07/10/2016

Chief Scientist To Lead Review Into Australia's Energy Security

The Guardian - 

Energy minister Josh Frydenberg during a state and territory meeting in Melbourne on Friday to consider a broad review of the nation's electricity market. Photograph: Mal Fairclough/AAP
Australia's chief scientist, Alan Finkel, will lead an energy security review determining whether the national electricity market can deliver reliable base load power while meeting Australia's climate change commitments.
Energy ministers held an emergency meeting on Friday and agreed to hold the independent review, which will deliver its preliminary findings in December.
The communique issued after the meeting says the review will take stock of the current state of the security and reliability of the national electricity market and provide advice to governments on a "coordinated, national reform blueprint".
"In light of this body of work, the Australian government's commitment at Paris and the integration of climate and energy policy at the federal level, the blueprint will outline national policy, legislative, governance and rule changes required to maintain the security, reliability, affordability and sustainability of the national electricity market," it says.
The federal government evidently sees the review as a mechanism to pressure the states to wind back their renewable energy targets.
In a statement issued after Friday's meeting, the federal energy and environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, said the agreement to hold the review meant that ministers had agreed that "energy security, reliability and affordability is their primary responsibility".
He said regulators had briefed Friday's meeting that there were "broader issues" about the reliability of the system as a result of the higher uptake of intermittent power, particularly wind and solar, and the flow-on impact on to interconnectors.
"We actually heard at this meeting from the Australian Energy Market Commission that the state-based targets do raise serious questions about the efficiency, the cost and location of investment decisions," Frydenberg said. "That work is still under way."
But South Australia evidently sees the review as a means of building an evidence base and support across Coag for a form of carbon trading for the electricity sector.
The South Australian energy minister, Tom Koutsantonis, told the ABC after the meeting he had raised the issue of an emissions intensity scheme during Friday's meeting, and he intended to build the case for a sectoral baseline and credit scheme as a mechanism for forcing an orderly transition in the national energy market from coal to gas and renewables.
He said there was a lot of support for the proposal in Coag, and that in pursuing the emissions intensity scheme, South Australia was only supporting a policy that Malcolm Turnbull had himself supported in 2009.
Frydenberg continued on Friday to dead bat questions about whether Canberra would countenance a trading scheme for the electricity sector, or push the federal renewable energy target out beyond 2020 as a means of allowing the states to step back from their schemes. "I'm not going to pre-judge the outcome of our 2017 review [of Direct Action]," he said.
The prime minister sought the one-off meeting of energy ministers following the storms that caused a statewide blackout in South Australia last week.
Turnbull had linked the SA blackout explicitly to the state's use of renewable energy, calling it a "wake-up call" for state leaders who were trying to hit "completely unrealistic" renewable targets.
Friday's communique, on the basis of a preliminary report from the Australian Energy Market Operator, said the cause of the blackout was the weather event, resulting in multiple transmission failures, including the loss of three big 275 kV transmission lines north of Adelaide.
The prime minister's rhetoric triggered a furious backlash among the states and a fresh outbreak of toxic climate change politics after a period of relative calm, prompting a coalition of business and energy groups to call for cool heads and bipartisan cooperation in advance of Friday's meeting.
On Friday, Turnbull continued to face off against the states, describing ambitious renewable energy targets as "heroic" and "very much a Labor obsession".
"South Australia is one that has achieved a very high level of renewable energy. If you look at Queensland, where they are currently at about 4%, they say they're going to get, by 2030, to 50%. Well how on earth is that going to happen?" the prime minister said.
"Ditto, similar targets in Victoria. They set these targets and rather than planning for energy security, they just treat it as an assumption. They assume that they can change the composition of the energy mix and that energy security will always be there and the lights will stay on. That has been brought into question."
Frydenberg was more measured, saying that after the talks the government would like to see "great harmonisation" with renewable energy targets and a "truly national system" – but he also acknowledged that the review process he had set in train was a Coag process, and he said the states were not budging.
The communique noted "the importance of integrating energy and climate policy at the federal level and the federal government's commitment to the Paris targets".
At Friday's meeting, Koutsantonis also reached agreement with his New South Wales counterpart Anthony Roberts to develop a new interconnector between the two states to increase stability in the system.

