(AU SMH) Gas Losing Favour In Electricity Market As Renewables Power On

 Sydney Morning Herald | Miki Perkins

Renewable energy generation reached record highs in all Australian mainland states in 2021 as reliance on gas continued to drop across the country.

 In the country’s largest grid – the National Electricity Market (NEM) – renewables provided five times more power than gas in 2021, while gas generation reached its lowest level in more than 15 years, according to data released on Thursday by the Climate Council.

The Coonooer Bridge wind farm north-west of Bendigo in Victoria.

Renewable energy generation increased almost 20 per cent in the NEM in 2021, with a 30 per cent jump in Victoria, and 26 per cent rise in Western Australia.

In South Australia, gas generation slumped to its lowest level in more than two decades, while in Victoria it fell 30 per cent in 12 months. In NSW, gas provided just 1.5 per cent of the state’s power, its lowest level in 15 years.

Tasmania matched its previous 2020 record of 99.9 per cent of renewable energy – created through wind, water and solar – in 2021.

Major upgrades to transmission lines across Australia have increased the capacity of the ageing electricity grid to cope with the increase in renewable power, said Dr Madeline Taylor, a senior lecturer at Macquarie University’s school of law and expert spokesperson with the Climate Council, an independent and community-funded organisation.

Energy production in 2021

*South West Interconnected System only
Source: OpenNEM. This data covers the period from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021.

A flurry of announcements about new “big batteries” had given confidence to investors in renewables and the high price of gas also led to a drop in consumption, she said.

“Gas is so expensive … it’s honestly one of the silliest ways to produce electricity when we have more and more battery storage,” said Dr Taylor.

Despite pandemic lockdowns and supply chain problems, householders led a record increase in rooftop solar capacity last year. More than 3000MW was installed in 2021 and almost one-third of Australian households have solar panels, the highest rate in the world.

Renewables

Twiggy’s Fortescue plans $10 billion Pilbara wind and solar farm

While reliance on coal has continued to fall, it remains the dominant source of power in the NEM, accounting for 66 per cent of electricity generation, a drop of 4.4 per cent since 2020. Over the past five years, coal’s share of electricity generation has fallen by 15.3 per cent.

Demand on the NEM has been consistent for the past 15 years and did not shift much during the pandemic because although consumers were not using power in offices, they were using it at home, Climate Council senior researcher Tim Baxter said.

“The role for gas in the grid is going to continue to decline over the course of the next 10 years,” Mr Baxter said. “This is where batteries and pumped hydro will help introduce more flexibility.”

Pumped hydro acts like a large battery. When there is excess power in the system, energy is used to pump water up to a storage area. When there is demand for energy, the water is released and used to generate electricity.

Energy

Labor’s plans for the Kurri Kurri gas spark little green interest

Bruce Mountain, from the Victoria Energy Policy Centre, said the drop in gas use also showed that peaking gas generators – only turned on to supply the grid when demand surges – are being driven out of the market.

“This was well known and forecast by any energy sector specialists,” Professor Mountain said.

The federal government has been criticised for its controversial proposal to build a $600 million gas-powered peaking plant at Kurri Kurri. When it was announced, Energy Security Board chair Kerry Schott said nobody would build it from the private sector because “it doesn’t stack up”.

Federal Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor has said peaking or fast-start gas plants are needed to provide dispatchable power to fill energy supply gaps.

Victorian Minister for the Environment and Climate Change Lily D’Ambrosio said her government was proud to have achieved the largest ever annual increase in renewable power in Australia last year, attributing this to multiple, legislated renewable energy targets and projects such as the 300-megawatt Victorian Big Battery.

