After The Storm: How Political Attacks On Renewables Elevates Attention Paid To Climate Change

The Conversation - David Holmes

AAP/David Mariuz

This time last year, Australia was getting over a media storm about renewables, energy policy and climate change. The media storm was caused by a physical storm: a mid-latitude cyclone that hit South Australia on September 29 and set in train a series of events that is still playing itself out.
The events include:

• an extraordinary attack on renewables by federal government ministers;
• a steadfast pushback by the South Australian government to continue its renewables roll-out;
• the offer of tech entrepreneur Elon Musk to build the largest battery storage facility in the world in South Australia and;
• the Finkel Review.

In one sense, the Finkel Review was a response to the government’s concerns about “energy security”. But it also managed to successfully respond to the way energy policy had become a political plaything, as exemplified by the attacks on South Australia.
New research on the media coverage that framed the energy debate that has ensued over the past year reveals some interesting turning points in how Australia’s media report on climate change.
While extreme weather events are the best time to communicate climate change – the additional energy humans are adding to the climate is on full display – the South Australian event was used to attack renewables rather than the carbonisation of the atmosphere. Federal MPs hijacked people’s need to understand the reason for the blackout “by simply swapping climate change with renewables”.
However, the research shows that, ironically, MPs who invited us to “look over here” at the recalcitrant renewables – and not at climate-change-fuelled super-storms – managed to make climate change reappear.
The study searched for all Australian newspaper articles that mentioned either a storm or a cyclone in relation to South Australia that had been published in the ten days either side of the event. This returned 591 articles. Most of the relevant articles were published after the storm, with warnings of the cyclone beforehand.
Some of the standout findings include:

• 51% of articles were about the power outage and 38% were about renewables, but 12% of all articles connected these two.
• 20% of articles focused on the event being politicised by politicians.
• 9% of articles raised climate change as a force in the event and the blackouts.
• 10% of articles blamed the blackouts on renewables.
• Of all of the articles linking power outages to renewables 46% were published in News Corp and 14% were published in Fairfax.
• Narratives that typically substituted any possibility of a link to climate change, included the “unstoppable power of nature” (18%), failure of planning (5.25%), and triumph of humanity (5.6%).

Only 9% of articles discussed climate change. Of these, 73% presented climate change positively, 21% were neutral, and 6% negative. But, for the most part, climate change was linked to the conversation around renewables: there was a 74% overlap. 36% of articles discussing climate change linked it to the intensification of extreme weather events.
There was also a strong correlation between the positive and negative discussion of climate change and the ownership of newspapers.
The starkest contrast was between the two largest Australian newspaper groups. Of all the sampled articles that mentioned climate change, News Corp was the only group to has a negative stance on climate change (at 50% of articles), but still with 38% positive. Fairfax was 90% positive and 10% neutral about climate change.

Positive/negative stance of articles covering climate change by percentage.

Given that more than half of all articles discussed power outages, the cyclone in a sense competed with renewables as a news item. Both have a bearing on power supply and distribution. But, ironically, it was renewables that put climate change on the news agenda – not the cyclone.
Of the articles discussing renewables, 67% were positive about renewables with only 33% “negative” and blaming them for the power outages.
In this way, the negative frame that politicians put on renewable energy may have sparked debate that was used to highlight the positives of renewable energy and what’s driving it: reduced emissions.
But perhaps the most interesting finding is the backlash by news media against MPs’ attempts to politicise renewables.
19.63% of all articles in the sample had called out (mainly federal) MPs for politicising the issue and using South Australians’ misfortune as a political opportunity. This in turn was related to the fact that, of all the articles discussing renewables, 67% were positive about renewables with only 33% supporting MPs’ attempts to blame them for the power outages.
In this way, while many MPs had put renewables on the agenda by denigrating them, most journalists were eager to cover the positive side of renewables.
Nevertheless, the way MPs sought to dominate the news agenda over the storm did take away from discussion of climate science and the causes of the cyclone. Less than 4% of articles referred to extreme weather intensifying as a trend.
This is problematic. It means that, with a few exceptions, Australia’s climate scientists are not able to engage with the public in key periods after extreme weather events.
When MPs, with co-ordinated media campaigns, enjoy monopoly holdings in the attention economy of news cycles, science communication and the stories of climate that could be told are often relegated to other media.

