The Global Heatwave Is About To Hit Your Wallet

Bloomberg - Rachel Morison | Marvin G Perez | Nicholas Larkin

Scorching weather across the globe makes fields too dry for crops, rivers too warm to cool power plants, and leaves wind turbines idle – and it’s pushing commodities prices higher

A combine harvester cuts a field of rapeseed in the U.K. Major crops are expected to be smaller due to dry conditions. Photographer: Bloomberg Creative Photos/Bloomberg

Commodity producers are having a summer to remember, for all the wrong reasons.
A heatwave across swathes of North America, Europe and Asia, coupled with a worsening drought in some areas, is causing spikes in the prices of anything from wheat to electricity. Cotton plants are stunted in parched Texas fields, French rivers are too warm to effectively cool nuclear reactors and the Russian wheat crop is faltering.
The scorching heat is extracting a heavy human cost – contributing to floods in Japan and Laos and wildfires near Athens. Relief from soaring temperatures, which topped 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Arctic Circle,  may not arrive for at least two weeks.
It’s a timely reminder of the vulnerability of global commodity markets to the changing climate, as human activity disrupts the behavior of plants, animals and the march of the seasons.

Grain Pain
Wheat prices surge to a three-year high as the heatwave hurts Europe's crop

Source: Euronext

The heat and lack of rainfall is pummeling crops across Europe as far as the Black Sea. Output in Russia, the world’s top wheat exporter, is set to fall for the first time in six years, while concerns continue to mount about smaller crops in key growers such as France and Germany. Wheat futures for December have jumped almost 10 percent in the past month in Paris, with prices this week reaching the highest since the contract started trading in 2015.
After years of bumper harvests, global output could drop this year for the first time since the 2012 to 2013 growing season. This could have political and social ramifications. Egypt, which relies on subsidized bread to feed its almost 100 million people, is already paying the highest price for its imports in more than three years.

French Power
High temperatures are forecast to continue in France, disrupting power plants

Source: The Weather Co. using GFS model

French farmers aren’t the only ones finding the weather too hot to handle. The country’s fleet of nuclear power plants is also suffering. Rivers have become too warm to effectively cool the reactors, and Electricite de France SA may be forced to cut output later this week at two stations. The hot weather also has forced a German coal-fired plant to curb operations and reduced the availability of some plants in Britain fired by natural gas.
France gets more than 70 percent of its power from 58 atomic stations and is a net exporter of electricity to neighboring countries. Any reductions in output would potentially boost prices across the continent.
The sultry conditions are also leaving wind turbines virtually at a standstill. In Germany, wind output over the past 10 days has been a third lower than the average for the year so far. Windmills are also becalmed in Spain, Italy, the U.K., Denmark and Sweden. Solar operators are enjoying the weather, but they can’t fill the gap left by wind and demand for natural gas is rising.
French and German day-ahead wholesale power is at the highest for the time of year for a decade, while in Britain they’re the most since at least 2009.

Texas Power Surge
Electricity prices surge as Texas heat smashes records

Source: Data compiled by Bloomberg

Over in Texas, prices are also jumping due to the heat. The northern part of the state smashed a 93-year-old daily temperature record last week, sending demand surging as people heeded advice to stay indoors and crank up their air conditioning. Wholesale prices for electricity secured a day in advance reached three-year highs, although they’ve since fallen as temperatures moderated.
Temperatures got so high that the National Weather Service was advising north Texas residents to avoid walking their dogs, lest they burn Fido’s paws. But for farmers in the west of the state, the drought was hurting even more than the heat.



The West Texas cotton belt – the world’s most productive area for the crop – is brown, baked, cracked and dusty. The dryness is so bad that close to half of the state’s crop is in poor or very poor condition, U.S. government data show. About 4.5 million acres of the fiber are planted in the region, 60 percent of which depends on rain because it isn’t irrigated.
"I lost everything in the dry land,” said Lloyd Arthur, a fourth-generation farmer in Crosby County. He’s not expecting to harvest anything from about a quarter of the 2,000 acres of cotton he sowed this season.