Links

• (AU The Conversation) Paying Australia’s Coal-Fired Power Stations To Stay Open Longer Is Bad For Consumers And The Planet
• National Farmers Federation Says Electricity Best Place To Make Emissions Cuts
• Solar PV And Wind Are On Track To Replace All Coal, Oil And Gas Within Two Decades
• (AU Climate Council) A Record Year: Renewables Provided 5X More Power Than Gas In 2021
• (AU The Guardian) NSW Approves Morrison Government’s $600m Kurri Kurri Gas-Fired Power Plant
• (AU The Age) ‘Corporate Welfare’: Commonwealth To Support Private Sector In Gas Push
• (AU Climate Council) A Record Year: Renewables Provided 5X More Power Than Gas In 2021
• (AU The Conversation) The End Of Coal Is Coming 3 Times Faster Than Expected.
• (AU SMH) Renewables Drive Australian Emissions Lower As Wind Records Blown Away

(AU ABC) Victoria's First Seaweed Farm Aims To Reduce Livestock Emissions

ABC Rural - Peter Somerville

Asparagopsis armata seaweed harvested from the ocean off Queenscliff.(ABC News: Patrick Rocca)

Key Points In a Victorian first, seaweed is being commercially farmed in Port Phillip The Asparagopsis armata will be fed to cattle to reduce methane emissions Eating just 50 grams per day can reduce emissions and help cattle gain weight faster

In a Victorian-first, seaweed is being farmed to one day reduce methane emissions in cows.

The numbers are impressive.

Feeding a small ration can reduce a cow's methane emissions by 98 per cent.

It is a natural product that is readily available, and it could even help the cattle gain weight faster.

Asparagopsis armata is being farmed in Port Phillip, right on Melbourne's doorstep.

Scientists are working on other uses for the seaweed, but it is the livestock application that is being targeted in Victoria for the time being.

A recent study found that including Asparagopsis in a steer's feedlot ration at a rate of 0.20 per cent of organic matter could reduce its methane emissions by up to 98 per cent.

Seaweed growing on the ocean floor off Queenscliff, viewed through a bathyscope. (ABC Rural: Peter Somerville)

 "We see globally and particularly here in Australia that the use of Asparagopsis as a livestock supplement is a very advanced field," Immersion Group director Scott Elliott said.

"We have a representative body called Future Feed who is  working hand in hand with industry in order to get this into the guts of animals and to reduce methane."

Mr Elliott said other beneficial uses, particularly in human applications, still required many years of research.

An exciting time for Victorian industry
        

Dr Prue Francis, from Deakin University, is excited about the future of seaweed farming in Victoria.(ABC Rural: Peter Somerville)

Researchers note a particular focus on Asparagopsis armata. However, it is not the only species that could have beneficial uses.

Dr Prue Francis, a senior marine science lecturer at Deakin University, said seaweeds could one day also be used in the medicine, beauty and food industries.

"For me, it's really exciting to see what might become, particularly in Victoria," Dr Francis said.

Cows ate seaweed and burped less

A trial where cattle were fed a small portion of seaweed in their diet has reduced their methane emissions by up to 86 per cent. But some scientists warn we need to be careful not to create "another cane toad". Read more

"There's a lot of great sites along the Victorian coastline.

"In fact, we've got a seaweed biodiversity hotspot along the Victorian coastline.

"So, we're really primed to explore what seaweed spaces we've got to farm and do it at a large scale and look after our food security.

"Seaweed and seaweed farming could potentially meet that food security challenge that we're seeing now in Australia."

Crucial to livestock industry targets Australia's red meat carbon neutral by 2030. The industry has invested in seaweed and has claimed it as a success story. 

Henry Cole seeds Asparagopsis in Port Phillip. It will eventually grow and become a livestock feed additive. (ABC Rural: Peter Somerville)

"It demonstrates that we can actually solve the problem," Meat and Livestock Australia managing director Jason Strong said.

"That we can invest in and discover or find and invent technologies that get us down the path of being carbon neutral by 2030.

This Asparagopsis armata harvested from Port Phillip could one day help reduce the emissions of Australian cattle. (ABC Rural: Peter Somerville)

"It works, and we're not that far off it becoming commercially viable at all," he said.