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A Military View On Climate Change: It’s Eroding Our National Security And We Should Prepare For It

The Conversation - 

The guided missile destroyer USS Barry deploys to sea from Naval Station Norfolk ahead of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. U.S. Navy/Flickr
In this presidential election year we have heard much about some issues, such as immigration and trade, and less about others. For example, climate change was discussed for an estimated 82 seconds in the first presidential debate last week, and for just 37 minutes in all presidential and vice presidential debates since the year 2000.
Many observers think climate change deserves more attention. They might be surprised to learn that U.S. military leaders and defense planners agree. The armed forces have been studying climate change for years from a perspective that rarely is mentioned in the news: as a national security threat. And they agree that it poses serious risks.
I spent 32 years as a meteorologist in the U.S. Navy, where I initiated and led the Navy's Task Force on Climate Change. Here is how military planners see this issue: We know that the climate is changing, we know why it's changing and we understand that change will have large impacts on our national security. Yet as a nation we still only begrudgingly take precautions.
The Obama administration recently announced several actions that create a framework for addressing climate-driven security threats. But much of the hard work lies ahead – assuming that our next president understands the risks and chooses to act on them.

Climate-related disruptions
Climate change affects our security in two ways. First, it causes stresses such as water shortages and crop failures, which can exacerbate or inflame existing tensions within or between states. These problems can lead to state failure, uncontrolled migration and ungoverned spaces.
On Sept. 21 the National Intelligence Council issued its most recent report on implications of climate change for U.S. national security. This document represents the U.S. intelligence community's strategic-level view. It does not come from the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change, politicians of either party or an advocacy group, but from nonpartisan, senior U.S. intelligence professionals.
The NIC report emphasizes that the problem is not simply climate change, but the interaction of climate with other large-scale demographic and migration trends; its impacts on food, energy and health; and the stresses it will place on societies, especially fragile ones.
Aftermath of a bomb attack in 2014 in Jos, Nigeria by the militant group Boko Haram. Analysts have linked Boko Haram's rise to climatic shifts and resource shortages. Diariocritico de Venezuela/Flickr, CC BY 
As examples the report cites diverse events, ranging from mass protests and violence triggered by water shortages in Mauritania to the possibility that thawing in the Arctic could threaten Russian oil pipelines in the region. Other studies have identified climate change as a contributing factor to events including the civil war in Syria and the Arab Spring uprisings.
Second, climate change is putting our military bases and associated domestic infrastructure in the United States under growing pressure from rising sea levels, "nuisance flooding," increasingly destructive storm surges, intense rainfalls and droughts, and indirect impacts from wildfires. All of these trends make it harder to train our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines to deploy and fight the "away" game and to keep our forces ready to deploy.
These changes are not hypothetical. Consider Hurricane Matthew: although we cannot directly attribute this storm to climate change, scientists tell us that as climate change worsens, major hurricanes will become more severe. As Matthew moves up the Atlantic coast, the armed forces are evacuating thousands of service members and dependents out of its path, and the Navy is moving ships out to sea. Other units are preparing to deliver hurricane relief to hard-hit areas.
Marines from the 8th Engineering Support Battalion, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, participate in relief efforts in New York after Hurricane Sandy, November 2012. U.S. Navy/Flickr, CC BY
Many of us who work in this field have written and talked about risks like these for years. Along with 24 other retired senior officers, civilian defense officials from Republican and Democratic administrations, and well-respected academics, I recently signed a consensus statement that calls climate change a strategically significant risk to our national security and international stability. We called for "a robust agenda to both prevent and prepare for climate change risks," and warned that "inaction is not an option."
The "change" part of climate change is critical: The more ability we have to adapt to and manage changes and the rate of change in our climate, the greater our chances are to avoid catastrophic chaos and instability.

