(AU) Opinion: Old Friendships Alone Won't Save Us From Climate Change

Sydney Morning Herald - Nick O'Malley

Nick O'Malley is National Environment and Climate Editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. He is also a senior writer and a former US correspondent.

It should not be a surprise that the independent panel advising the government on how to better spend $2.5 billion on clean energy projects has proposed that it should kick the door open to, well, dirty energy.

The man tasked with leading the panel, Grant King, was managing director of Origin Energy before he became the Business Council of Australia boss in 2016.

BCA managing director Grant King (right) with Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Credit: Wolter Peeters

Among the recommendations he made was one to encourage more investment in carbon reduction schemes by allowing coal and gas industries to apply for funding for carbon capture and storage projects.

Carbon capture and storage is backed by the Australian coal industry, because it involves burning coal, but opposed by climate scientists, because it is unproven and expensive.

Extractive industries are similarly well represented on the National COVID-19 Coordination Commission, the body convened to advise the government on how to mitigate the economic fallout of the coronavirus shutdown.

It is led by Nev Power, former chief executive of Fortescue Metals Group, current deputy chair of Strike Energy. It is advised by Andrew Liveris, a board member of Saudi Aramco and deputy chair of the resource engineering firm Worley. Its membership includes Catharine Tanner, managing director of EnergyAustralia and James Fazzino, who is also on the board of APA, an energy infrastructure company.

It is no accident that these are the men and women in the room as the decisions are made. Fossil fuels have been dominant energy source over the modern era and as a result energy companies have relationships with governments fostered over generations.

Not only do politicians understand their pet projects, their top personnel are embedded in government while advocates of new ideas are too often banging on closed doors.

Professor Frank Jotzo, director of the Australian National University's Centre for Climate Economics, observes that the recommendations of the men and women picked for these advisory roles carry not only the weight of their own expertise, but of the billions of dollars of value that their industries represent, of years of well-funded and well-orchestrated lobbying, and of the unstated threat of the backlash these industries are capable of unleashing when crossed.

It cost the mining industry, Jotzo notes, just a few million to derail Kevin Rudd’s signature resources super profits tax and arguably begin the obliteration of his authority as leader.

In their 2018 book on the political economy of fossil fuel subsidies, the British academics Peter Newell and Phil Johnstone argued the only way to properly understand governments’ continued support for fossil fuels in the face of overwhelming evidence of potentially catastrophic climate change is to recognise “the extent of the depth and reach of fossil fuel incumbency”.

Jotzo says that in his view the proposals made by King are “not bad”. He believes that while they leave the door open for fossil fuel interests, renewable energy projects are likely to win funding on merit in any case. But now is hardly the moment for “not bad” ideas.

As world governments embark on a US$5 trillion ($7.7 billion) spending spree, many are directing their focus to green initiatives. The EU is discussing setting border prices on carbon, while the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged governments to use historically low oil and gas prices as an opportunity to end subsidies to fossil fuels, which the International Monetary Fund last year estimated to cost Australia $29 billion annually once the impact of pollution was factored in.

Both of these ideas are better than “not bad” and neither appears to be on the horizon for Australia. But they should be.

Shortly after the Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor announced the advice he had received from his panel, the leading journal Nature Climate Change published the first peer-reviewed study on the impact on carbon emissions of the COVID-19 crisis.

The news is not good. Yes, emissions dropped by a staggering amount in the early months of the year – up to 17 per cent a day by early April. But averaged over the year the drop will likely turn out to be between 4.2 and 7.5 per cent.

Which is to say that having suffered the greatest global economic crisis since the Great Depression we are just meeting the reductions targets we are going to have to hit, year after year, if we are to limit climate change to 1.5 degrees of warming. In other words, we cannot expect to rebuild the old economy and stave off global warming. And we cannot do it relying on the old guard alone.