"There's a number of companies growing and producing the supplement now, initially as a freeze tried product. it's able to be used now, and we expect those companies growing it will have a product in the market very soon."

New challenges Dr Francis said figuring out how to cultivate seaweeds can be challenging.

"Taking it up to farm at a large scale requires research and development trials, so we're certainly getting there. Hopefully, into the future, with more research and more trials, we'll see our knowledge improve further."

Scott Elliot and Henry Cole hope to one day produce commercial quantities of Asparagopsis armata. (ABC Rural: Peter Somerville)

Henry Cole, a diver and offshore operations manager with Immersion Group said they were actually propagating seaweed from the sea floor to their lines.

"Basically, we're just giving it the assistance it needs and structure for it to grow,"  Mr Cole said.

Mr Elliott said there had been false starts along the way, with a lot learned about seaweed production. 

"We're at a stage where our research and development is done," Mr Elliott said.

Links

• Is seaweed the key to reducing methane in burping cattle and sheep, or an over-hyped risky investment?
• Can red seaweed lead to greener climate pastures? Science award finalists think so
• Could seaweed forests help turn the tide in the fight against climate change?
• The remarkable power of Australian kelp - BBC Future
• Can Farming Seaweed Put the Brakes on Climate Change?
• Fighting Climate Change By Farming Kelp - NPR
• From fake meat to cow burps: 5 ways to use seaweed to tackle climate change

(AU The Guardian) NSW Activists ‘Delighted’ As High Court Rejects Kepco’s Coalmine In Bylong Valley

The Guardian - Lisa Cox

Environmental advocates tell South Korean miner to ‘pack its bags’ as company considers next steps

The high court has rejected Kepco’s appeal to build an open-cut coalmine in NSW’s Bylong Valley. Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/AAP

The mining company Kepco has failed in its final legal bid to challenge a decision to reject its plans for an open-cut coalmine in the New South Wales Bylong Valley.

Environmentalists and members of the Bylong Valley community are now calling on the South Korean company to walk away and sell its land back to farming families rather than submitting a revised development proposal for the project.

The high court on Thursday declined to hear Kepco’s appeal that sought to challenge the NSW Independent Planning Commission’s (IPC) decision in 2019 to reject its development application.

The commission refused development approval for the greenfield coalmine, citing the unacceptable impact the mine would have on agricultural land and the environment – including through greenhouse gas emissions – and the costs to future generations.

Its decision was subsequently upheld by the NSW land and environment court and the court of appeal.

The high court’s decision exhausts the company’s final legal avenue for the project in its current form and brings to an end a lengthy battle for Bylong Valley community members who have fought the project for years.

“KEPCO needs to eat some humble pie, pack its bags, and leave,” said Phillip Kennedy, the president of the Bylong Valley Protection Alliance.

“KEPCO must not submit a revised project, it must not delay, it must only sell its land back to the farming families of Australia and leave the Bylong Valley for good.

“The Bylong Valley community only wants some certainty, and we’re looking forward to that with this win.”

The Bylong Valley Protection Alliance had joined as a party to the original judicial review to defend the IPC’s ruling after the commission itself declined to take an active role in proceedings.

The alliance’s legal representative, the Environmental Defenders Office, said the high court made its decision based on written submissions, without the need for a hearing.

“We could not be more delighted for our clients, the Bylong Valley Protection Alliance, who have dedicated years of their lives to challenging this destructive and inappropriate coal mine proposal,” managing lawyer Rana Koroglu said.

Glencore’s proposed $1.5bn coalmine site home to over a dozen threatened species, government told.  Read more

“The IPC’s decision to refuse this mine was sound. It was based on the evidence and the science, including evidence about the ‘problematical’ greenhouse gas emissions.”

Koroglu said the project would have generated more than 200m tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.

She said the commission’s decision had been tested to its limits through the courts and in every appeal had been upheld.