Links

• How TV weather presenters can improve public understanding of climate change
• Fake news and god’s wrath: extreme hurricane politics in the US
• The future of Australian coal: an unbankable deposit
• Australia’s climate bomb: the senselessness of Adani’s Carmichael coal mine
• With battery storage to the rescue, the Kodak moment for renewables has finally arrived
• Playing politics with renewables: how the right is losing its way
• Growing inequality in the US is bad news for climate change
• ‘We must keep the lights on’: how a cyclone was used to attack renewables
• The fossil-fuelled political economy of Australian elections

Our Changing Climate Mind-Set

New York Times - Robert Jay Lifton*

A scene in eastern Puerto Rico after the passage of Hurricane Maria. Credit Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

Climate images have never been able to convey our full planetary danger until now.
The extraordinary recent four-punch sequence of hurricanes — Harvey, Irma, Jose and Maria — threatened the lives of millions of people, obliterated their homes and has raised doubts that some places will ever recover. The rest of us have a newly immediate sense of catastrophes of biblical proportions. As meaning-hungry creatures we search for explanations.
No wonder some have embraced the apocalyptic narrative of total destruction by an angry deity. And no wonder that climate-change rejecters like President Trump have increasing difficulty defending their position.
Even before the hurricanes we had experienced a drumbeat of storms, floods, droughts and wildfires that rendered global warming not just a remote future danger but an immediate one. This fear was reinforced by the recent hurricanes, which provided imagery equivalent to the danger, imagery equivalent to nuclear disaster.
When we viewed photographs and film of the annihilated cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we sensed that the world could be ended by nuclear weapons. Now these hurricanes have conveyed a similar feeling of world-ending, having left whole islands, once alive in their beauty and commerce, in ruin.
But does this mean that we attribute this menace to global warming and to human contributions to that warming? My answer here is yes and no and yes again.
Yes: Scientists warn that hurricanes are made worse by the warming of the atmosphere and the oceans and by the increased storm surge caused by higher sea levels. Climate change can thus amplify disasters into catastrophes.
No: There are still voices ridiculing this conclusion. About the record-breaking intensity of Hurricane Irma, Mr. Trump said that “we’ve had bigger storms than this.” And Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, took righteous exception to discussing the “cause and effect of these storms” as “very, very insensitive to the people in Florida.”
Both were engaging in climate rejection rather than denial. Because with climate truths so widely disseminated and accepted, both know in some part of their minds that global warming is real and threatening.
But there is good reason to believe that climate rejecters, including the president and Mr. Pruitt, are fighting a losing battle. The apocalyptic fear aroused by the recent destructive hurricanes is the latest manifestation of the mounting dread that has taken hold in the American mind-set about the implications of our steadily warming planet.
So yes again, hurricanes have now become a central component of what I call the climate swerve: the powerful shift in our awareness of climate truths. The swerve is a change in collective consciousness that includes a coherent narrative of global warming, of cause and effect and of steps necessary for mitigation. The swerve forces us to look upon ourselves as members of a single species in deep trouble.
This mind-set is evident in public opinion surveys, in the reporting of catastrophes that regularly invoke the influence of global warming, in growing doubts about a carbon economy and in challenges to the morality of extracting and burning underground fossil fuel resources.
The Paris climate conference of December 2015 was a stunning demonstration of the reach and force of the climate swerve. Virtually every nation in the world joined in what could be called a species-wide recognition of global warming and its dangers, each putting forward a promised goal of reduced carbon emissions. True, Paris was more a demonstration of universal climate awareness than an enforceable treaty. But the mind-set it expressed is crucial for all subsequent climate action.
And that mind-set could not be readily defied, as President Trump has learned. His determination to withdraw from the agreement was no surprise, since he had long rejected the idea of climate change as nonexistent, not human-caused or a hoax.
What was perhaps surprising was the immediate and overwhelming reaction to his announcement of the American withdrawal. The decision was widely denounced in this country by governors who declared that their states would hold to the Paris protocols, and by mayors who said the same of their cities. It was also condemned abroad. France, Germany and Italy insisted that the Paris momentum was “irreversible,” and China asserted that it would follow the protocols no matter what the United States did.
What followed were clarifications by the White House having to do with renegotiation and continuing to attend climate meetings — all amounting to equivocation and leaving the whole issue of withdrawal confused.
It would seem that the climate swerve is greater than any individual person, even one as dangerous to the world as Donald Trump. And while the climate swerve may ebb and flow, it is gathering momentum and will have to be reckoned with for generations.
The string of hurricanes we experienced recently and can expect again in the future raises a crucial question about the kind of adaptation we make to climate change. Of course we must prepare for extreme climate conditions, with special attention to coastal areas and flood plains, and to restrictions on what and how we build or rebuild in those areas.
But to do only that would neglect the primary cause of our danger, and would do nothing to prevent ever more lethal expressions of global warming. The climate swerve moves us to focus on the adaptation of our entire species.
That would require meeting the Paris pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and going further in making renewable energies a dominant force in national and world economies. In that inclusive form of adaptation, the human species becomes our operative group, and we do all we can to bring our historical and psychological imagination to the task.
We have squandered opportunities to reduce global warming and there has already been more suffering from climate change than we have allowed ourselves to recognize. But we can still avert civilization-ending catastrophe, and even achieve a modest new beginning for our species. Yes, it is very late in the game, but at the same time far from too late.