Links

• (AU) (AU) Political interference a key risk to emissions reductions, experts say
• (AU) Be Worried When Fossil Fuel Lobbyists Support Current Environmental Laws
• (AU) Fossil Fuel Industry Applauds Coalition Climate Measures That Support Carbon Capture And Storage
• (AU) Government's Tech Roadmap Reveals Its Talent For Wasting Time
• (AU) Federal Government Releases Emissions Technology Investment Roadmap, Backing Gas And A Shift Towards Renewables

(AU) I Spent Over 40 Years In The Australian Defence Force. The Lack Of Readiness To Deal With Coronavirus Is A Wake-Up Call

The Guardian - Chris Barrie

It is time Australian governments started to listen to experts when it comes to climate change and pandemics

‘The last summer of bushfires and fire storms were met with an unacceptable lack of preparedness, despite several rural fire chiefs having tried to get the federal government to hear their well-founded concerns in April 2019.’ Photograph: Mark Evans/Getty Images

Chris Barrie is a former Australian defence force chief. Since then he has worked as consultant, teacher and mentor at Oxford University, the National Defense University in Washington DC, and the Australian National University.

The past 18 years has been a period of significant disengagement and disinterest by the community in Australian political affairs.

The political shenanigans described in Malcolm Turnbull’s recent book A Bigger Picture ought to be a wake-up call that as our political leaders have jostled for the right to exercise power from the PM’s office, time has been a’wasting in finding appropriate solutions for the challenges Australia must face over the next three decades.

It is time for us to hold our governments to account for the quality of their governance.

Until the end of last year, we had blindly turned away from doing anything to address many of the challenges that have been laid out by science and respected commentators. Bigots in our media and parliaments have held sway and prevented much from being done. The result has been a lack of preparation to deal with the serious issues we confront.

This lack of preparedness concerns me. I spent more than 40 years in the defence force watching for events that could present challenges to our national security. Successes under my leadership were made possible by preparedness and a federal government that listened carefully and acted appropriately.

With the shock of the bushfires and fire storms of the last summer followed by floods and now with the global Covid-19 pandemic Australians have experienced first-hand the manifestation of a significant lack of preparedness fostered by the absence of strong, principled and effective leadership.

The impact of these shocks will have a lasting impact on our economy, our society, and our wellbeing. The current pandemic is a wake-up call for what needs to be done to counter predictable and potentially existential threats from global warming, and their impact on the climate and other systems critical to human life on the planet.

Early in April the Economist Intelligence Unit reported an expected global economic contraction of 2.5% this year as a result of the pandemic.

Australia’s geo-strategic future is very uncertain. Our national character and will are likely to be challenged in many new ways

This huge downturn in the global economy has taken place in just a few weeks. Its effects will be felt for a long time. But it is not uniformly distributed around the globe. Significant economies such as the United States, United Kingdom, Europe and even Australia have been in lockdown and are slowly moving out of it.

We are not certain where the future lies. Yet, there are a few better prepared economies such as Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong that have dealt with the pandemic much better. It is ironic that Taiwan, the world leader on pandemic management is not included as a full member in the World Health Organization!

We have heard also about the “unexpected” nature of this downturn. It has been labelled as a black swan event. According to Nassim Taleb a black swan event flows from the extreme impact of rare and unpredictable outlier events – and the human tendency to find simplistic explanations for these events, retrospectively.

For those in the science community looking at global warming and its consequences since the early 1990s, climate change and related health issues have been predicted. It’s just that very little has been done to prepare for them, even though there have been many scenario games and simulations held in our government bureaucracies and some businesses to stress test our capabilities. Some of those scenarios have looked like the ones we are going through now.

Last week I obtained an unclassified copy of a mobilisation review prepared for the senior leadership in defence. It was completed in June 2019. I knew work on mobilisation was being done in defence. In 2012 I was the facilitator of a closed workshop of international and national experts who examined nuclear issues, mass migrations, Pacific relocation, Southern Ocean disaster, extreme weather, pandemic and Southern Ocean eco-tourism. A report of this workshop is included in the mobilisation review.

The broad findings of the review are:

• The geo-strategic environment is more uncertain than it has been for many decades.
• Defence needs to have confidence that its planning arrangements are appropriate for the contemporary context.
• While considerable defence mobilisation has occurred at lower levels since the 1998 lead up to operation Interfet there has been limited consideration of formal planning for large-scale, (including national) mobilisation since the Vietnam era or the need to mobilise in less traditional ways.
• Despite an extended period of ADF operations since the late 1990s the mobilisation impact on the Australian economy and population has been limited to a narrow element of defence industry and some employers of defence reserves.

In the detail of the review there is much food for thought. For example, in the global engagement workshop we considered the drastic measures needed to deal with the consequences of a pandemic.