“It means the IPC can be assured that an evidence-based decision to reject these kinds of destructive fossil fuel projects in the future is legally supported.”

A spokesperson for Kepco said the company was “disappointed with the high court’s decision to dismiss the special leave application”.

“KEPCO will now take some time to consider its next steps,” they said.

Links

• (AU SMH) ‘Walk Away’: Bylong Coal Mine Appeal Rejected
• (AU) Energy Giant Loses Bylong Coal Mine Appeal In Win For Anti-Coal Groups
• Key Climate Ruling Against Coal Mine Stands After Miner Declines To Appeal
• (AU Canberra Times) Climate Warriors Counting Their Legal Wins
• (AU ABC) 'Another Nail In The Coffin': Indian-Owned Australian Coal Mine Suffers Big Legal Reverse
• (AU SMH) As Australia’s Climate Policy Disappoints, Hope Is Found In Court 

(Podcast) Changing How We Cover Climate Change

Whooshka - Podcast

This week, Prue Clarke talks with Julian Cribb, co-founder of the Council of Human Future, and Kyle Pope, the editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, about how to cover climate change.

Kyle Pope Kyle Pope is the editor and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review. He has worked as editor of the New York Observer, the Wall Street Journal, and Portfolio magazine. Pope has served as a judge for The Pulitzer Prizes and the National Magazine Awards. In 2016, he was hired by the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) as editor and publisher. Covering Climate Now, a collaborative approach by media outlets committed to improving their climate journalism, is an initiative of CJR. Julian Cribb Julian Cribb AM is an Australian author and science communicator. He is a Fellow of the UK Royal Society for the Arts, the Australian Academy of Technological Science and Engineering (ATSE) and the Australian National University Emeritus Faculty. Cribb's career includes appointments as scientific editor for The Australian newspaper, director of national awareness for CSIRO, editor of several newspapers including the National Farmer. He is president of national professional bodies for agricultural journalism and science communication.

Links

• Climate reporting’s new start
• Covering Climate Now
• Climate Change Media Partnership
• Earth Journalism Network
• Climate crisis: does journalism actually make a difference?
• Climate Change in the Media - Reuters Institute
• Why climate change must stay on the news agenda beyond global summits

(AU The Conversation) Time For A Reckoning: Cricket Australia, Fossil Fuel Sponsorship And Climate Change

The Conversation - Brett Hutchins

Shutterstock

Author Brett Hutchins is Professor of Media and Communications, Monash University

As we head towards the end of the summer sporting calendar, Cricket Australia is facing pressing questions well beyond replacing Justin Langer as coach of the men’s national teams.

Chief among them is the question of climate change.

While other sporting codes and teams around the world are starting to use their clout to push for more and faster action, Cricket Australia’s powerbrokers seem to be largely paying lip service to climate action.

Meanwhile, many players are taking action.

You might think cricket and climate change have nothing in common. Sadly, that’s not the case.

On a practical level, steadily rising temperatures and heightened natural disasters make it harder to play the sport safely over summer.

And on a cultural level, fossil fuel power companies have long used sponsorships to “sportwash” their reputations.

It’s time for Cricket Australia to take a stronger stance on climate and turn away from fossil fuel sponsorships.

Is cricket really at risk?

There is clear and growing evidence rising temperatures, bush fire smoke, cyclones, floods and drought brought by climate change are hurting cricket and the health of its players around the world.

Smoke from the Black Summer bushfires overshadowed the Sheffield Shield match at the SCG on December 10, 2019. Craig Golding/AAP

That’s to say nothing of sea level rise and stronger hurricanes, which threaten to take chunks out of cricket-mad island nations in the Caribbean.

In June last year, Grenada Prime Minister Keith Mitchell called on Cricket Australia and the International Cricket Council to sign on to UN efforts to harness sport for climate action.

In response, Cricket Australia said they would look into it. We’ve heard nothing further.