*Robert Jay Lifton, a psychiatrist, is the author, most recently, of “The Climate Swerve: Reflections on Mind, Hope, and Survival.”

Links

• Hundred-Year Forecast: Drought
• Can Hollywood Movies About Climate Change Make a Difference?
• Exclusive-Trump EPA to Propose Repealing Obama's Climate Regulation: Document
• Respect for Science in Jeopardy in Polarised U.S., Nobel Winners Say

Five Charts That Show Tony Abbott Is The One Who Has Lost Sight Of The Science

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Tony Abbott's speech to the Global Warming Policy Foundation provides a mix of partial truths that are designed to create a plausible whole.
As one leading climate change scientist noted in private on Tuesday, "most statements have the classic element of truth but once confronted by the balance of evidence the statements are true but irrelevant, or true to a point and then misleading - classic sceptics' stuff".

Turnbull: "working intensely" towards affordable power
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, responds whether his government is backing away from the Clean Energy Target.

Still, there are enough clangers to suggest Abbott either can't read a chart or is tapping some data source that has somehow escaped the attention of the many global climate monitoring bodies from NASA to the UK Met Office or Australia's Bureau of Meteorology.
Here are some of Abbott's standout claims, and the charts that counter them.

'Only 0.3 degrees'
"Temperatures in Australia have only increased by 0.3 degrees over the past century, not the 1 degree usually claimed," is one of Abbott's statements.
According to the bureau and CSIRO's State of the Climate 2016, here's what we're seeing in Australia:

The only pockets of Australia to have warmed less than 0.5 degrees since 1910 are located in a couple of places in NSW (though not Manly, as it happens) and Western Australia.

'Photos show no sealevel rise'
Staying local, Abbott has this to say about sea-level rise: "More than 100 years of photography at Manly Beach in my electorate does not suggest that sea levels have risen despite frequent reports from climate alarmists that this is imminent."

Global warming is obvious to the overwhelming majority of scientists, despite what a few deniers would tell us. Photo: Daniel Munoz

Consider, first, the lean likelihood of avid snappers catching the same point of the tide at the same place over the years.
Imagine, too, the future lawsuits when owners of coastal developments that have been washed away submit to the court grainy, faded photographs explaining they had no idea what they were buying into.

Tony Abbott has made another pitch declining the significance to climate change. Photo: Daniel Munoz

Coastal sea-level rise can be quirky, but for those wanting to project future development, Geoscience Australia provides projections, even for Manly.
In the meantime, this readily available information from CSIRO showing global sea-level rise is accelerating:

Abbott might want to acquaint himself with the reasons for that rise in sea levels, including the well-understood fact 93 per cent of the extra heat being trapped by extra greenhouse gases ends up in the ocean.
A warmer ocean, not surprisingly expands. The melting ice caps, glaciers and sea ice absorb about 2 per cent of that extra heat and most of that ice melt ends up in the ocean, lifting their levels.
While just 2.3 per cent of the extra warming ends up in the atmosphere and 2.1 per cent in the land, that happens to be where most of the temperature readings are made and where our own lives are lived out.

Blame the sun
So here's Abbott's interpretation of what's been going on, temperature wise: "Certainly, no big change has accompanied the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration over the past century from roughly 300 to roughly 400 parts per million or from 0.03 to 0.04 per cent."
And if anything is going on, let's not blame it all on CO2, he would have us believe: "Evidence suggests that other factors such as sun spot cycles and oscillations in the Earth's orbit are at least as important for climate change as this trace gas."
Blaming the sun, as it happens, is one of the top two climate myths raised by deniers, according to the Skeptical Science website, and one of the first ruled out.
The following chart from that website helps to knock a few of Abbott's misleading interpretations on the head:
Solar radiation has in fact been on a cooling trend for the past three decades, and yet temperatures have continued to climb. And they are clearly much closer to 1 degree higher over the past century than 0.3 degrees.
This chart, also helps to put this claim by Abbott into perspective: "Even the high priests of climate change now seem to concede that there was a pause in warming between the 1990s and 2014."
News Corp commentators such as Andrew Bolt regularly play up that "no warming" has occurred in the past 10, 15, 18 or so years.