Stunted Crop
Cotton futures are up more than 10% this year on drought fears

  

Ron Harkey, the president and chief executive officer of the world’s largest cotton warehouse in Lubbock, expects to get 1.5 million bales from members of a growers cooperative in the area this year. That’s down from 2.5 million last season. Tighter supplies have helped drive cotton traded in New York up more than 10 percent this year.

Links

• The world is hot, on fire, and flooding. Climate change is here.
• Global heatwave: Hundreds killed and injured across Europe and Asia
• Why is Europe going through a heatwave?
• Droughts, bushfires and heatwaves: Scientists' warning on global temperature rises
• A Global Heat Wave Has Set the Arctic Circle on Fire
• Greece wildfires: Dozens dead in Attica region
• Europe burns as climate change fuels 'forest fire danger extremes'
• Climate change brings catastrophe across the world
• The big heatwave: from Algeria to the Arctic. But what's the cause?

Government's Energy Plan Would Guarantee A 'Nightmare' Of Complexity

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

The Turnbull government's National Energy Guarantee is "terrifically complex", and its problems will become "more significant" if its emissions reduction goal is increased, according to the first report by the Victorian government's new energy policy hub.
The report by Bruce Mountain,  director of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre, argues thorough economic analysis of the impact of the two arms of the policy - to reduce emissions and to improve reliability - has yet to be done even though state and energy ministers are being asked to approve it by August 10.

The country's electricity market will be made a lot more complex if the National Energy Guarantee gets up, a leading analyst says. Photo: Nick Moir

The emissions component of the scheme, which obliges retailers to contract with generators according to the carbon pollution associated with the electricity production, is particularly complicated because transactions won't be public but stored instead in a registry.
Mr Mountain said market participants would have buy a combination of electricity volume and emissions intensity without knowing the alternatives, nor penalties if they buy too much or too little.
Unlike current National Electricity Market operations, they would have no access to the range of hedging instruments that help them minimise risk.
The effort to suppress price discovery is to avoid the emerge of a carbon price that is politically toxic to the Coalition, he said.“It’s that complexity which makes it a nightmare and it’s unavoidable as long as you are seeking to hide the underlying emissions price,” Mr Mountain said.
Fairfax Media sought a response from Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg. His office referred to recent comments by Mr Frydenberg that the guarantee would "deliver a more affordable and reliable energy system and has the backing of business, industry and community groups”.
The paper said existing renewable energy generators, including Snowy Hydro, Hydro Tasmania and operating wind and solar farms would enjoy a windfall from the scheme.
"Some part of this windfall will be funded by the more emission-intensive retailers, but the greatest part will fall onto the shoulders of consumers who will be required to pay more without any matching reduction in emissions," the report said.
"While we do not expect that windfalls will be a major issue as long as the emission reduction target is no more demanding than [business as usual] emission reductions, windfalls funded by customers could become significant if meaningful emission reduction targets are set."
The fact the emissions target of the scheme will likely be met within the first year of its operation meant that even it were to work well "it would be pointless since it will deliver no more than what would happen anyway", the paper said.
That weak target also meant any hope that the plan would deliver investment certainty was "wishful thinking".
"Australia’s inability to hold a steady course on emission reduction policy reflects deep-seated disagreement on the objective - emission reduction - not on the methods by which this is to be achieved," the paper said. "Implementing the [guarantee] does nothing to resolve the fundamental disagreement."

Links

• The National Energy Guarantee: decide in haste, repent at leisure: A critical assessment of the proposed National Energy Guarantee
• Victoria Energy Policy Centre
• Government's electricity plan caps offsets, offers review by 2024
• Electricity plan would all but hit emissions goal before it starts
• Tender Will Allow Coalition To Dig Its Way Out Of Coal Hole
• Renewables Will Replace Ageing Coal Plants At Lowest Cost, AEMO Says
• Prolong The Life Of Coal-Fired Power Stations In The National Electricity Market, Says Australian Energy Market Operator
• Greenpeace And Getup Launch Campaign To Kill National Energy Guarantee
• National Energy Guarantee 'Clumsy, Inefficient', Says VEPC's Mountain
• Phony Peace? Challenges To Energy Plan Sent Back To Modelling Board
• 'Not A Big Drama' For Electricity Industry To Slash Emissions, Says Scheme Architect
• Victoria Demands New Detailed Analysis On NEG After COAG Meeting
• NEG: A Bipartisan Agreement To Disagree?
• Independent Review of the Electricity and Gas Retail Markets in Victoria