No doubt some readers will baulk at the idea of putting the politics of climate change and cricket together. But if the last century of sporting history has taught us anything, it’s that high level sport and politics go hand-in-hand, from Cold War Olympics, to race relations, to nationalism.

Climate change is the single biggest issue of our time, dubbed “code red for humanity”. It’s an exceptionally well established issue seen across atmospheric, chemical and physical patterns.

To tackle it requires a massive collective undertaking. That means politics. But to make big changes requires public buy-in.

Sport, which absorbs so much of our attention, has a vital role to play.

Players are taking the lead on climate action

Many of Australia’s leading players – including men’s Test captain Pat Cummins – are not waiting. They are calling for urgent action to protect the sport and the generations of younger players to follow.

For Cummins, the realisation was personal. In January 2020, his local cricket club in Penrith sweltered as Western Sydney became the hottest place on earth. Smoke haze from Black Summer megafires forced match cancellations.

Two years earlier, Cummins watched as English captain Joe Root was taken to hospital after battling 47℃ heat.

Last week, Cummins launched Cricket for Climate, which will install solar panels on club facilities around the country. He’s not alone in his activism. This is just the latest surge of support for urgent climate action by our athletes.

Cricket for Climate follows on from AFL Players for Climate Action, which now has 260 members.

On a broader scale, there’s The Cool Down, a national climate campaign led by Emma and David Pocock which has more than 300 top athletes as backers, including cricket’s Alex Blackwell, Rachel Haynes and Sean Abbott.

Our athletes want faster, stronger action. So what’s the hold up?

Cricket Australia supports climate action through the fine work of the Sports Environmental Alliance as an organisational member. But it could do much more.

While Cricket Australia has signed on to Cummins’ new initiative, it has not committed to either of two UN initiatives, Sports for Climate Action Framework or the Race to Zero Initiative.

You’d be hard pressed to find detail on Cricket Australia’s environmental initiatives. There’s no information about this in their current five year plan or their annual report.

There’s no reporting on the “holistic” sustainability strategy the organisation stated it was developing in 2020 in the face of concerns about extreme heat.

The problem of sportswashing and sponsorships

Unfortunately, professional sport is awash with lucrative sponsorships from fossil fuel companies. The main sponsor of our men’s cricket team is Alinta Energy, which owns one of Victoria’s largest coal-fired power plants, Loy Yang B.

While Alinta is moving into wind and solar, its parent company, Pioneer Sail Holdings, is still the sixth highest carbon emitting corporation in Australia as of 2019-2020.

These kinds of sponsorships are coming under increasing scrutiny nationally and internationally, with comparisons drawn between our current fossil fuel corporation sponsorships and tobacco company sponsorships in the 1980s.

Fossil fuel companies seek out the “soft power” of sport as a way to improve their public image and create positive brand associations.

India’s Sourav Ganguly suffers from heat exhaustion in the 2007 Test in Australia. Andrew Brownbill/AP

So what would it take to deny fossil fuel companies this kind of social license? Cricket managers don’t have to look far at all. There’s an excellent example at Rod Laver Arena, just over the train tracks from Cricket Australia’s head office.

In January, Tennis Australia sent shockwaves through sport by cancelling its multi-year sponsorship with their “official natural gas partner” Santos ahead of this year’s Australian Open. The cancellation came after a long campaign targeting “sportswashing”.

This sudden shift is positive. It means the comparison with tobacco companies now has real teeth. Remember that in the 1980s, tobacco advertising was everywhere.

To reduce the damage done by smoking, Australia progressively denied tobacco companies the social license offered by sponsorships and advertising, as part of a broader push.

We need a similar effort to encourage a wholesale shift away from fossil fuels.

The question now for Cricket Australia is simple.

How long will it hesitate at the climate crossroads, caught between the health of its players and planet and the fossil fuel interests of its sponsors? The players aren’t waiting.

Pat Cummins and many other players are leading the way to a safer future for cricket and those who love it.

It’s time for their national governing body to follow them.