 Illustration: Matt Golding

By taking the top of the record-high El Nino year in 1998 it is possible to see warming slowed. But note Abbott conveniently ends in 2014, forgetting to include the fact that year - a record for warming - was then beaten by 2015 and 2016.
While examining a single month rarely tells us about longer-term trends, September surprisingly set global records according to preliminary data even without an El Nino influence.

'More good than harm'
Abbott would like to have it both ways. If there is warming, and if we were to be driving it, perhaps it's not a bad thing after all.
"At least so far, it's climate change policy that's doing harm; climate change itself is probably doing good; or at least, more good than harm," he said in his speech.
Australians happen to live in a nation with a highly variable climate, especially for rain.
There are ample signs of recent heatwaves, including in this spring, to have people worried with reason about the threat of worse bushfires, among other challenges.
Recent research pointing to Sydney and Melbourne likely to have 50-degree days in coming summers was dismissed as "groupthink" by Abbott on Fairfax Media's 2GB.
As the bureau and CSIRO note in their report, though, Australia has been reporting a big increase in the number of extreme heat events, with all the stresses on the health of humans (and other creatures) that they bring:

As the report notes, extreme days are defined as those above the 99th percentile of each month from the years 1910 to 2015.
"In 2013 there were 28 days over this threshold," the report said. "This compares to the period prior to 1950 when more than half the years had no extreme days."
Abbott's speech made little of the fact it was during his two-year stint as prime minister that Australia signed up to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 26-28 per cent by 2030 compared with 2005 levels.
The pledge "was a compromise based on the advice that we could achieve it largely through efficiencies, without additional environmental imposts, using the highly successful emissions reduction fund; because, as I said at the time, the last thing we want to do is strengthen the environment (but) damage our economy".

What's 'Herculean' in Chinese?
Quite apart from the ERF being "highly successful" (see here or here), Abbott goes on to say this: "Even if reducing emissions really is necessary to save the planet, our effort, however Herculean, is barely better than futile; because Australia's total annual emissions are exceeded by just the annual increase in China's."
Well, it turns out China's emissions have actually been flat for several years.
Whether the recent plateau holds or starts to climb again remains to be seen. Concern about urban pollution and the massive construction that has already filled many of the major cities with ample subway lines, highways and tower blocks suggest returning to the run-up of emissions during the 2000-2010 is unlikely.
Perhaps the following chart from Climate Change News, though, is a better pointer to the trends in China, the world's largest carbon emitter:
It shows annual growth of energy consumption. Fossil fuel use has a diminishing share of the extra energy needed to drive what will soon be the world's largest economy.
Giving the cost of solar and wind energy continues to decline at a rapid rate - while fossil fuel extraction is if anything getting more costly as easy to access resources disappear - it's a fair bet if China's energy demand does pick up, coal and oil aren't likely to provide the lion's share of extra supply.

Links

• Tony Abbott's climate change speech in London reveals his true self
• Tony Abbott speech: Allies go to ground and Labor lashes 'loopy' ex-PM over climate change views
•  Tony Abbott says climate change is 'probably doing good'
• 50-degree days possible for Sydney, Melbourne: research
• How 'unprecedented' early season heat baked Australia

Josh Frydenberg Set To Dump Clean Energy Target

The Australian - Rachel Baxendale

Josh Frydenberg has all but ruled out a clean energy target. Picture: AAP.

Bill Shorten has renewed Labor’s commitment to a 50 per cent renewable energy target after Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg all but ruled out proceeding with the clean energy target proposed by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel.
Speaking at the National Energy Summit in Sydney, the Opposition Leader said Labor had 69 votes in a House of Representatives where the government has a majority of one.
“We are ready to vote for a clean energy target,” he said.
Mr Shorten said he was troubled by reports of anonymous sources saying that because of opposition to renewable energy on the Coalition backbench, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was likely to give up on a clean energy target.
“Walking away is the worst possible option,” he said.
“It would leave investors in the lurch, sentence business to more uncertainty, more chopping and changing.
“It would make Australia’s job harder to reduce emissions. If Turnbull caves in to Tony Abbott and a handful, a rump of conservative backbenchers and walks away from a clean energy target, it will mean continued higher prices for Australian families and Australian industry.
“It is a simple choice that Mr Turnbull faces. Work with Labor to deliver a clean energy target that is meaningful, or lock in higher power bills for businesses and families.”
Mr Shorten also attacked Mr Turnbull over gas prices.
“Back in April, Mr Turnbull promised to halve wholesale gas prices from about $20 a gigajoule to under $10 a gigajoule. Australians will not forget that,” he said.
“Australians do not understand why it has been cheaper to purchase Australian gas in Japan than it has been here in Australia.
“As long as this absurd situation persists, jobs and prosperity are in jeopardy. We need more than a cosy gentlemen’s agreement with the gas exporters that everything will be fine.
“If Labor were in government, we would immediately pull the trigger, activating export controls, with the clear objective of lowering the price of gas.”
Mr Shorten said Mr Frydenberg was right that the price of renewable energy had come down.
“Renewable energy, if not the cheapest form of energy already, is among the cheapest and becoming cheaper every day, so Labor’s commitment to 50% renewables recognises that future, including outlined by the government,” he said.
“Embracing renewable energy is a race for the jobs of the future and Australia has been given a dream barrier draw.
“We are the sunniest continent on Earth, one of the windiest places in the world. We are home to universities and research centres that set global standards for efficiency in solar-cell technology, and we have massive potential to couple renewables with peaking gas, pumped hydro and battery storage.”