Meeting the challenge
Simultaneously with the NIC report on Sept. 21, the White House released a Presidential Memorandum, or PM, on climate change and national security. This document formally states the administration's position that climate change impacts national security.
Building on past executive orders and policies, it directs senior climate officials at 20 federal agencies to form a working group on climate change and national security, cochaired by the president's national security adviser and science adviser. This working group will analyze questions such as which countries and regions are most vulnerable to climate change impacts in the near, medium and long term.
That's high-level attention! In the words of a senior administration official, the PM "gives permission" for career civil servants and military professionals to work on this challenge, just as they address myriad other security challenges daily.
Destroyed tanks in front of a mosque in Azaz, Syria, 2012. Climate scientists have identified the 2006-2010 drought in Syria as a factor in the civil uprising that began in 2011. Christiaan Triebert/Flickr, CC BY-NC
But we need to do much more. I am a member of the Climate and Security Advisory Group – a voluntary, nonpartisan group of 43 U.S.-based military, national security, homeland security, intelligence and foreign policy experts from a broad range of institutions. We have produced a comprehensive briefing book for the next administration that makes detailed recommendations about how to expand our efforts to address security risks associated with climate change.
Our top-line recommendation is to "mainstream" this issue by ensuring that U.S. leaders consider climate change on an equal basis with more traditional security issues, such as changing demographics, economics, political dynamics and other indicators of instability – as well as with low-probability, high-consequence threats like nuclear proliferation. We also recommend that the next president should designate senior officials in key departments, the intelligence community, the National Security Council and within the Executive Office of the President itself to ensure this intent is carried out.
What's next? As a retired naval officer, I find myself drawing on the words of American naval heroes like Admiral Chester Nimitz. In 1945, while he was commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Nimitz wrote about a devastating storm near the Philippines that had sunk three ships and seriously damaged more than 20 others, killing and injuring hundreds of sailors. He concluded by observing that:
"The time for taking all measures for a ship's safety is while still able to do so. Nothing is more dangerous than for a seaman to be grudging in taking precautions lest they turn out to have been unnecessary. Safety at sea for a thousand years has depended on exactly the opposite philosophy."
The next president will have a choice to make. One option is to continue down the path that the Obama administration has defined and develop policies, budgets, plans and programs that flesh out the institutional framework now in place. Alternatively, he or she can call climate change a hoax manufactured by foreign governments and ignore the flashing red lights of increasing risk.
The world's ice caps will not care who is elected or what is said. They will simply continue to melt, as dictated by laws of physics. But Americans will care deeply about our policy response. Our nation's security is at stake.

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What's Really Going Wrong With Electricity