Prescient as it was, this review stated in 2019 that “the World Health Organization (WHO) expects a significant pandemic to emanate from Asia in the next 10 years” and noted that a “key area of concern is the availability of pharmaceutical supplies” because 90% of all Australian supplies are imported.

But given our current experience it is clear that going through the review in the context of preparedness would begin to reveal the extent of work needed to overcome weaknesses and the vulnerabilities exposed by it, not just by the defence department, but by a whole-of-government look.

This action would represent only a start. We cannot afford to go on as unprepared as we have been over the past 18 years. It is time Australian governments started to take notice of experts and listened to the people.

Australia’s geo-strategic future is very uncertain. Our national character and will are likely to be challenged in many new ways. The bushfires and fire storms of last summer were met with an unacceptable lack of preparedness, despite several rural fire chiefs having tried to get the federal government to hear their well-founded concerns in April 2019.

The warning about cyber security vulnerabilities set out in the review must also be taken seriously, especially in the context of unconventional cyber warfare and the potential for negative effects on social cohesion.

As well as improving national security domestically we should also consider the limits on Australia’s ability to shape the kind of world we would like. By 2050 we will be about 40 million people living with neighbours numbering 3.5 billion. Nearest to us, Indonesia will have a population of about 330 million, and PNG about 14 million people, although there are in-country predictions of about 30 million in PNG – more people than in Australia today.

We can only guess at how the contest between the major powers such as China, India and the United States will impinge on us and the decisions we will need to make.

We have an opportunity now to set right the ship of state by being highly analytical, ruthless in our judgement and focused always on better outcomes for the future. It will be a pity if our current circumstances fritter away Australia’s standing in the region.

We have much to offer, but we desperately need to start turning our minds to what the next 30 years should look like.

This is where the mobilisation review and documents like it present a good place to start, if only they could see the light of day.

Links

• Seizing the moment: how Australia can build a green economy from the Covid-19 wreckage
• Why Tackling Global Warming Is A Challenge Without Precedent
• Coronavirus Shows We Are Not At All Prepared For The Security Threat Of Climate Change
• A Security Threat Assessment Of Global Climate Change: How Likely Warming Scenarios Indicate a Catastrophic Security Future
• (AU) Is Morrison Government Fit For Purpose, Or The Greatest Danger To Our National Security?
• (AU) Climate Change Is A Serious Threat To National Security
• (AU) 'Dystopian Future': Climate Change To Force Review Of Military's Role
• (AU) 'National Security Issue': Turnbull tells Q&A Morrison Must Step Up Response To Bushfire Crisis
• Could Climate Change Become A Security Issue — And Threaten Democracy?

Climate Change Turning Antarctica's Snow Green

Reuters - Martyn Herman

Paleontologists working at the site on Antarctica's Seymour Island where fossils of an Eocene frog were discovered are seen in this photo released on April 24, 2020 in Stockholm, Sweden. Jonas Hagstrom/Swedish Museum of Natural History/Handout via Reuters

LONDON - Antarctica conjures images of an unbroken white wilderness, but blooms of algae are giving parts of the frozen continent an increasingly green tinge.

Warming temperatures due to climate change are helping the formation and spread of "green snow" and it is becoming so prolific in places that it is even visible from space, according to new research published on Wednesday.

While the presence of algae in Antarctica was noted by long-ago expeditions, such as the one undertaken by British explorer Ernest Shackleton, its full extent was unknown.

Now, using data collected over two years by the European Space Agency's Sentinel 2 satellite, together with on-the-ground observations, a research team from the University of Cambridge and the British Antarctic Survey have created the first map of the algae blooms on the Antarctic Peninsula coast.

"We now have a baseline of where the algal blooms are and we can see whether the blooms will start increasing as the models suggest in the future," Matt Davey of the University of Cambridge's Department of Plant Sciences told Reuters.

Mosses and lichens are considered the dominant photosynthetic organisms in Antarctica - but the new mapping found 1,679 separate algal blooms that are a key component in the continent's ability to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

"The algal blooms in Antarctica are equivalent to about the amount of carbon that's being omitted by 875,000 average UK petrol car journeys," Davey said. "That seems a lot but in terms of the global carbon budget, it's insignificant.