Frydenberg set to drop clean energy target
Mr Frydenberg told the summit that emissions in the electricity sector had fallen over the last two quarters as a consequence of the closure of coal-fired power stations and flatlining demand, but said this could not continue if it made power less reliable or affordable.
“As Minister for both Energy and Environment, the first time these responsibilities have been brought together, I am acutely aware of this delicate balance,” Mr Frydenberg said.
“Should reliability and affordability be compromised, public support for tackling climate change will quickly diminish and previous gains will be lost. This is in nobody’s interest.”
Mr Frydenberg said the cost of wind-powered generation had more than halved in seven years, with similar reductions in solar PV technology.
“It is against this backdrop of a declining cost curve for renewables and storage, greater efficiencies that can be found in thermal generation and the need for sufficient dispatchable power in the system that we are considering the Finkel Review’s 50th recommendation to which we’ll respond before the end of the year,” he said, referencing the clean energy target.
“It is important to not lose sight of the fact that we accepted and are now implementing 49 out of the 50 Finkel recommendations through the COAG Energy Council.
“Many of the recommendations will have a profound impact, with new requirements around notice of closure, generator reliability and security being long overdue.”
But Mr Frydenberg said that a premature reliance on wind and solar was making supply and demand harder to predict and increasing prices.
“This is because in an energy only market, large amounts of wind and solar produce low
wholesale prices when they are running, but very high prices when they are not,” he said.
“This volatility creates an uncertain investment climate and makes it more difficult for synchronous generators to recover their fixed costs and remain commercially viable.
“As these generators are pushed out, liquidity in the contract market is reduced, not only because there are fewer participants who can provide firm hedging, but also because new entrants are deterred by the greater volatility risk.
“To take this point to the extreme, the Grattan Institute has pointed out that, for a system with 100 per cent renewables, the wholesale price cap would need to lift more than fivefold to between $60,000 and $80,000 to ensure a sufficient revenue stream.
“No jurisdiction could be expected to embrace such extremes and in many other countries they have not.”
Mr Frydenberg urged state and territory governments to support a national approach.
“It’s high time that the states and territories accepted that by going it alone and frustrating a truly national approach, they are driving prices higher, reliability lower and making the smooth transition to a lower emissions future that much more difficult,” he said.
“By sanctioning the uncompetitive bidding practices of government-owned generators or appeals under the Merits Review process for networks, state governments have prioritised profits over lower energy prices.
“Indeed in Queensland over the last few months, the wholesale electricity prices have gone down by 25 per cent, following a belated state ministerial direction.
“And in the ACT and New South Wales had the Limited Merits Review process been abolished sooner, citizens of those jurisdictions would have had power bill savings of more than $5 billion.”
Mr Frydenberg said states and territories had also increased gas prices through their refusal to lift moratoria on coal seam gas.
He also singled out the Renewable Energy Target as a policy which was “far from perfect”, despite attracting bipartisan support.
“This policy did not anticipate or adequately deal with the situation where there would be a particularly high penetration of renewable in a single region, namely South Australia, where storage and stability services would be at a premium,” he said.
“While renewable energy advocates quickly seek to justify their subsidies by pointing to emissions as a costly externality it is only fair to point out that renewables without storage are also a costly burden,” he said.
“The best illustration is the experience of South Australia, where the spot price increased by 84 per cent between 2015-16 and 2016-17, following the closure of the Northern coal-fired power station last May and the rising cost of gas-fired generation.
“With wind on any given day providing between zero and 100 per cent plus of the state’s needs and only limited and more expensive gas left to balance the variability, the markets quickly priced in this risk.”
Mr Frydenberg also indicated he was concerned about market concentration in the wholesale electricity market, as highlighted in a recent ACCC report.
“In each region of the National Energy Market, the two or three biggest generators between them control more than 70 per cent of capacity and dispatched energy,” he said.
“This has been increasing over time. As an illustration, the big three, AGL, EnergyAustralia and Origin between them in 2009 had 15 per cent of generation capacity in the NEM. Today, it’s nearly 50 per cent.
“This concentration can affect bidding behaviour as the companies know that their market dominance guarantees dispatch regardless of price.
“This is why I have asked the Australian Energy Regulator to investigate bidding practices by generators with a particular focus on New South Wales. I look forward to receiving their initial findings in November.
“While this type of behaviour may technically be within the NEM rules, it is not in the long term interests of consumers. Governments will need to consider what rule changes may be required.”
Mr Frydenberg said the key to guaranteeing lower prices and better reliability was having an effective regulatory framework with a real emphasis on transparency and competition.
He said the declining cost of new technology would play an increasing role in the energy sector.
“Just as the mobile phone disrupted the landline and the digital camera superseded film, the energy market is being shaped by the so-called internet-of-things; behind-the-meter technology such as solar PV and storage; demand-side responses; and increasingly cost effective utility scale renewable generation,” he said.
Chief Scientist Alan Finkel said there was still a need for a long term target, and a mechanism to reach it.
“The focus should be on the end point of the atmospheric emissions,” Dr Finkel told the summit.
“We looked at the Emissions Intensity Scheme, Clean Energy Target, regulated closure.
“For a variety of reasons, we felt the Clean Energy Target was a little bit better than those others but the critical thing is not that it is a Clean Energy Target per se but that there is a mechanism that is a tool that enables the operators to ensure that the atmospheric emissions trajectory is delivered.”