Links

• We need to 'climate-proof' our sports stadiums
• Sportswashing: how mining and energy companies sponsor your favourite sports to help clean up their image
• (AU SMH) Australia’s Top Cricketers Make The Baggy Green Even Greener
• (Global Voices) Why Beijing’s Artificial Snow At The 2022 Winter Olympic Games Is Stirring Controversy
• (AU ABC) Climate Change Threatens Future Of Winter Olympics And All Snow Sports, Research Suggests
• (USA NPR) Could The World Become Too Warm To Hold Winter Olympics?
• (AU RenewEconomy) Conservatives Want Australia’s Cricket Captain To Shut Up About Climate
• (AU The Guardian) ‘We All Have A Role’: More Than 260 Australian Rules Footballers Sign Up To Climate Campaign
• (AU The Guardian) Every One Of Us Should Care About The Climate Crisis. Together We Can Make A Big Difference
• (AU The Guardian) David Pocock Leads 250 High-Profile Australian Athletes In Climate Campaign
• (AU ROAR) Cricket Must Start Preparing For Climate Change

(AU RenewEconomy) Australia’s Bushfire Threat Already Beyond Worst-Case Scenarios, Thanks To Climate Change

RenewEconomy - Michael Mazengarb

Australia's bushfire threat is beyond 'worst case scenario's experts say. (AAP Image/Darren Pateman)

Australia will continue to experience more extreme impacts of climate change, with the bushfire threat already exceeding the ‘worst case’ scenarios, experts have told the Australian National University’s 2022 Climate Update event.

The director of the ANU’s Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions, Mark Howden, said that the observed impacts of climate change were indisputable evidence of the human effects on the environment.

“The human influence on the global climate is now unequivocal. Essentially, as a matter of fact, it’s not uncertain,” Howden said.

“We can put to bed a lot of that argument that it’s not human influence. It was clear that there was widespread rapid intensifying an unprecedented influence of humans on many different aspects of the climate system.”

Howden pointed to the worsening threat posed by the increasing severity of bushfires, no longer limited to Australia’s summer months, and now becoming a year-long issue.

“Across most of Australia, the fire danger index is increasing and increasing significantly, particularly in the southeast,” Howden said.

“Starting from spring and ending early in autumn, and we can see [the area burned] going up, essentially linearly. But if we look at the winter period, the autumn and winter period, the cool season, what we see is the area burnt is actually going up essentially exponentially.”

“There is no reason to feel comfortable about how fire is evolving at the moment. And this is beyond the worst-case climate change scenarios for this type at this time span, which were produced just a few years ago,” Howden added.

The latest Annual Climate Statement, recently published by the Bureau of Meteorology, found that while 2021 brought the coolest average temperatures for Australia since 2012, it still ranked amongst the top 20 hottest years on record at 0.56 °C warmer than the 1961–1990 average.

The lower temperatures are partially attributable to the ongoing influence of a La Niña event, which usually brings cooler and wetter periods to Australia’s east coast that can help spur the growth of vegetation.

Howden said that it formed part of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle that can amplify the bushfire risk when the warmer and drier periods return.

"A lot of our fire danger arises through our climate variability, which in large part is driven by El Niño,” Howden said.

“So that’s the difference between the wet years when we grow a lot of biomass and the dry years where that dries out and becomes an immediate fire risk.”

“We’re likely to see the rainfall variability associated with the ENSO cycle likely to increase. The difference between the wet years and the dry years in a place like Australia is likely to increase with a whole series of implications for droughts and floods and fires.”

Howden, who also serves as vice chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said that he saw the government response to the Covid-19 pandemic, with linkages being made by policymakers between public health and economic health, as a potential model that could be replicated in response to climate change.

“In COVID, we very demonstrably showed that if you look after your people, you look after your economy, those countries which acted well and very proactively, in terms of COVID, also fared well, economically,” Howden said.