"It does take up carbon from the atmosphere but it won't make any serious dent in the amount of carbon dioxide being put in the atmosphere at the moment."

Green is not the only splash of color in Antarctica. Researchers are now planning similar studies on red and orange algae, although that is proving harder to map from space.

Links

• Climate Change Is Turning Antarctica's Snow Green And The Effects Can Now Be Seen From Space
• Algae is now growing on melting Antarctic snow due to climate change
• Antarctic algal blooms: 'Green snow' mapped from space
• Remote sensing reveals Antarctic green snow algae as important terrestrial carbon sink
• Algae Bloom in Antarctic Sea Ice
• Climate change is turning parts of Antarctica green, say scientists
• Blood red algae blooms hit Antarctica

(AU) Carbon Road Map Winning Few Friends, Little Influence

Sydney Morning Herald - Nick O'Malley | Mike Foley

Last December, as the world's horrified attention was drawn to the worst bushfires in Australia's known history, the nation was also making news for its efforts to dilute global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions during crucial climate negotiations in Madrid.

Breaking with diplomatic norms Costa Rica's environment and energy minister Carlos Manuel Rodríguez called out three countries as the chief wreckers: The US, Brazil and Australia.

Delaying tactics? Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor during Question Time. Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

"I am deeply pained by the attitude of the current Australian government: that still after the worst disaster that has ever hit the planet, the bushfires in Australia, that this government is still denying climate change and denying the fact that there is a lot that Australia can and should be doing," one of the United Nation's top climate negotiators, Christiana Figueres, later told the ABC.

In January the 2020 Climate Change Performance Index, drafted by a group of think tanks including the NewClimate Institute, the Climate Action Network and Germanwatch, was published.

Of the 61 nations whose climate policy it considered it ranked Australia as having the worst.

One of the authors of that survey was Ursula Hagen of Germanwatch. Having read the government's so-called Technology Road map released this week in draft-form Hagen told the Herald and The Age that she sees no reason why the document would cause Australia's rank to change.

"It lacks any clear targets [for emissions reduction], it has no clear policy of how it might achieve any targets," Hagen says. "It is not a strategy."



The central criticism of the road map is that it is essentially a survey of (mostly) green technologies that the government may support at the advice of an expert panel in order to create an economy that emits less carbon, but which maintains growth and jobs.

"We do not need another survey of technologies that might save us in the future," says Associate Professor Malte Meinshausen, the founding director of the University of Melbourne's climate and energy college.

"We already know what the technologies are. We need regulatory reform and a plan to use them."

In his experience, says Meinshausen, surveys of emerging technologies have been used to delay real action.

Nor does the road map contain a quantifiable set of objectives. It does not outline how much less carbon the government wants Australia to emit over the coming years, or how it might meet such targets.

This is despite the fact that the entire global effort in combating climate change is predicated on setting and meeting targets.

Scientists tell us that to stave off the worst impacts of climate change we need to keep global warming under 2 degrees and as close to 1.5 degrees as possible. Australia agreed to this at the Paris climate talks in 2015.

According to the UN the world is currently on track for a 3.2C temperature rise. In order to pull back towards 1.5 degrees of warming the world now needs to cut its emissions by 7.6 per cent annually. Each year we delay action, that figure rises.

'We have all the technology already. We don't need to look at things that might save us in 10 or 20 years.'
Malte Meinshausen, founding director of the University of Melbourne's climate and energy college.

Due to Australia's reliance on coal it is among the highest per capita carbon emitters on earth, with 0.3 per cent of the world's population we release 1.07 per cent of greenhouse gases.

Nonetheless, and despite drought and bushfires already demonstrating how susceptible Australia is to climate change, our leaders have proved to be among the least ambitious in confronting the crisis.

Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor said the Paris agreement set a "joint target with other countries around the world to reduce emissions to net-zero in the second half of the century". The federal government has declined to set any earlier commitments.

Australia's global critics view this as not in keeping with the spirit of the Paris agreement.

Article two of the agreement locks signatories into following the "best available science" on emissions reduction and to pursue the "highest level of ambition" to act consistently with global action needed to keep warming in check.

This clause sets a de facto deadline on achieving net-zero emissions, Australian National University Emeritus Professor Will Steffen told the Herald and The Age earlier this year.