Links

• Back to the future as old climate battlelines re-emerge
• Shorten pledges to overhaul energy market and renewable investment rules
• Climate crunch: Australia to fail on Paris commitments without massive renewable switch
• Tony Abbott says dumping clean energy target would help Coalition win election
• Alan Finkel urges Turnbull to adopt clean energy target before states act
• Turnbull rejects efforts to ‘dumb down’ energy debate into renewables v coal
• Greens warn Labor not to do clean energy deal that protects coal power
• Coalition's Finkel response won't rule out new coal power stations, PM says
• Barnaby Joyce: I'll support a clean energy target – if coal is included
• Malcolm Turnbull leaves open alternative to clean energy target after internal criticism
• 'Too early to say' if Coalition will back clean energy target, Frydenberg says
• BlueScope Steel backs low emissions target as way to achieve energy balance
• Power prices will soar if energy policy doesn't change, Frydenberg warns
• Berejiklian to extend coalmine
• Shorten’s green jobs vision
• No surprise over CET end

Frydenberg Signals Government Poised To Abandon Clean Energy Target

The Guardian - Katharine Murphy

Energy minister says electricity sector wants stability, ‘not necessarily handouts’ suggesting renewables won’t be subsidised b after 2020

Josh Frydenberg said industry is ‘looking for a settled bipartisan investment climate’ in a speech that hinted the clean energy target may be abandoned. Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP

The energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, says Australia’s electricity sector is looking for stability, “not necessarily” for handouts, in a signal the Turnbull government is poised to abandon the clean energy target.
In comments to an energy summit on Monday, Frydenberg pointed to the falling costs of renewable energy as one of the calculations in the government’s consideration of the clean energy target recommended by the chief scientist, Alan Finkel.
Asking whether the falling costs of renewables meant Australia no longer need a clean energy target, which subsidises renewables, Frydenberg said: “Industry is looking for stability, they’re not necessarily looking for a handout.
“What they’re looking for is a settled bipartisan investment climate whether there are subsidies or not.”
The Turnbull government is finalising its new investment framework for energy policy, which it wants to settle during the remaining parliamentary sitting weeks before the summer recess.

Given it faces considerable internal opposition, it has been clear for some time the government would not adopt the clean energy target modelled in the Finkel review, and would look to rule changes in the national electricity market as one of the foundations of the overhaul.
Frydenberg’s comments to the Australian Financial Review summit on Monday suggest the government is not convinced renewable energy requires ongoing subsidies once the current renewable energy target winds down after 2020.
But asked by reporters in Sydney whether the government had abandoned the Finkel recommendation, Malcolm Turnbull hedged.
“What we are determined to do is to ensure that energy is reliable, affordable and that we meet our emissions reduction commitments that we have made through the Paris agreement,” the prime minister said.
Speaking to the AFR summit, the chief scientist dismissed the point that the falling cost for renewables meant a clean energy target was no longer required.
Finkel told the gathering a clean energy target was a framework allowing an orderly transition away from carbon-intensive power sources to low-emissions power sources.
“It remains a useful tool even if there is an extreme rate of reduction in the price of the new technologies,” Finkel said. “You need a managed transition.”
Speaking immediately after Finkel, the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, called for a truce in the decade-long climate wars, and urged Turnbull to hold the line.
Shorten said it was “troubling” to see signals from the government that they intended to dump the clean energy target. The Labor leader said Turnbull had previously argued the Finkel recommendation had a lot of merit.
“Walking away is the worst possible option. It would leave investors in the lurch, sentence business to more uncertainty, more chopping and changing,” Shorten told the summit.
“It would make Australia’s job harder to reduce emissions.
“If Turnbull caves in to Tony Abbott and a ... rump of conservative backbenchers and walks away from a clean energy target, it will mean continued higher prices for Australian families and Australian industry.
“It is a simple choice that Mr Turnbull faces – work with Labor to deliver a clean energy target that is meaningful, or lock in higher power bills for businesses and families.”