“And the same goes for climate change. If we don’t look after our people and environment, our economy will suffer. And it’s increasingly become clear across a whole range of studies.”

At the end of February, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will release its next landmark report on climate change, detailing the anticipated impacts of climate change, the vulnerability of natural systems, and options for adaptation measures.

It will follow last year’s IPCC report, which outlined the latest scientific understanding of the physical basis of climate change and detailed global warming projections.

Links

• CSIRO study proves climate change driving Australia’s 800% boom in bushfires
• Bushfire Risk Management Research Hub
• Australian Research Finds Climate Change Behind Bushfire Surge
• Bushfire best practice guide - CSIRO Research
• Bushfire Crisis Australia - The Nature Conservancy
• Bureau of Meteorology Annual climate statement 2021

(USA The Atlantic) Biden’s Biggest Idea On Climate Change Is Remarkably Cheap

The Atlantic - Robinson Meyer

It’s one of the most cost-effective climate policies the U.S. has ever considered, according to a new analysis.

David Paul Morris / Bloomberg / Getty

Over the past year, my climate reporting has had a few preoccupations. They include:

1. Whether President Joe Biden will succeed in passing a major climate bill;
2. The degree to which climate change is already a profound concern to the economy, and indeed whether the climate problem is more about “money” than “science”; and
3. Carbon taxes.

Now, I have an occasion to bring all three together! A new analysis from researchers at the University of Chicago and the Rhodium Group, an energy-research firm, finds that one of President Joe Biden’s marquee energy proposals—the one of the most likely to make it through Congress—has a good chance of working.

Biden’s clean-energy tax credits—a set of incentives that would push the United States to generate more electricity through wind, solar, and other zero-carbon resources—would be one of the most cost-effective climate policies in American history, according to the analysis.

The researchers’ study, which has not been peer-reviewed, finds that the policy’s benefits will be three to four times larger than its costs, creating as much as projected $1.5 trillion in economic surplus while eliminating more than 5 billion tons of planet-warming carbon pollution through 2050.

“I will confess I was always a little skeptical of the tax incentives. I was concerned that they were expensive on a cost-per-ton-abated basis,” Michael Greenstone, a co-author of the study and the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago, told me.

“I came away from this quite surprised at how beneficial this was.” (I should disclose that I worked with Greenstone last year when I was a journalist in residence at the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute.)

“It’s very rare that we get opportunities to have policies with a benefit-to-cost ratio of 3 or 4 to 1. Normally it’s, like, 1.3 to 1, and we economists get very excited,” he said.

A year ago, I wrote that Biden’s infrastructure bill is the climate bill. Since then, that bill has been cut in two, renamed the Build Back Better Act, killed, resurrected, maybe killed again, and generally muddled over by Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and the rest of the Senate Democratic caucus.

Considerable controversy persists over what social-spending programs should go in the bill. But the climate and energy section has remained one of the most popular aspects of the bill—and one policy that has, so far, stayed within Manchin’s favor. “I think that the climate thing is one that we probably can come to agreement much easier than anything else,” he told reporters early last month.

As you may know, the United States already has a set of policies that could be described as “clean-energy tax credits,” a mishmash of tax breaks for solar panels, wind turbines, and geothermal systems. But they are overly specific and kind of a mess, written at different times by different legislators.

The tax credit for solar, for instance, gives developers a break whenever they invest in new solar capacity, while the wind tax credit gives them credit only when they produce a kilowatt-hour of wind power. They’re also designed in such a way that big banks end up capturing a lot of their economic value.

The new tax-credit scheme fixes those problems. The new tax credits are technology-neutral, allowing developers to use them when producing or investing in any kind of zero-carbon electricity (although they can’t claim both for the same project). And the new credits’ simpler design—they’re fully refundable—should eliminate banks’ overbearing role.

The credits also  include a few other tweaks that will make it easier for normal utilities, and not independent power producers that sell electricity to the highest bidder, to use them.