Kids Around The World Are Suing Governments Over Climate Change—And It’s Working

QUARTZ - Ephrat Livni

Earth Day 2018 sand sculpture on the banks of the river Yamuna in Allahabad, India. (Reuters/Jitendra Prakash)

Nobody could have predicted the kids would get this far.
Back in 2015, a group of 21 young Americans decided to sue the US government over climate change. In Juliana v. US, the plaintiffs argue that the government has violated “the youngest generation’s constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property” by adopting policies that promote the use of fossil fuels—despite the knowledge that carbon dioxide emissions are a primary cause of global warming.
That might sound like an extreme claim. But in the years since, the lawsuit has kept succeeding against all odds. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on July 20 denied the Trump administration’s attempt to dismiss the suit (pdf), and the case remains set for trial 0n October 29. “With the Ninth Circuit again ruling in our favor, we are going strong,” 12-year-old plaintiff Avery M. said in a statement (pdf). “The federal government is trying to block our path but we are persevering. We are optimistic and have the courage to keep standing up for our constitutional rights.”
To the average observer, the case may still seem like a long shot. But the kids are part of a global movement of concerned citizens advancing similar claims. Collectively, the lawsuits are creating new precedents that bolster activism—and may, in the long term, help alter the way governments think about their responsibility to protect citizens against climate change.
The young plaintiffs in Juliana v. US, who are now between 11 and 22 years old, are represented by the legal nonprofit Our Children’s Trust. The organization is involved in similar suits around the country and the globe. In this case, attorneys for the trust argue that a fundamental right to a stable climate that sustains life is implied in the US Constitution.
There’s no explicit mention of climate change in the Constitution, of course, since human-induced global warming wasn’t a concern in the 18th century. But the attorneys argue that, last century, once government officials became aware of the harm their energy policies were causing and persisted in approving measures that endanger the planet, the government ran afoul of the Constitution. The notions of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are meaningless on a planet that can’t sustain life.
The children also claim that, as a result of the government’s past and current policy decisions, their generation has been disproportionately burdened by the environmental impact of climate change. As such, they say they’ve been discriminated against in violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Cause.
There’s reason for the plaintiffs to be hopeful about their chances at trial come October. This April, youth in Colombia succeeded in convincing the nation’s high court (pdf, in Spanish) to reverse a February decision denying their climate change lawsuit against the government. The Supreme Court of Justice of Colombia ruled in favor of the youth plaintiffs, who argued that deforestation in the Amazon and increasing temperature threatened their constitutionally-guaranteed rights to a healthy environment, life, health, food and water. Notably, the high court also found that the Colombian Amazon forest has legal personhood and that, as such, the government has a duty to protect the forest.
In Belgium, a climate change case against authorities is expected to proceed to trial this year after three years of procedural disputes. Similarly in India, a hearing is expected soon on the case of a ten-year-old plaintiff, Ridhima Pandey, who last year filed an affidavit with India’s National Green Tribunal arguing that the government has failed to implement its emissions reductions policies and adhere to its environmental laws. In 2016, a seven-year-old Pakistani girl sued the government for its environmental failures, and the case has been allowed to proceed.
Norwegian youth are appealing the Oslo District Court’s January denial (pdf) of their constitutional climate change case to the nation’s highest court. And lawyers in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom are working with Our Children’s Trust on filing actions there in the near future.
Although the children involved in the lawsuits may not know one another, they’re involved in a collective international effort. Judges considering the US case have looked at similar cases, like the one in the Netherlands, for guidance. It’s only fitting that the push to hold authorities accountable is a collaborative one, as climate change is an issue that transcends national borders.
In fact, the Dutch government unsuccessfully used that argument to try to disavow responsibility for the effects of its policies. When Dutch citizens sued the government over climate change in 2015, the government argued that the issue of climate change was too big for it to handle alone. But Dutch judges didn’t buy it, ruling in favor of the plaintiffs. The Dutch government was ordered to reduce emissions by 25% within five years. If the US kids keep winning, the American government could face a similar directive.
“Climate change is already destructive,” 13-year-old plaintiff Sahara V. said in a statement after the appeals court decided not to block the US case. “It’s harming me and my family, and will only get worse unless the government starts taking action to stop it rather than cause it.”