Links

• Back to the future as old climate battlelines re-emerge
• Shorten pledges to overhaul energy market and renewable investment rules
• Climate crunch: Australia to fail on Paris commitments without massive renewable switch
• Tony Abbott says dumping clean energy target would help Coalition win election
• Alan Finkel urges Turnbull to adopt clean energy target before states act
• Turnbull rejects efforts to ‘dumb down’ energy debate into renewables v coal
• Greens warn Labor not to do clean energy deal that protects coal power
• Coalition's Finkel response won't rule out new coal power stations, PM says
• Barnaby Joyce: I'll support a clean energy target – if coal is included
• Malcolm Turnbull leaves open alternative to clean energy target after internal criticism
• 'Too early to say' if Coalition will back clean energy target, Frydenberg says
• BlueScope Steel backs low emissions target as way to achieve energy balance
• Power prices will soar if energy policy doesn't change, Frydenberg warns
• Berejiklian to extend coalmine
• Shorten’s green jobs vision
• No surprise over CET end

Josh Frydenberg Hints The Government Could Back Away From Clean Energy Target

Fairfax - Adam Gartrell

The Turnbull government is hinting that the rapidly declining cost of renewable energy is undermining the case for further clean-energy subsidies, as it maintains it will make a decision on a clean energy target in coming months.
In a speech to the Australian Financial Review's National Energy Summit in Sydney on Monday, Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg has emphasised the "declining cost curve" for wind, solar and renewables storage.

CET decision by year's end: Frydenberg
Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg has signaled the government is backing away from a clean energy target, a suggestion which has divided the Coalition. Vision: ABC News. 

"Globally in the past seven years, the cost of wind-powered generation has more than halved. Domestically, solar PV costs have dropped more than 50 per cent," he said.
"By 2020, costs of battery technologies are expected to fall 40 to 60 per cent and over 70 per cent to 2030.
"It is against this backdrop of a declining cost curve for renewables and storage, greater efficiencies that can be found in thermal generation, and the need for sufficient dispatchable power in the system, that we are considering the Finkel Review's 50th recommendation – to which we'll respond before the end of the year."
The government has accepted 49 of the 50 recommendations of Chief Scientist Alan Finkel's review of the National Electricity Market. However the recommendation for a clean energy target – which would drive investment in renewables and bring down emissions, and which the government did not accept – has divided the Coalition, preventing a decision on its future for four months.
Many of the other Finkel recommendations will have a "profound impact" on the electricity market, Mr Frydenberg said.
The minister's speech – which appears to signal that he is backing away from a clean energy target – is likely to please conservative Coalition MPs, who have argued hard against the measure.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull with Minister Josh Frydenberg at Parliament House in Canberra. Photo: Andrew Meares

In his speech at the same event, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten will reiterate Labor's willingness to negotiate with the government on a "fair dinkum" clean energy target.
"This does not mean compromise at any cost. A framework that isn't fair dinkum will not receive our support," Mr Shorten will tell the conference.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is offering the Turnbull government bipartisanship on a clean energy target. Photo: Andrew Meares

"But there must be a way through. I don't imagine we will get everything we want, and the LNP may not get everything they want. But that cannot mean we throw up our hands, return to our trenches and resume hostilities. It cannot mean choosing insults over ideas or bringing props into the Parliament instead of policy."
Mr Shorten believes there are some conservatives within the Coalition who will never vote for a clean energy target in any form.
"But Labor has 69 votes in the House of Representatives – and we are ready to vote for a clean energy target," he will say.
But Mr Frydenberg says that the transition to lower emissions cannot come at the expense of the reliability and affordability of the electricity system.
"Should reliability and affordability be compromised, public support for tackling climate change will quickly diminish and previous gains lost. This is in nobody's interest," he said.
"It is challenging but possible to simultaneously put downward pressure on prices and enhance the reliability of the system, while meeting our international emissions reduction targets."