Fairfax - 

The extreme weather conditions and 80,000 lightning strikes that thrust South Australia into darkness last week was extraordinary enough; the disingenuous debate it sparked about Australia's changing energy system has been something else again.
At the heart of the issue - as Malcolm Turnbull has identified - is ideology. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister's words on the subject would have had more power had he not allowed himself to be seen as an ideological player.
The collapse of transmission lines led to the shutdown of SA's entire power network. Photo: Tom Fedorowytsch/ABC
After noting the blackout was the result of a storm, he whacked Labor-led states for setting "extremely aggressive, extremely unrealistic" clean energy targets rather than merely sticking to what should be his central point: that an inevitable change is under way in the electricity system.
The only real questions are: are we managing it well? If not, how do we to fix that?
The answer to the first is a resounding no. The second remains an open question that, as federal and state energy ministers prepare to meet in Melbourne on Friday, we are some distance away from meaningfully addressing.
The Capital Wind Farm in NSW. Picture: Bloomberg
In reality, it is too early to say anything of the sort. But the idea - more popular with politicians than the population, and significantly over-represented in influential media commentary – that the growth in renewable energy is a problem that needs to be stopped or reversed persists.
At the other end of the spectrum, and to a lesser extent, so does a suggestion that the shift to a cleaner grid will be simple. Neither are true. But the change is necessary and inevitable.
Consider the facts.  Burning coal to make electricity has been good for Australia's economic development, but it wasn't and isn't cheap. It carries a hidden cost that is passed on to future generations.
Speculation is mounting that the Hazelwood power plant will close. Picture: Chris Hopkins
Coal itself is neither good nor evil. It's just fossilised carbon that burns easily. The idea of carbon pricing, introduced and abandoned by the federal government, was developed as a response to the problem it causes – that we should pay the true cost of using a fuel now to reflect the damage being done.
Recent indicators suggest that damage is encroaching: 2016 is on track to be the hottest year on record; summer Arctic sea ice reached its second lowest level on record; the Greenland ice sheet is melting faster than previously thought; coral reefs are bleaching and dying at rates that have stunned scientists.
Global mean surface temperature for January to June 2016. Source: NASA
It doesn't matter whether an individual accepts the mainstream climate science that links these extraordinary shifts to human activity - the global community has accepted it on their behalf. Nearly 200 governments agreed in Paris last December that average warming needed to be limited to well below 2 degrees and acknowledged the ultimate goal should be zero emissions. As of this week, more than 55 countries responsible for more than 55 per cent of global emissions have ratified the Paris deal, crossing the threshold for it to take effect
Celebrations as the climate deal is secured in Paris in December. Picture: AP
Many of those countries don't yet have policies in place to meet the targets required, but the traffic in policy terms is one way.
Businesses across the globe, hard-headed and rationalist, have taken the hint. Shareholders increasingly want to know how companies are responding to climate change. In both China and India, the huge investment in coal power has begun to slow, with some projections suggesting solar power may soon be cheaper to build.
China is aiming to reach a peak its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Picture: Getty
In Australia, the major energy companies all acknowledge coal is on the way out and want the government to intervene to help with an orderly transition to cleaner generation. French energy giant Engie, which owns 72 per cent of Hazelwood, has begun to "exit from coal" by shutting or selling its dirtiest plants across the globe. The Victorian generator is in its sights. Already, some old and inefficient coal plants across the country have shut because they were not profitable.
Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg, his Environment and Energy Minister, have indicated publicly they understand the trend. Both have also acknowledged that under the Paris deal Australia's climate targets (a 26-28 per cent cut in emissions by 2030 compared with 2005 levels) will have to become more ambitious over time.
Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg. Picture: Philip Gostelow
Yet we remain stuck in the disingenuous position of having federal policies – mainly the "direct action" emissions reduction fund – that no one believes are capable of meeting even existing commitments. The government currently has no policy to cut the coal-fired emissions of the electricity sector.
It has a policy to boost renewable energy that Tony Abbott sought to kill but couldn't, that Turnbull and Frydenberg have backed to deliver about 23.5 per cent of generation by 2020. But it stops in that year with no plan to extend it.
In this vacuum, Labor state governments have pledged to dramatically increase the share of renewable energy on their own turf. Some, including Victoria, have released details of how they plan to do this. Other targets, such as Queensland, are little more than aspirations. It is arguable whether state targets are helpful – some experts say they increase costs unnecessarily. As recently as last December, then environment minister Greg Hunt said he had encouraged states to offer extra investment if they wanted to attract more clean power. Blame for the current mess lies more with Canberra than the provinces.
Wholesale electricity prices increased dramatically in South Australia in winter. Picture: Jessica Hromas.
Currently, most renewable energy policy is building the cheapest form, wind power. It has proved effective well beyond doomsday predictions, but how much of our electricity should it provide?
Australia's coal plants are mostly old, need replacing over the next couple of decades, and no one is going to build a new coal plant. There is an argument that gas-fired electricity – with lower emissions than coal - could have a role as a transitional power source. But gas is increasingly expensive and are governments really going to introduce a new subsidy – whether direct or implied through regulation – for fossil fuel generation?
The economics and impossible politics of nuclear power continue to rule that out, but it is likely large-scale solar power could have a significant part to play. The cost is coming down rapidly and battery storage continues to advance. And an increasing chunk of the energy system will be decentralised – powered by people and businesses across the country with solar panels and batteries. Already, nearly 2 million Australian homes have solar panels.
Wherever it lands, the transition won't be straight-forward. But those arguing clean energy should be held back due to concerns the transmission network can't cope are approaching the issue in reverse. The question needs to be how can the network be transformed, and what rules need to be changed, to make the grid smart and robust enough to handle a complex mix of centralised, decentralised and intermittent generation underpinned by batteries? And what can we learn from places such as Germany and parts of the US, which have adapted to life with a higher proportion of renewables and micro-grids in certain areas that would protect against blackouts on the scale seen last week?
Energy ministers meeting on Friday could begin by agreeing to change what's known as the national electricity objective to reflect that their decisions should consider reducing emissions alongside the key issues of price and reliability.
It would make it easier to approve new connections between states – a step that should improve reliability of the grid, and is likely to lift the pace of transition.
They could discuss - ahead of a federal review next year - what policies are needed to transform the electricity sector at cheapest cost, and that could be scaled up to meet more ambitious targets. (Hint: start by turning direct action into a form of carbon pricing.)
They could consider how to best ensure coal plants are closed and clean energy brought on in a staged and predictable way.
With their colleagues in other portfolios, they could agree on a template for supporting people in coal towns who deserve support and empathy as their livelihood winds up - including, perhaps, an industry policy that brings work to those regions.
That would be a start. Here's hoping.