"To stay within two degrees we need to reach net-zero emissions by 2040-2045 at the very latest: 2050 is too late, we've already put too much carbon into the atmosphere," Professor Steffen said.

The Paris Agreement also includes an interim target. For Australia, that means reducing emissions by at least 26 per cent by 2030, based on 2005 levels, or a cumulative 695 million tonnes of carbon.

To reach this target Australia is insisting on counting the 365 million tonnes of "carryover credits" it earned by exceeding the target set in a previous international treaty – the Kyoto Protocol. It is this demand that prompted such fury at Australia in Madrid in December, and which is causing such concern around the world as nations prepare for the next round of talks in Glasgow next year.

Which brings us back to the road map announced this week.

Experts were cheered that it made no mention of coal. Some were shocked that it listed gas and carbon capture and storage as technologies that may win support, while others welcomed its recognition of the wide-scale technology reform needed to achieve net-zero emissions.

In a perfect policy world, experts argue, the government would help industry meet the target by investing in incentives for industry. That means offering subsidies to industry to adopt low-emissions technologies.

This creates a "push factor" for industry to change. The push factor would be complemented by "pull factors" – namely government-set quotas for products and services produced by the low-emissions industries.

For example, concrete produced through renewable power, low emissions heating and lighting in new buildings, electric vehicles in public transport, and so on across the economy.

"There is no space any more for any more fossil fuels," says Tim Baxter, a senior researcher with the Climate Council.

At next year's climate talks each nation is expected to present even more ambitious reduction targets, and a plan for meeting them. So far, the road map is the closest thing Australia has to such a plan.

According to Richie Merzian, who in 2013 was a lead negotiator for Australia at climate talks in Warsaw, the document will be viewed as inadequate at best.

"No one asked for this. There was no international body that wanted a technology road map, what people want is a target and a strategy," he says.

Merzian – now director of climate and energy policy at The Australia Institute, a progressive think tank – still recalls how isolating it was to represent Australia that year, shortly after Tony Abbott had come to power and denounced the UN climate system as socialism masquerading as environmentalism.

Each day during the bruising talks members of civil society groups would vote on which nation had played the most destructive role and present a representative of that nation with a "fossil of the day award". Australia took it out time and again.

"We were seen as a nation that was happy for domestic politics to undermine collective international action," he says.

Asked what a comprehensive plan would look like Meinshausen can rattle off a detailed framework from the top of his head.

It would begin with an optimistic vision of an Australia in 2030 with a bustling outwardly focused economy fuelled by renewable energy and meeting emissions reduction targets.

It would chart a course on how to achieve that goal based on four pillars:

• Regulatory reform centred on some form of carbon price.
• Outline how the government would help to strengthen the grid and buttress it with batteries and technologies such as pumped hydro to store and dispatch power.
• Consider how our land management practices could arrest carbon emissions from forestry loss and boost the amount of carbon we stored in soil via agricultural practices.
• Detail how the government would help Australia become a heavy industry powerhouse, supporting green energy intensive manufacturing.

"We have all the technology already. We don't need to look at things that might save us in 10 or 20 years," he says. "We need policy and regulatory reform and implementation now."

According to Herve Lemahieu, the director of the Lowy Institute's Asian power and diplomacy program, the cost to Australia of isolation on climate change extends far beyond climate talks.

He says Australia was facing further embarrassment at the Glasgow talks in November, before they were delayed due to COVID-19, and it has won something of a diplomatic reprieve due to its effective handling of the pandemic. He cites the support Australia was given at the World Health Assembly for its calls for an inquiry into the source of the coronavirus.

But he says soon climate change will again be the focus of the world, and Australia will again be isolated for its recalcitrant response.

"It is going to be harder for Australia to deepen its relationships with like-minded middle powers, which Australia needs to do in the absence of US global leadership."

