and the UN has warned the amount of fossil fuel extraction planned by countries “vastly exceeds” the limit needed to keep below the 1.5C threshold.

“We need to pull out the stops in every sector, to transform our power generation, the diets we have, how we manage land and more, all simultaneously,” said Kelly Levin, chief of science at the Bezos Earth Fund, one of the report’s co-authors. “We need transformational change and it’s very clear the trends aren’t moving fast enough.”

From renewable electricity generation to meat consumption to public financing for fossil fuels, the report found that no indicator was showing the required progress to cut emissions in half this decade before eliminating greenhouse gases completely by 2050, which would give the world a chance to keep below 1.5C.

Coal needs to be phased out five times faster than it is now, according to the analysis, while the pace of reforestation needs to be three times faster. Coastal wetlands need to be restored nearly three times faster, climate finance needs to grow 13 times faster and the energy intensity of buildings needs to drop at a rate almost three times faster than now.

In wealthy countries across Europe and North America, the consumption of beef needs to reduce 1.5 times faster than it is now. In these countries with high meat consumption and plentiful alternatives, cutting back to the equivalent of one and a half burgers per person a week would significantly reduce demand for land and greenhouse gas emissions.

There are some glimmers of promise: the global share of electricity generated from solar and wind has grown at 15% annually over the past five years and renewables have become the most cost-effective replacement for coal in most places. Electric vehicle adoption is on the rise, reaching more than 4% of worldwide car sales last year.

The report also found there was a good chance, given proper support, of “exponential” progress in technology such as the direct removal of carbon dioxide from the air, which scientists have said will probably have to be deployed on a grand scale to reduce worsening climate disasters. But overall the picture is of a world moving too slowly to confront the climate crisis.

“While things are heading in the right direction in some areas, we are moving too slowly to avoid 1.5C,” said Sophie Boehm, a climate researcher at World Resources Institute and report co-author. “If that continues, we will fall woefully short of the goals to avoid disastrous climate change. It’s very worrying we are not on track for any of these target areas.”

While progress is lagging in most places, three areas in particular – cement production, steel making and efforts to place a fee on carbon emissions – are stagnating, the report found. A further three – emissions from agriculture, the share of trips made by cars and the deforestation rate – are moving in the wrong direction.

“We need complete u-turns from these areas,” said Levin. “With climate change you can’t just head in the right direction, you need to do it at pace. Without that, we will reach disastrous tipping points.”

There is little optimism that countries will make the required commitments to salvage this situation at the Glasgow talks, known as Cop26, with Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, admitting it is “touch and go” whether the required action will be taken. John Kerry, who is Joe Biden’s climate envoy, has said there will likely be “gaps” in emissions-cutting plans put forward by governments.

Should the world breach 1.5C in global heating, the planet will be hit by an increasing frequency of deadly heatwaves, ruinous storms, disastrous flooding and crop failures, wiping trillions of dollars from economic activity and forcing the displacement of millions of people.

António Guterres, secretary general of the UN, has warned the world is risking a “hellish future” through its lack of urgency to confront the crisis.

“We have the technology for the majority of these areas to decarbonize,” said Bill Hare, chief executive of Climate Analytics, an organization that provided input to the new report. “What we need is political will, and for governments to catch up with the opportunity this transition will bring for their economies.”

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