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Justin Trudeau Gives Provinces Until 2018 To Adopt Carbon Price Plan

CBC News - Kathleen Harris

Announcement surprises, frustrates some environment ministers meeting in Montreal
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivers a speech at the start of the Paris climate agreement debate in the House of Commons Monday, announcing a 'floor' carbon price of $10 a tonne by 2018, and $50 a tonne by 2022. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took provinces by surprise Monday by announcing they have until 2018 to adopt a carbon pricing scheme, or the federal government will step in and impose a price for them.
A tough-talking Trudeau told MPs in the House of Commons that provinces can craft a cap-and-trade system or put a direct price on carbon pollution — but it must meet the federal benchmark or "floor price."
"If neither price nor cap and trade is in place by 2018, the government of Canada will implement a price in that jurisdiction," he said.
Trudeau made the announcement in leading off parliamentary debate on the Paris climate change agreement Monday, making the case for Canada to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030.
Trudeau said the proposed price on carbon dioxide pollution should start at a minimum of $10 a tonne in 2018, rising by $10 each year to $50 a tonne by 2022.
Provinces and territories that choose a cap-and-trade system must decrease emissions in line with both Canada's target and with the reductions expected in jurisdictions that choose a price-based system.
Whatever model a province chooses, Trudeau said, it will be revenue neutral for the federal government, with any revenues generated under the system staying in the province or territory where they are generated.
Trudeau insisted the plan will be good for the economy, good for innovation and good for jobs.

'Sledgehammer' approach
Conservative MP and environment critic Ed Fast accused Trudeau of taking a "sledgehammer" approach with the provinces.
"Here, he lowers the boom on the provinces and said, 'I'm not going to co-operate with you. It's my way or the highway,'" Fast said.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May praised the Liberal government's "leadership" at last year's climate talks, but said keeping the 2030 target set by the previous Conservative government under former prime minister Stephen Harper is "incompatible" with the commitments made there.
"How can he reconcile adopting the Paris agreement while accepting the Harper target, which will make achieving Paris impossible?" she asked.
NDP environment critic Linda Duncan also accused the Liberals of backtracking on targets they once denounced as inadequate, weak and catastrophic. The government has signed on to the Paris agreement without a clear plan and firm measures to meet targets.

Environment ministers meet
Debate in the House comes as Canada's environment ministers met in Montreal to discuss collective efforts to fight climate change.
Environment Minister Catherine McKenna was trying to reach a consensus with provincial and territorial ministers on a pan-Canadian plan, but is facing some fierce pushback on a national carbon-pricing scheme. Upset ministers from Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador walked out of the meeting early after getting word of Trudeau's plan.
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall was incensed that Trudeau would make the announcement as his minister pushed a "collaborative" plan with the provinces.
"The level of disrespect shown by the prime minister and his government today is stunning," he said in a statement. This is a betrayal of the statements made by the prime minister in Vancouver this March. And this new tax will damage our economy."
Wall said that Saskatchewan "will investigate all options to mitigate the impact of one of the largest national tax increases in Canadian history."
Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said she supports the principle of a common price on carbon, but could not yet embrace the amounts laid out today.
Any targets must come hand-in-hand with energy projects like pipelines, she said during an interview on CBC News Network's Power & Politics.
"We think it needs to happen concurrently with concrete action on energy infrastructure and in particular on getting a pipeline to tidewater," she told host Rosemary Barton.

Applause for plan
Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard applauded the federal plan.
"We believe it's good, and it's not going to affect the functioning of our trading system," he said.
According to figures from Canada's Ecofiscal Commission, an independent research firm, Alberta and B.C. are the only two provinces with a direct carbon tax system.
Alberta's phased-in regime will be $20 a tonne by January 2017 and $30 a tonne one year later.
B.C. Premier Christy Clark has promised to hike the current $30-per-tonne price on carbon.
Ontario and Quebec have cap-and-trade systems, but neither province is on track to meet federal targets.