Links

• ‘Climate Kids’ Suit Against Government Allowed To Proceed
• Children Sue Washington State Over Climate Change
• Four Climate Change Lawsuits To Watch In 2018
• Dear Leaders: You've Failed Your Children On Climate Change
• Florida Kids Sue Gov. Scott Over Climate Change: You Have 'Moral Obligation' To Protect Us
• Kids around the world are suing their governments for ruining the planet
• Ninth Circuit Rules in Favor of Youth Plaintiffs Again (pdf)
• Judges Can Save Us From Climate Change, And They've Already Started
• Seven-year-old girl sues Pakistan government over climate change
• Urgenda Foundation Court Case

The World Is Hot, On Fire, And Flooding. Climate Change Is Here.

Grist - Eric Holthaus

Angelos Tzortzinis / AFP / Getty Images

The worst ravages of climate change are on display around the world.
Wildfires have ripped through towns in Greece, floods have submerged parts of Laos, and heat waves have overwhelmed Japan. These are striking examples of climate change playing out in its deadliest forms, and they’re making  the term “natural disaster” an outdated concept.
People in Greece were jumping into the Aegean to escape advancing wildfires, according to a report in the New York Times. More than 70 are confirmed dead so far, and some scenes are horrific.
“Greece is going through an unspeakable tragedy,” said Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, in a televised address to declare three days of national mourning.
This is already Greece’s hottest year on record. Although the last few weeks have been mild and wet, it’s nearly certain that warm weather has played a role in drying out forests throughout Europe, where the number of fires this year is 43 percent above normal. Longer summers, more intense drought, and higher temperatures are all linked to greater fire risk.
We’ve known enough about meteorology to link extreme events to their increased likelihood as they are happening for years now. Recent advances in extreme weather attribution can often tell us exactly how much.
Ample evidence links worsening fires with human activity. Greece and much of the Mediterranean region is projected to turn into desert over the next several decades, and there are signs that this shift has already begun. As the region’s native trees die off and urban areas expand into neglected forests, firefighting resources are becoming woefully overmatched. Regardless of ignition source — arson or lightning or human carelessness — massive wildfires will become more common as droughts intensify and heat waves get more common. Extreme winds, like those blamed for fanning the flames this week in Greece and during megafires in Portugal last year, can make an already dire situation uncontrollable.
It’s the hottest month of one of the hottest years in the history of human civilization, and unusual wildfires are sprouting up all over the map. Sweden has called for emergency assistance from the rest of the European Union to help battle massive wildfires burning north of the Arctic Circle. Across the western United States, 50 major wildfires are burning in parts of 14 states, fueled by severe drought. The wildfires burning in Siberia earlier this month sent smoke plumes from across the Arctic all the way to New England, four thousand miles away. Last year, big wildfires burned in Greenland for the first time in recorded history.
And then there are the rains. In Laos, after days of downpours, a hydropower dam that was under construction collapsed on Tuesday. Hundreds of people have been reported missing. Higher global temperatures increase the evaporation rate, putting more water vapor in the atmosphere and making extreme downpours more common.
In recent weeks, high temperature records have been set on nearly every continent. On Monday, Japan had its hottest temperature in recorded history — 106 degrees Fahrenheit — just days after one of the worst flooding disasters the country has ever seen.
Algeria has recorded the highest reliably measured temperature in Africa, 124 degrees Fahrenheit. In late June, the temperature never dropped below 108 degrees Fahrenheit in Oman — the highest overnight low temperature anywhere in the world.
Even in normally temperate places the air has been sweltering: Temperatures approaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit hit parts of Canada, overwhelming hospitals in Montreal — where another heat wave is imminent this week.
According to calculations from climate scientist Gavin Schmidt, this year will likely be the world’s fourth warmest year on record globally, behind 2015, 2016, and 2017. With another El Niño on the way, next year could be even hotter.
All over the world, heatwaves are getting longer and more intense, the most well-documented and deadliest consequence of our failure to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Links