Links

• Australia's Technology Investment Roadmap: discussion paper
• New nuclear technologies to be examined in planning Australia's energy mix
• Hydrogen at centre of Australia’s technology roadmap
• EVs, batteries and solar priorities in Government’s Technology Roadmap discussion paper
• Government's COVID-19 economic recovery committee looks fixed on a gas-fired rebound
• Government opens door to paying for cleaner coal and gas with climate funds
• Scott Morrison promises a 'truth campaign' as he targets Bill Shorten over electric vehicles
  Morrison government to underwrite new gas power plants
• Australia’s most senior former public servants reveal their anger about climate policy failure

(AU) Australia's Gas And Electricity Producers Push Back On Government Intervention

The Guardian - Katharine Murphy | Adam Morton

Subsidies should focus on early-stage clean technologies not energy sources that are already mature or commercial, Energy Council says

Gas producers have warned against the Morrison government underwriting a massive expansion of the industry, saying it could raise prices. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

Australia’s oil and gas producers have warned against the Morrison government underwriting a massive expansion of the domestic industry, saying the country does not have a gas shortage and intervention could reduce supply and raise prices.

The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association said it welcomed some recommendations on gas in a leaked draft report by a manufacturing taskforce advising the National Covid-19 Coordination Commission, but it also included “ideas that just won’t work”.

The report suggested taxpayers should underwrite an increased national gas supply from multiple new fields and help build multibillion-dollar interstate gas pipelines, and the states should introduce “reverse auction” subsidy schemes for gas-fired power.

Andrew McConville, APPEA’s chief executive, did not say which recommendations he thought made sense and which he rejected, but said the country should “let gas markets work”. “Intervention is not needed and could be potentially counter-productive by discouraging investment, reducing supply and raising prices,” he said. “There’s also the question of what is the problem we are trying to solve?”

McConville said the Australian Energy Market Operator had found there was no gas shortage, and the taskforce’s recommendations would not keep prices to the historically low level of $4 a gigajoule as it hoped. He said Asian countries had managed to have strong manufacturing industries – the point of the taskforce’s report – with much higher prices.

The report to the NCCC leaked as the government kicked off the process of developing its much-vaunted technology investment roadmap with the release of a discussion paper flagging taxpayer support for innovation.

The Australian Energy Council, which represents Australia’s major electricity and downstream natural gas businesses, echoed the warning from APPEA about the perils of arbitrary government intervention. It welcomed the discussion paper, but warned the government it should reserve taxpayer support for early-stage clean technologies, not look to subsidise energy sources that are already mature or commercial.

Sarah McNamara, the chief executive of the council, said many of the directions set out in the discussion paper were sensible, including focusing potential support for carbon capture and storage (CCS) on hydrogen and gas production rather than retrofitting coal-fired power stations, which had not been commercially successful.

“But as a note of caution, funding should be reserved for genuine innovation and to help establish early-stage clean technologies,” McNamara said. “It should not subsidise already commercial or mature technologies. The latter would simply undermine private investor confidence and inhibit market efficiencies.”

She said it was a “concern” that the taxpayer-funded Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency would be used to support already mature technologies. “Customers need to be confident that taxpayer funds are being spent on technologies that require support, not those that are already self-sufficient,” she said.

Facing sustained pressure to adopt a 2050 target of net zero emissions, pressure it is continuing to resist, the Morrison government plans instead to develop the roadmap as the cornerstone of the Coalition’s mid-century emissions reduction strategy. The discussion paper points to a role for gas, hydrogen, renewables and, potentially, nuclear power.

Angus Taylor, the energy and emissions reduction minister, and the NCCC has also focused on gas as being at the centre of economic recovery plans from the pandemic. The leaked report to the NCCC does not consider cleaner alternatives to the fossil fuel, or mention climate change or the country’s commitments to the Paris climate agreement, raising the ire of the renewable energy industry and climate activists.

Australia’s resources industry has welcomed the positive signals from the government on CCS and on nuclear. The Minerals Council of Australia – historically one of the major opponents of carbon pricing to drive the transition to low emissions – said it supported a “genuinely technology-neutral approach to reducing emissions which embraces global best practice and the adoption of CCS and advanced nuclear technology as well as renewables, gas, coal with CCS and pumped hydro”.

But the Investor Group on Climate Change, representing institutional investors managing $2tn in assets, said it would be important for the government to set clear goals through a national climate policy that made it clear Australia was heading for net zero emissions by 2050, consistent with its international obligations. It said private investors would be reluctant to invest in the transition if it did not.

Its director of policy, Erwin Jackson, queried whether new gas investments were consistent with that objective. “Private investors are already making climate risk assessments in their portfolios about carbon-intensive fuels like gas as compared to zero-carbon alternatives like renewable energy and storage technologies,” he said.