Pricing plans
Quebec's current estimated equivalent price is about $16.40 per tonne, and is expected to climb to $18 per tonne by 2020
Ontario's plan would have an estimated equivalent price of $19.40 per tonne by 2020, according to Canada's Ecofiscal Commission.
But a statement from Ontario's Environment Minister Glenn Murray said the province is on course to achieve its 2020 target (15 per cent below 1990 levels) and has legislated targets for 2030 (37 per cent below 1990 levels) and 2050 (80 per cent below 1990 levels).
He called Trudeau's announcement a "positive step" for Canada's effort.
"We remain firmly committed to establishing our carbon market, linking with Quebec and California and growing carbon markets both in Canada and around the world in an effort to fight climate change," he said.
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Paris Climate Accord To Go Into Force, Australia Misses Out

Fairfax - Reuters | Bloomberg | AAP | Fairfax Media

The Paris climate accord negotiated last year has been ratified by enough countries for it to go into force.
A group of European nations raised support for the Paris Climate Change Agreement to countries that represent 56.75 per cent of world greenhouse gas emissions, above the 55 per cent needed for implementation.
President Barack Obama welcomes the news that the Paris agreement on climate change will take effect in a month as a historic achievement. Photo: AP
Germany, France, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and Malta - European Union nations that have completed domestic ratification and account for about 4 per cent of emissions - formally signed up on Wednesday.
In total, 72 countries out of 195 have ratified the agreement, the UN said.
Smoke belches from the chimney of a factory on the outskirts of Gauhati, India. The country formally joined the Paris accord on Sunday. Photo: AP
However, Australia has missed out on being part of the historic moment.
The federal government only tabled the agreement in Parliament in its first week back after the July 2 election.
The parliamentary committee into treaties is still examining the deal, with a public hearing on Thursday and submissions closing on Friday.

Historic day: Obama
"Today is a historic day in the fight to protect our planet for future generations," US President Barack Obama told reporters in the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday.
"Today, the world has officially crossed the threshold for the Paris agreement to take effect.
"If we follow through on the commitments that this Paris agreement embodies, history may well judge it as a turning point for our planet."
The deal will formally start in 30 days on November 4 - four days before the US presidential election in which Republican Donald Trump opposes the accord and Democrat Hillary Clinton strongly supports it.
China and the United States joined up last month in a joint step by the world's top emitters.
China and the US together account for about 38 per cent of global emissions. Because the accord is not a treaty, US ratification did not require a vote by the Senate, where Republicans mostly oppose the agreement.
India, the planet's fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, formally joined the accord on Sunday.
Other countries to have signed include Moldova, Kyrgyzstan and New Zealand.
The UN's top climate official Patricia Espinosa said the ratification was a "powerful combination" of the importance countries attached to climate change and the realisation of opportunities from the deal.
"The speed at which countries have made the Paris agreement's entry into force possible is unprecedented in recent experience of international agreements," she said in a statement.

Australia still trying
A spokesman for Australia's Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg said the government was trying to get it ratified as soon as possible.
The parliamentary committee was looking at the deal as part of Australia's domestic processes, he said.
Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop insists Australia wants to ratify the agreement before the end of the year.
The election is being blamed for the delay in tabling the agreement.
But Greenpeace said it was time for Australia to follow the lead of countries such as China and prove it's serious about climate change.
"It's unfortunate that, at a time in history when other world leaders are taking action in the global battle against climate change, Australia's ill-informed political leaders are hurling insults at wind turbines," Greenpeace Australia senior climate campaigner Nikola Casule said.

3 degrees warming predicted
It took eight years for the previous UN climate deal, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, to gain enough backing to take effect.
It obliged only rich nations to cut emissions and the United States stayed out of it.
UN studies project that average world temperatures are set to rise by 3 degrees or more by 2100, based on current trends.
And this year is expected to prove the warmest since records began in the 19th century, beating 2015.

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06/10/2016

4 Reasons the Paris Agreement Won’t Solve Climate Change

EcoWatch - James Hansen

Many hail the Paris agreement—set to cross the threshold this week to come into effect—as a panacea for global climate change. Yet tragically, this perspective neglects to take into account the scientific reality of our climate system, which tells a much different story.
Our latest research, Young People's Burden: Requirement of Negative CO2 Emissions, appeared Monday as a "Discussion" paper in Earth System Dynamics Discussion, and outlines how—if national governments neglect to take aggressive climate action today—today's young people will inherit a climate system so altered it will require prohibitively expensive—and possibly infeasible—extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere.