• Global Climate Report - June 2018
• Wildfire Risk Increase
• What’s the hottest Earth has been “lately”?
• Extreme Heat Is Defining Climate Change

South Australia On Track To Meet 75% Renewables Target Liberals Promised To Scrap

The Guardian - Adam Morton

Liberal energy minister, who inherited policy criticised as a mix of ‘ideology and idiocy’, says he’ll ensure it does not come at too high a price 

Dan van Holst Pellekaan says South Australia must transition towards renewable energy. Photograph: Kelly Barnes/AAP

South Australia’s energy minister says the state is on track to have 75% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025 – the target set by the former Labor premier Jay Weatherill and once rejected by his Liberal government.
And Dan van Holst Pellekaan pledged to ensure it does not come at too high a price.
The Liberal party was highly critical of Weatherill’s target when it was announced during this year’s South Australian election campaign, with the then state opposition leader, Steven Marshall, pledging to scrap it and the federal energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, likening the then premier to a clean energy addicted gambler “doubling down to chase his losses”. Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull had earlier described Weatherill’s renewable energy policy as “ideology and idiocy in equal measure”.
But several expert analyses have found the state is likely to meet or nearly meet the aspirational target, which was not tied to a policy mechanism. The Australian Energy Market Operator has projected South Australia would have 73% renewable power by 2020/21 while consultants Green Energy Markets found it could reach 74% by 2025 without any additional policies being introduced.
The South Australian energy and mining minister, Dan van Holst Pellekaan, said that was also his understanding. “That’s what the reports I’ve read are saying,” he said. “We need to harness it properly so consumers aren’t paying too high a price along the way.”

Van Holst Pellekaan has responsibility for shaping the future of energy in a state that already gets about half its electricity from variable sources such as wind and solar – a situation that Weatherill described in 2015 as “a big international experiment”. The new minister has inherited some of Labor’s proposed solutions, including a giant lithium-ion battery, a 20-year power purchase contract to underwrite a solar thermal plant with built-in storage and a “virtual power plant” of solar and batteries across public housing sites.

We must transition away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy ... And we need to do it sensibly.
Dan van Holst Pellekaan

He assumed the energy portfolio in March amid intense debate over the future of the national electricity market, which connects the four eastern states and South Australia. Frydenberg is attempting to design the government’s national energy guarantee policy so that it can win backing from the states, the Coalition party room and federal parliament. Labor wants it to allow a future government to ramp up the proposed 2030 emissions target for the electricity grid of a 26% cut below 2005 levels. Some federal Coalition members want taxpayers to support or underwrite new or existing coal-fired power plants.
Speaking in his electorate office in Port Augusta, home to the state’s coal power until the last plant closed in 2016, and now with up to 13 clean energy at varying stages of development including the solar thermal project, van Holst Pellekaan said the shift from coal to more clean energy in South Australia had been messier than it needed to be, but was inevitable.
“We must transition away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy,” he said. “There’s no doubt about it. And we need to do it sensibly.”
He said he believed the former ALP government had made a mistake in not paying Alinta Energy the $24m it had requested to keep the Northern coal plant at Port Augusta open for another three years while more renewable energy was built as it would have avoided “an enormous amount of pain” in local job losses and a spike in the wholesale electricity price.
“Many of my friends who are incredibly strong proponents of renewable energy disagree with me,” he said. “They say, ‘No mate, just shut it as soon as possible. Who cares what the price is?’ The ‘Who cares what the price is?’ part is where I differ.”