“Governments will also need to assess whether further support and investment in gas projects are resilient to continued rapid cost reductions in clean energy options and an accelerated shift to truly zero-emissions energy options”.

Prof John Quiggin, an economist at the University of Queensland, said the government’s thinking was “five to 10 years behind the times”.

“Although the idea of new coal-fired power stations seems finally to have been abandoned, the report focuses heavily on technology options that seemed promising in the past, but have now been abandoned everywhere in the developed world, such as nuclear power and carbon capture and sequestration,” he said.

But he said the roadmap’s most significant failure was that it did not recognise that gas-fired electricity generation was increasingly being supplanted by renewable energy backed by battery storage. “The policy remains fixated on extractible resources such as coal and gas, ignoring our massive endowment of solar and wind resources,” he said.

Links

• Leaked Covid-19 commission report calls for Australian taxpayers to underwrite gas industry expansion
• New nuclear technologies to be examined in planning Australia's energy mix
• Green steel industry could secure jobs future for Australia's coalmining heartland
• Australia's carbon emissions fall just 0.3% as industrial pollution surges
• New resources minister Keith Pitt rejects calls for higher taxes on gas industry
• Scott Morrison strikes $2bn deal with NSW to boost gas supply
• WA relaxes emissions curbs on new projects, despite its gas plants driving national rise
• Half of Australia's emissions increase linked to WA's Gorgon LNG plant
• Warning of power shortfall risk after closure of Liddell plant

Experts Urge Further Climate Action As Lockdown Triggers 'Extreme' Emissions Drop

Sydney Morning Herald - Miki Perkins

The coronavirus shutdown has triggered extraordinary reductions in global carbon emissions but the likely annual decrease is comparable only to the reductions needed year on year over decades to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, new research finds.

Government action and economic incentives after the pandemic are likely to influence global carbon emissions for decades to come, according to new peer-reviewed research and analysis published in Nature Climate Change.

Global carbon dioxide emissions decreased by up to 17 per cent by early April. Credit: AAP

There has been much speculation about the likely impact of COVID-19 restrictions on carbon pollution, and this is the first peer-reviewed research in a scientific journal to robustly examine the decrease.

It found global carbon dioxide emissions decreased by up to 17 per cent by early April, when compared with emissions in 2019. Surface transport, power and industry were the most affected sectors, accounting for 85 per cent of the total reduction in global emissions.

The changes were largest in China, where the COVID-19 confinement started, then the US and Europe.

But while these daily and monthly decreases in carbon emissions were "extreme and probably unseen before", the authors point out the annual decrease is likely to be much lower.

The emissions outlook for the rest of 2020 will depend on the duration of pandemic confinement and the degree to which life returns to normal.

But even if some restrictions remain in place until the end of the year, the report authors estimate it will lead to a maximum decrease of carbon emissions in 2020 of only 4.2-7.5 per cent.

These figures are comparable with the rates of decrease needed year on year over the next few decades to limit climate change to 1.5 degrees of warming.

According to the most recent UN emissions gap report, a reduction of 7.6 per cent is needed year on year to reach that target.

"What has been really shocking is that although we were shutting down the whole economy, we were still emitting about 92 per cent of the emissions we emitted before COVID," said Dr Pep Canadell, a co-author of the research paper and senior research scientist at the CSIRO.

"It shows the fossil energy system is so ingrained into the fabric of our society and economy that even when we shut down a huge part of it we still emit large amounts of carbon."

The changes are likely to be temporary because they do not reflect structural changes in the economic, transport or energy systems, the authors write.

"These numbers put into perspective ... the size of the challenge we have to limit climate change in line with the Paris Climate Agreement."

Despite the significance of carbon emissions, there are few systems to monitor global emissions in real time, and usually this data is released months or even years later.

The study authors gathered all the available data – from aviation to mobile phone statistics – to determine the extent that different coronavirus confinement policies affected emissions.

There are opportunities to set structural changes in motion by ensuring economic stimuli is aligned with low-carbon initiatives, they say.

These could include changes to surface transportation, says Dr Canadell. Surface transport accounted for nearly half the decrease in emissions during confinement, and active travel (walking, cycling and using e-bicycles) have social distancing advantages.