These tweaks make the tax credits much more efficient than other policies. At their peak, the incentives would eliminate 33 to 45 percent of carbon emissions from the country’s electricity sector, compared with a world without the policy, the analysis found.

Because Biden’s strategy for decarbonizing the American economy depends on zeroing out carbon pollution from the electricity grid first, carbon savings in the electricity sector propagate through the system. The cleaner the grid, for instance, the cleaner electric vehicles become.

Under a conventional economic analysis, most of the government’s existing climate policies cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to prevent a single ton of carbon from entering the atmosphere. The existing solar tax credits, for instance, can effectively cost up to $2,218 to abate a ton of carbon pollution.

The new policies will cost the public only $33 to $50 to prevent a ton of climate pollution from entering the atmosphere, which is well below economists’ median estimate of how much each ton of carbon pollution costs the economy.

Not all of America’s climate policies are designed to maximize carbon reductions on a per-ton basis. According to the University of Chicago and the Rhodium Group’s estimates, the cost of preventing a single ton of carbon pollution under various policies can range from less than $50 to more than $3,000. (University of Chicago / Rhodium

“Most of those other climate policies are just getting a small amount of tons,” Greenstone said. “But this is a quite broad policy that would give you a lot of tons.”

That’s in large part due to the huge collapse in the price of solar and wind, John Larsen, another co-author of the study and a partner at the Rhodium Group, told me.

“Wind and solar are so cheap now and are projected to get even cheaper this decade. When you extend and enhance federal tax credits for a decade, it really leverages all this cheap tech in a way that just wasn’t possible five or 10 years ago.”

That places the clean-energy tax incentives at an unusual sweet spot: Although they’re normally explained as innovation policies, aimed at bringing down the cost of alternative and zero-carbon energy, they will also cheaply eliminate tons of carbon pollution.

And because their per-ton cost is below the social cost of carbon, the tax credits may in some cases be more efficient than a carbon tax. Yet they seem unlikely to generate the political blowback that tends to greet a carbon tax.

“It’s cost effective, it gets a lot of tons, it gets at the sector that everyone says we have to get right the fastest—and we can do it without the tools everyone said we needed,” Larsen said. That sets a good precedent for the next time that Congress takes a look at the climate problem.

“Prior to 2021, the only way that people felt they could make big gains was with a comprehensive climate policy,” he said. “This shows that there’s a lot of ways to get points on the board with spending.”

In an email, Lynne Kiesling, an economist at the University of Colorado who was not involved in the study, agreed that the study found the tax credits may be cheaper than other policies. But she pointed out that the cost of paying for the policy isn’t the necessarily the same as its dollar-and-cents efficiency.

“The cost of financing the tax credits is likely to be the variable of the most concern, both for the policy itself and for its broader macroeconomic tax consequences,” she said.

Remarkably, the study may actually underestimate the public benefit of the tax breaks, Larsen added, because he and his colleagues did not include an estimate of the money saved in medical bills from reducing conventional toxic air pollution.

During the Obama administration, the benefits of reducing this conventional air pollution often paid for climate policy by itself. “Typically, the co-benefits of conventional pollutants are quite large—they’re usually of the same magnitude as the climate benefits,” he said. “It shouldn’t be dismissed.”

Society could reap the benefits of such a prosperous policy. But first, the bill has to pass.

Links

• Biden’s new spending framework has $555 billion for clean energy, focused on incentives, not punishments
• Clean Energy Tax Proposals in Biden’s New “Build Back Better” Framework
• Biden’s Solar Ambitions Hinges On More Inclusive Policy
• FACT SHEET: Biden- Harris Administration Races to Deploy Clean Energy that Creates Jobs and Lowers Costs
• Biden Administration Takes Big Step by Proposing Clean Energy Tax Incentives
• Biden tax plan replaces U.S. fossil fuel subsidies with clean energy incentives
• Electricity CEOs tout Biden clean energy tax credits, despite stalled plan