The Bungala solar power plant in South Australia. Photograph: the Guardian

“For us, I think a three-year phase-in [of replacing coal] would have been fine. Nationally, maybe we’re looking at a 10- or-20-year phase-in. I’m comfortable there’s no more coal-fired electricity in South Australia – very comfortable – we just should have made the transition better.”
Van Holst Pellekaan said gas-fired electricity, a fossil fuel with lower emissions than coal, would have a slower decline, predicting it would take “a couple of decades”. Rather than traditional baseload gas that runs constantly, he said the focus would be on peaking gas plants – fast-start generators that sit idle until needed at times of peak demand – to fill the gaps around renewable energy.
He agreed with the federal government that policy should be “broadly technologically neutral” but said it needed to place a value on three goals – keeping consumer costs down, delivering non-polluting technology and improved efficiency within the national market. “That steers you towards large-scale renewables with large-scale storage and an underlying security that comes from peaking gas plants,” he said.
South Australia is also backing small-scale storage. Under a deal signed by Labor, the government is installing a “virtual power plant” – initially 1,100 solar panels and Tesla batteries in public housing backed by a $30m loan from taxpayers.
Van Holst Pellekaan announced last week an initial trial had been a success, increasing supply and the reliability of the network and lowering cost at times of peak demand. He said delivering Labor’s full promise of 50,000 public housing systems depended on private-sector financing and Tesla and the government signing off on the final program design.
The Labor scheme will sit alongside a Liberal-pledged $100m plan to subsidise batteries at 40,000 private homes. Details are promised in coming months.
Van Holst Pellekaan said his focus in energy was helping consumers, including by making tools available to help those who chose to juggle their electricity use to reduce their bills.
“If a family says ‘I don’t care if it’s the most expensive electricity of the day, I’m going to use it between 5pm and 9pm because that’s what I want in my household’, OK, that’s their choice,” he said. “But if another family says, ‘I can skew things a bit earlier, or a bit later, and I can get a bit cheaper electricity’, good, that’s their choice.”
He stressed the importance of improved connection between the states, particularly a long-mooted link between South Australia and New South Wales, to improve grid efficiency and reliability. The transmission company ElectraNet has recommended a $1.5b interconnector between South Australia’s mid-north and Wagga Wagga.
Van Holst Pellekaan, a National Basketball League player in the 1980s with the Hobart Devils, said South Australia’s energy policies were in line with recent advice from the Australia Energy Market Operator and the competition and consumer watchdog.
The former released a forecast that found renewable electricity backed by storage and gas would be the lowest cost replacement for coal, and that early departures from the grid should be avoided to ensure an orderly transition.

The latter made recommendations to reform the national energy market, including potentially underwriting new plants designed to serve large industrial users to ensure they can be funded and built – a proposal energy insiders understand was influenced by South Australian policies.

Links
Sanjeev Gupta: Coal power is no longer cheaper – and we'll prove it
Life after coal: the South Australian city leading the way

The Rapidly Changing Dynamics Of Australia’s GridA Month In, Tesla’s SA Battery Is Surpassing Expectations'All Happening Very Quickly': Tesla Battery Sends A Jolt Through Energy MarketsTesla’s Enormous Battery In Australia, Just Weeks Old, Is Already Responding To Outages In ‘Record’ Time'History In The Making': Tesla Switches On World's Largest Battery In SAWhy South Australia Must, And Will, Lead World On RenewablesSouth Australia’s Energy Plan Gives National Regulators Another HeadacheMary Robinson launches new feminist fight against climate change

Mary Robinson Launches New Feminist Fight Against Climate Change

The Guardian - Fiona Harvey

Former Irish president’s initiative kicks off with podcasts pairing her with comedian Maeve Higgins

Mary Robinson (left), former president of Ireland, and comedian Maeve Higgins. Photograph: Ruth Medjber

Women around the world who are leading the fight against climate damage are to be highlighted by Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and UN high commissioner, in the hopes of building a new global movement that will create “a feminist solution for climate change”.
Perhaps more revolutionary still, the new initiative is light-hearted in tone, optimistic in outlook and presents positive stories in what the originators hope will be seen as a fun way.
Called Mothers of Invention, the initiative will kick off with a series of podcasts showcasing the work of grassroots climate activists at a local level, as well as globally resonant initiatives such as the legal challenges under way in numerous jurisdictions to force governments to adhere to the Paris agreement goals. Scientists and politicians feature alongside farmers and indigenous community leaders from Europe, the US and Australia to India, Kenya, South Africa and Peru.
The podcast is a first for Robinson, who has focused on climate justice for the last 15 years through her charity, the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice, and as one of the Elders group, after seeing at first-hand as UN commissioner for human rights the danger that global warming presents to women whose lives are already precarious.
“Climate change is a manmade problem that requires a feminist solution,” she said ahead of the podcast launch. “What we are hoping to do is create a movement. Climate change is not gender-neutral – it affects women far more. So this is not about climate change, it is about climate justice.”