"Now, more than ever before, we need to be careful that anything we have to do with energy is well aligned with the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement," he said.

Links

• Temporary reduction in daily global CO2 emissions during the COVID-19 forced confinement
• Political interference a key risk to emissions reductions, experts say
• Government looks to carbon capture for climate action
• Australia's Technology Investment Roadmap: discussion paper
• New nuclear technologies to be examined in planning Australia's energy mix
• Hydrogen at centre of Australia’s technology roadmap
• EVs, batteries and solar priorities in Government’s Technology Roadmap discussion paper
• Government's COVID-19 economic recovery committee looks fixed on a gas-fired rebound
• Government opens door to paying for cleaner coal and gas with climate funds
• Scott Morrison promises a 'truth campaign' as he targets Bill Shorten over electric vehicles
  Morrison government to underwrite new gas power plants
• Australia’s most senior former public servants reveal their anger about climate policy failure

Climate Change Is Turning Antarctica's Snow Green And The Effects Can Now Be Seen From Space

NEWS.com.au - Jessica Wang | AFP

What should be a wilderness of white ice caps has been invaded by an eerie green tinge so widespread it’s now visible from space.

Handout picture taken in 2018 and released by the University of Cambridge on May 20, 2020 showing green snow algae near Rothera Research Station, at Rothera Point, in Antarctica. Photo by Dr. Matt Davey / University Of Cambridge/SAMS / AFP

Warming temperatures due to climate change have resulted in a spread of "green snow" in Antarctica, the extent of which is now visible from space.

New research published on Wednesday from the University of Cambridge and the British Antarctic Survey showed the first map of these algae blooms, which help soak to soak up CO2 from the atmosphere.

Using data collected by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel 2 satellite over the past two years, they reported the spread of was particularly prominent along the Antarctic Peninsula coast and is expected to increase due to global warming.

This is because the slushy melting snow provides the perfect environment for these microscopic organisms to thrive.

More parts of the Antarctic Peninsula will change colour as global temperatures increase, new research showed on May 19, 2020. Picture: Matthew Davey/University of Cambridge/AFP

Photo taken of green snow algae near Rothera Research Station, at Rothera Point, in Antarctica. Picture: Matthew Davey/University of Cambridge/AFP

In their research, scientists identified more than 1600 separate green algae blooms on snow across the peninsula, with a combined surface area of 1.9 square kilometres.

They also calculated a total of 875,000 average car journeys worth of CO2 is currently absorbed by the algae colony. Although red and orange algae blooms have also been seen on Antarctica, this was not documented in the study.

Speaking to AFP, plant and algal physiologist from Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences, Matt Davey said the increase biomass is “highly significant”.

“Even though the numbers are relatively small on a global scale, in Antarctica where you have such a small amount of plant life, that amount of biomass is highly significant,” he said.

“A lot of people think Antarctica is just snow and penguins. In fact when you look around the fringe there is a lot of plant life.”

Due to warming polar regions, researchers predicted algae will gradually disappear from low-lying areas of the Antarctic due to snow-free summers.

Despite this, they hypothesised there will be “really large blooms” in the north of the peninsular due to the melting snow, the volume of which will “more than offset” lost algae.

The algae might be one symptom of global warming but it’s by no means its most dire. Picture: Matthew Davey/University of Cambridge/AFP

Although algae is highly proficient at absorbing CO2, researchers predict it could have a small but adverse impact on local albedo, or how much of the Sun’s heat is reflected back from Earth’s surface.

While white snow reflects 80 per cent of radiation that hits it, the figure for green snow is closer to 45 per cent.

The team said, however, that the reduced albedo is unlikely to impact Antarctica’s climate on any meaningful scale.

“There will be more carbon locked up in future just because you need snow to be in a slushier state for algae to bloom,” said Evans.

“We expect there to be more suitable habitat and overall more carbon sequestration.”

Links

• Algae is now growing on melting Antarctic snow due to climate change
• Antarctic algal blooms: 'Green snow' mapped from space
• Remote sensing reveals Antarctic green snow algae as important terrestrial carbon sink
• Algae Bloom in Antarctic Sea Ice
• Climate change is turning parts of Antarctica green, say scientists
• Blood red algae blooms hit Antarctica
• Penguin poo is funny. Science says so