Global temperatures are already at the level of the Eemian period (130,000 to 115,000 years ago), when sea level was 6-9 meters higher than today. Considering the additional warming "in the pipeline," due to delayed response of the climate system and the impossibility of instant replacement of fossil fuels, additional temperature rise is inevitable.
Continued high fossil fuel emissions place a burden on young people to undertake "negative CO2 emissions," which would require massive technological CO extraction with minimal estimated costs of $104-$570 trillion this century, with large risks and uncertain feasibility.
Continued high fossil fuel emissions unarguably sentences young people to either a massive, possibly implausible cleanup or growing deleterious climate impacts or both, scenarios that should provide incentive and obligation for governments to alter energy policies without further delay.
The paper provides the underlying scientific backing for the Our Children's Trust lawsuit against the U.S. government, which argues that climate change jeopardizes the next generation's inalienable rights under the U.S. Constitution to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The paper offers an opportunity to examine the current state of the planet with respect to climate change. Four key takeaways include:
  1. The Paris Climate Accord is a precatory agreement, wishful thinking that mainly reaffirms, 23 years later, the 1992 Rio Framework Convention on Climate Change.
    The developing world need for abundant, affordable, reliable energy is largely ignored, even though it is a basic requirement to eliminate global poverty and war. Instead the developed world pretends to offer reparations, a vaporous $100B/year, while allowing climate impacts to grow.
  2. As long as fossil fuels are allowed to be held up as the cheapest reliable energy, they will continue to be the world's largest energy source and the likelihood of disastrous consequences for young people will grow to near certainty.
  3. Technically, it is still possible to solve the climate problem, but there are two essential requirements:
    (1) a simple across-the-board rising carbon fee collected from fossil fuel companies at the source, and
    (2) government support for RD&D (research, development and demonstration) of clean energy technologies, including advanced generation, safe nuclear power.
  4. Courts are crucial to solution of the climate problem.
    The climate "problem" was and is an opportunity for transformation to a clean energy future. However, the heavy hand of the fossil fuel industry works mostly in legal ways such as the "I'm an Energy Voter" campaign in the U.S.
    Failure of executive and legislative branches to deal with climate change makes it essential for courts, less subject to pressure and bribery from special financial interests, to step in and protect young people, as they did minorities in the case of civil rights.
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AEMO Report Into SA Blackout Raises Questions, Answers None

Renew Economy - 

Image: ABC
A preliminary report into last week's blackout in South Australia from the Australian Energy Market Operator says it is clear that it was a "weather event" that sparked 30 seconds of chaos and triggered the collapse of three main transmission lines and ultimately the state-wide blackout.
But the report, although reaching no conclusions, and based on incomplete data, invites the media – and wind farm opponents in Coalition and industry – to cite wind energy as a key factor by inferring that some of the state's wind farms contributed to the cascading impacts that caused the state-wide outage.
The report was released on Wednesday morning, just two days before a hastily convened COAG energy minister's meeting on Friday.
This is grist for the mill for that meeting – and it appears its timing serves no other purpose. No doubt it will be seized upon by the Coalition in its campaign against wind farms and its attempts to stop the states from going forward with their own renewable energy programs.
In particular, the Coalition will point to the loss of 315MW of wind power highlighted by AEMO in the press release after the collapse of the last of the transmission lines that preceded the failure of the inter-connector. At which point all the remaining gas and wind generators tripped.