The movement, she added, would grow organically from the women who feature and the women who join in: “It will be happening in an unstructured way, which is all the better, because we are not prescribing what a feminist solution should look like, we are listening – we want women to tell us what they want. That to me is more interesting.”
Robinson has paired with Maeve Higgins, an Irish-born comedian based in New York and self-styled “sidekick”. They jointly introduce their female guests through a series of informal conversations larded with backchat and jokes – an unusual way of presenting the often gloomy subject of climate damage, Higgins admits, but one she hopes will reach people more effectively than the standard models of climate communication and male-dominated discourse.
“There is a lot of doom and gloom – this is not like that,” Higgins said. “This is for people like myself who feel stuck, knowing there are actions they should be taking but paralysed by despondency. The capitalist patriarchy is not going to solve this. We need to.”
The internet provides the means to reach women all over the world, she said: “This is democratic, this is available to as many people as possible.”
The series will bring in issues of colonialism, racism, poverty, migration and social justice and how these are bound up with feminism and the effects of climate change, and will include related environmental issues such as plastic pollution.
Podcasts are new departure for Robinson. “This is taking me way beyond my comfort zone,” she said. But “I’m willing to go there – I am so urgent about the fact that we need to do more.”
The first five episodes in the series, which is funded by philanthropic foundations, focus on women, but Robinson promised the initiative would not exclude men’s voices. “We will include men in the future,” she said, “but we have started with women, who have found it hard to be heard. A feminist solution to climate change involves everyone.”

Links

• Mothers of Invention
• Women are the victims of climate change – and the keys to climate action
• COP21 is too male dominated and has male priorities, says UN special envoy
• Global Climate Litigation
• Climate Change A 'Man-Made Problem With A Feminist Solution' Says Robinson
• Margaret Atwood: Women Will Bear Brunt Of Dystopian Climate Future
• Where Women Lead On Climate Change
• Indigenous Women Show The Way For Banks To Divest From Fossil Fuels
• Climate Change 'Impacts Women More Than Men'
• Women Key To Fight Against Climate Change
• When Environmental Crises Hit Homes, Women Suffer The Most
• To Stop Climate Change, Educate Girls And Give Them Birth Control
• Lack Of Women In Energy ‘Holding Back Fight Against Climate Change’
• Bringing Women Together To Fight Climate Change
• 5 Ways Climate Change Is A Women’s Rights Issue

Electricity Plan Would All But Hit Emissions Goal Before It Starts

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

The Turnbull government’s National Energy Guarantee - the centrepiece of its climate change and electricity policy - would help cut an average household’s power bills by $50 in its first year but do little to cut carbon emissions over the decade to 2030.
The final design report, produced by the Energy Security Board and sent to state governments this week, projects an emissions target that would be 97 per cent fulfilled before the NEG policy starts in 2021, leaving it with little work to do.

National energy policy will be decided in the next week, with ramifications potentially lasting decades. Photo: Paul Jones

The study found that power prices will drop sharply, with or without the NEG policy in place, before starting to rise again towards 2030.

Electricity bill savings
Forecast average retail bill saving relative to 2017-18

Source: ACIL Allen consulting

Households connected to the National Electricity Market - serving about 80 per cent of Australians - will save "around $550 a year" over the decade, compared with 2017-18, the paper said.
That estimate assumes network costs - the largest contributor to higher power bills over the past decade - are unchanged. About $150 of the annual household savings are "directly attributable" to the NEG.
The Turnbull government has touted the policy as delivering lower power prices and increased reliability of the grid, while also meeting a 26 per cent reduction in 2005-level greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
The Environment and Energy Minister, Josh Frydenberg, said the policy would “deliver a more affordable and reliable energy system and has the backing of business, industry and community groups”.
“We think that 26 per cent target is right. It’s a pro-rata contribution out of the electricity sector as part of our overall Paris Agreement,” Mr Frydenberg said, adding the government would release its final paper on the emissions obligation before the COAG Energy Council next meets on August 10.