Links

• Back to the future as old climate battlelines re-emerge
• Shorten pledges to overhaul energy market and renewable investment rules
• Climate crunch: Australia to fail on Paris commitments without massive renewable switch
• Tony Abbott says dumping clean energy target would help Coalition win election
• Alan Finkel urges Turnbull to adopt clean energy target before states act
• Turnbull rejects efforts to ‘dumb down’ energy debate into renewables v coal
• Greens warn Labor not to do clean energy deal that protects coal power
• Coalition's Finkel response won't rule out new coal power stations, PM says
• Barnaby Joyce: I'll support a clean energy target – if coal is included
• Malcolm Turnbull leaves open alternative to clean energy target after internal criticism
• 'Too early to say' if Coalition will back clean energy target, Frydenberg says
• BlueScope Steel backs low emissions target as way to achieve energy balance
• Power prices will soar if energy policy doesn't change, Frydenberg warns
• Berejiklian to extend coalmine
• Shorten’s green jobs vision
• No surprise over CET end

Government Unveils 36,000 New Solar Panels At Williamsdale

Fairfax - Steven Trask

The ACT government put the finishing touches on its mammoth "solar highway" project on Thursday afternoon with the unveiling of 36,000 solar panels at Williamsdale.
Climate Change Minister Shane Rattenbury said the long-awaited Williamsdale Solar Farm, about 20 kilometres south of Canberra's city centre, could on its own generate enough electricity to power 3,000 homes.

Impact investment Group's Lane Crockett at the opening of the new Williamsdale Solar Farm. Photo: Rohan Thomson

Solar farms in Mount Majura, Mugga Lane and Royalla complete the "solar highway", which now totals a combined 177,000 panels along a 50 kilometre stretch.
"The future is here and it is clean, green and renewable," Mr Rattenbury said as the Williamsdale Solar Farm was officially opened.
"The clean power generated by the Williamsdale Solar Farm takes us another significant step towards achieving our target of 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2020 in the ACT."

The four solar farms were capable of generating 85,500 megawatt hours of electricity every year, enough to power more than 11,000 homes.
According to ACT government estimates, the solar farms could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1.4 million tonnes over the next 20 years.
"The ACT is establishing itself as a world leader when it comes to investment in renewable energy and action on climate change," Mr Rattenbury said.
"Already, renewable energy has driven around $500 million of investment into the local economy."
The ACT government has faced its share of challenges to get the solar highway project over the line.
Elementus Energy began the project in 2013 on the back of a 20-year government commitment to provide tariff support payments worth a maximum of $2.3 million every year.
But Elementus encountered fierce resistance to its planned site near Uriarra Village, eventually leading to the announcement in 2015 that it would move to blocks at Williamsdale.
The Impact Investment Group then took over the project in 2016, agreeing to acquire and develop it for "up to $35 million".
Lane Crockett, the fund manager's head of renewable energy, said on Thursday that the Williamsdale project would deliver environmental and economic benefits.
"The smartest investors and developers in the country aren't trying to eke another few years out of old unreliable, polluting coal-fired infrastructre," he said.
"They are building the clean generators that will deliver reliable electricity, crucial environmental benefits, health benefits and attractive financial returns.
"Meanwhile, our investors have confidence knowing that the ACT government has committed to buying the farm's electricity for 20 years."
The opening of the Williamsdale Solar Farm was announced on the same day the Climate Council think tank released a report on Australia's renewable energy sector.
The report found that political inertia was the only barrier preventing Australia from revamping its ageing power grid with renewable energy.
"The nation's leading energy experts, scientists and major authorities are all in agreement - Australia is ready to switch to a modern grid, powered by renewables and storage," Climate Council chief executive Amanda McKenzie said.
In another report released on Thursday, the International Energy Agency found that the uptake of solar power had grown faster than any other source of fuel for the first time ever.
The ACT government has legislated a target of generating 100 per cent of the territory's electricity through renewable sources by 2020.
"By 2020 that ACT will produce 100 per cent of our electricity from renewable sources like wind and solar and, by 2050 at the latest, our city will produce zero net greenhouse gas emissions," Mr Rattenbury said.

Links

• Solar grows faster now than all other forms of power
• Clean energy target: how the states might make it work
• Most Australians want renewables to be primary energy source, survey finds
• Turnbull says own rooftop solar not inconsistent with 'clean-coal' message
• This summer was greenest ever for energy, says National Grid
• Wind power is now cheaper than nuclear – the energy revolution is happening
• Greens propose new energy storage target to drive switch to renewables 
• 'A no-brainer': small businesses can be part of a renewables revolution too 
• World's first solar panel road opens in Normandy village