But there is a question about whether this loss of wind capacity really mattered. The data in the actual report suggests not.
Wind generators were producing a total of 883MW at the time (gas was providing 330MW and 613MW was coming from Victoria) – and had ridden out the loss of the first two transmission lines.
A small amount of wind capacity dropped out after the second transmission line collapsed, possibly – the operators say – as the result of lightning strikes and a software glitch that has since been rectified.
But as this chart below shows, there was no impact on frequency. It was only the failure of the third transmission line at 1615.18 that some generation was lost, the frequency dropped the system went black 1.2 seconds later.
The loss of the third transmission line took away the delivery mechanism for two other wind farms, which suggests it wouldn't have mattered which power source was operating on that line. Within another half a second, all remaining gas and wind plants had gone after the interconnector tripped.
The report does not say why this happened, or why they stopped generating. It could be because they had nowhere to send their output. Or that, as mentioned earlier, some were hit by lightning, or tripped after repeated voltage drops.
Nor does the report does not say if the total blackout would avoided by having a brown coal generator on line, or if the outcome would have been any different with no wind power.
The report also point to problems with conventional generation, saying that contracted but un-named providers of "black start" services – peaking gas fired and diesel power stations – failed to deliver and could not be used to restart the main gas generator, meaning the operator had to wait until a new link was established with Victoria.
They are paid millions of dollars to provide this essential service, but failed when needed. The report does not say why, possibly because it won't even say who.
Indeed, the report is also likely to trigger discussions about the role of AEMO itself, and the actions that it took, or didn't take, in the lead up to the blackout.
It says, for instance, that  it was on a "heightened state of readiness" with "emergency procedures in place".
But market players are wondering why it saw no reason to allocate more back-up power, or adjust the flow on the interconnector so that they could respond to any unforeseen events, particularly for the lightning that is frequent in that part of the world.
If it had "reclassified" the potential loss of the interconnector, this would have invoked the provision of 35MW of local FCAS constraint and constrained the interconnector, leaving enough headroom to manage this power flow increase.
Already, the question is being asked: how serious does a storm have to be, and who made the call that this was not serious enough? Many in the market are also expecting a review of the fault ride-through equipment and systems that are rarely tested in real-time.
AEMO has already taken some preventative measures in the interim, placing constraints on wind farms and taking control of the wholesale market – essentially running it as a centrally controlled system rather than an open energy market.
The reason for this is the continued absence of the three main transmission lines, and some smaller lines, which are unprecedented and beyond the system design. It has also reclassified 10 wind farms that it says "did not operate" normally during the weather events.
It effectively means their combined output cannot exceed 600MW, or that of the interconnector. It says this will remain in place until more is known about the issues. AEMO wants to see high speed data from all wind farms in the region in order to confirm that each generator performed in line with their respective agreements.
The preliminary report explains how severe weather moved through South Australia on the afternoon of Wednesday, September 28, with high winds, thunderstorms, 80,000 lightning strikes, hail, and heavy rainfall and even two tornadoes.
The weather, it said, resulted in multiple transmission system faults including, and in the space of 12 seconds, the loss of three major 275 kV transmission lines north of Adelaide.

 The sequence of events as described by AEMO went something like this:
– At 1618 (network time): One line faulted: No change to generation or load. … but 1 transmission line out of service
– Another line faulted (and successful re-connected within 1 second). Then it re-faulted and 2 transmission lines out of service.
– 1 second later, there was about 123MW reduction in wind output.
– 4 seconds later – another transmission fault …. and now 3 transmission lines were out of service
– About 2 seconds later another about 192MW reduction in wind output occurred. This caused the flow across Heywood Interconnector to increase to over 850MW, causing it to trip. In less than half a second the whole state went to "system black".
The cause of wind farm disconnection is still not clear and is not dealt with by AEMO. There is some suggestion that some wind farms could have been lost because of multiple lightning strikes, or because of protection measures.
Strikes at some turbines may have triggered an automatic shutdown after three successive faults – although these faults could have been caused by lightning or falls in frequency. There are concerns that these turbines should have been configured to ride through more such events.
It wouldn't be the first time lightning has caused havoc in South Australia. In 2005, a lightning strike forced the Northern brown coal generator to drop from nearly full output to zero, causing the inter-connector to trip and the loss of a number of other conventional power plants.
Still, these are troubling times for the wind industry, and for the solar industry as well, which could also find itself impacted should the states find themselves beaten into submission by the federal government and a baying media crowd.

South Australia premier Jay Weatherill says the report shows that it was a weather event and was not a "renewable energy" event.
"Now, armed with that information, we need to attend the national energy ministers meeting on Friday to take steps to ensure that we have a secure, clean and affordable electricity system," he was quoted as saying by the ABC.
Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, however, said the state had failed to keep the lights on. "SA has the highest wholesale energy costs in Australia. That is not good for business. It's not good for a state which needs to get more jobs, [and has] a higher unemployment rate than any other."
The Clean Energy Council says it was clear that the blackout was caused by the storm that took out the huge electricity pylons and triggered a sequence of "extraordinary events", and it wouldn't have mattered if the state was running on coal, gas, nuclear or renewable energy.
"This was a once-in-50-year storm which placed extraordinary stress on the power system, and the cascading events that followed the damage to the transmission system have never been experienced before," CEO Kane Thornton said.
"Australia's power network is highly sophisticated with a range of advanced protection and fault ride-through equipment and systems that are rarely tested in real-time. These were put under unprecedented pressure due to the extreme weather events in South Australia.
"No doubt there will be much we can learn to improve the resilience of the electricity system in light of the evolving energy mix and the probability of increased storm events in the future.
"There is no evidence to suggest that maintaining Northern Power Station in operation or the increased role of wind power changed the outcome in these extraordinary events."

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