'Technology neutral'
The paper said the NEG policy is ‘‘fuel- and technology-neutral and provides a clear investment signal, so the cleanest, cheapest and most reliable generation ... gets built in the right place at the right time".
However, concerns that the plan’s emissions goals are feeble are borne out by the design paper. According to modelling done for the board by ACIL Allen, a surge in renewable energy projects between now and the plan’s start in 2020 means carbon emissions are dropping faster than expected, leaving little for the sector to achieve in the entire ensuing decade."
By 2021, emissions in the [National Electricity Market] are expected to be around 24 per cent below 2005," the report said.
All up, of the 1320 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent needed to be reduced by 2030, the NEG will need to deliver just 38 million tonnes - or less than 3 per cent.
"Put another way, that's a whole 3.8 million tonnes per year on average over the 10 years," Dylan McConnell, an energy analyst at Melbourne University, said.
Fairfax Media sought comment from state and territory governments. Several declined to comment until they had considered the report.
Guy Barnett, Tasmania's Energy Minister, said his state was "Australia’s renewable energy powerhouse," adding that "a well-designed NEG can deliver significant benefits for Tasmania”.

'Fifth-best option'
One state official, though, described the NEG as "the fifth-best option over the past few years".
The Energy Security Board had "done a fair bit of work" to ensure it could be grafted on the existing electricity market.
Wholesale electricity prices would be an average 20 per cent lower over the 2020s than without the plan, the modelling showed.

NEM wholesale prices under the guarantee

Source: Energy Security Board

The report did not model a more ambitious carbon target, which consultants such as Reputex say would push prices lower.
The federal government needs all states and territory governments to approve the NEG for it to proceed. It will likely highlight the modelling's results that show lower prices in all jurisdictions than without the plan.

Projected jurisdictional wholesale price outcomes

Source: Energy Security Board

Energy mix
Mr McConnell said the modelling appeared to be at odds with the Integrated System Plan released last week by the Australian Energy Market Operator.
For instance, the paper assumed AGL's Liddell and Queensland's Gladstone coal-fired power stations drop out by 2030, but AEMO predicts the Vales Point plant in NSW will have shut by then.

Change in NEM generation capacity by fuel type without the guarantee

Note: Changes in NEM-wide capacity under ‘no policy’ modelling scenario
Source: ACIL Allen consulting

"There is practically no new renewable energy from 2020-21," Mr McConnell said.
The Victorian, Queensland and ACT renewable energy targets appear to be overlooked as well.
The rooftop solar forecast, put at about 800 megawatt a year, may also be pessimistic. Some 702 MW of new rooftop photovoltaic panels were added in the first half of 2018 alone, according to Green Energy Markets.
The projections also assume the multi-billion dollar Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro scheme is up and running by 2023-24, otherwise electricity prices would be rising sooner.
The scheme is yet to finalise a business case, nor clear a range of environmental hurdles.
Under the design, Snowy Hydro - now owned by the Commonwealth - and Hydro Tasmania would potentially earn windfall profits from their pre-1997 built plant, without adding any low-emissions generation. That amounts to a potentially huge transfer of wealth from consumers, said Bruce Mountain, head of the new Victoria Energy Policy Centre.

Links

• At some point, climate change must be injected into the energy debate
• Tender Will Allow Coalition To Dig Its Way Out Of Coal Hole
• Renewables Will Replace Ageing Coal Plants At Lowest Cost, AEMO Says
• Prolong The Life Of Coal-Fired Power Stations In The National Electricity Market, Says Australian Energy Market Operator
• Greenpeace And Getup Launch Campaign To Kill National Energy Guarantee
• Australia’s Regulators Still Can’t Imagine A Clean Energy Future
• The ACCC Says Your Energy Bills Are Too High. Here's How It Thinks Prices Can Be Slashed
• More Than 20 Nations Seek Lead In Setting Tougher Climate Goals
• Australia's Emissions Rise Again In 2017, Putting Paris Targets In Doubt
• Voters Prefer Low Emissions Target To Carbon Trading – Guardian Essential Poll
• Climate Change Authority Says Turnbull Government Should Adopt New Low Emissions Target
• 'Disastrous': Australia's Carbon Emissions Jump As Coal-Fired Power Ramps Up
• NSW Sets Net-Zero Carbon Emissions Goal By 2050 As Australian Pollution Climbs