Fossil fuel marketing terms swamp the ABC and national media

Fran Kelly.

Hats off to ABC Radio National’s Breakfast announcer, Fran Kelly. On Wednesday, when picked up by a listener following an interview, Kelly said she was wrong to use the term “clean coal”, because it didn’t exist.

She was right. But then Kelly got into murky territory.

Better, she said, to use the term “low emissions” to describe the coal plant technology now known as HELE (high efficiency, low emissions). But why? It may not be as extreme as “clean”, but “low emissions” in this case is just another marketing term from the coal and fossil fuel lobby.

After all, these plants claim – at best – to emit between 0.7 tonnes and 0.8 tonnes of greenhouse gases for every megawatt hour of electricity produced. That sounds like high emissions technology to me.

It is only “low” in comparison to the incredibly dirty coal plants that preceded them, and their emissions are substantially higher than any other technology – including gas, but particularly solar, wind, hydro and nuclear.

Read the RenewEconomy story by Giles Parkinson - “Fossil fuel marketing terms swamp the ABC and national media.”

Election off to a bad start - RenewEconomy

The 2016 election campaign got off to a bad start, even before it was officially declared.

In its budget presentation last Tuesday, the Coalition government gave no mention of climate change or clean energy, despite banking on its theme of “innovation”, a nimble and agile Australia and a “new economy”.

When the campaign was finally launched, Turnbull – the man who said he would never lead a party that didn’t take climate change seriously – saw no reason to correct the record.

By Monday, the first day of the campaign, the man voted in at least partly because he could speak in whole sentences, was reduced to one and two-word exclamations: “More jobs ….. growth …. Australia,” I heard him say on ABC radio.

Things actually did get worse. The budget contained no additional funding for the government’s emissions buy-back program, just confirmation that it intends to strip $1.3 billion from the legislated budget of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

Later that week, it emerged that the Climate Change Authority – the pesky institution that the Coalition had tried to abolish, but which has now been stacked with Coalition appointees – had decided to censor itself and delay two key reports until after the poll.

Read the RenewEconomy story - “Election off to bad start, but Sex Party supports clean energy.”

Craig's 'Conversation' comment about Clean Energy Finance Corporation

C

raig Froome writes on The Conversation about the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

The Clean Energy Program Manager at The University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute, said: “In defending the federal government’s decision to bar the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) from investing in wind and small-scale solar power, environment minister Greg Hunt explained to ABC Radio what he sees as the future direction for the CEFC. He said that the funding was to focus on projects that were “not mature and not commercial”, identifying three main areas as worthy recipients of investment:

-      large-scale solar, including new solar thermal technologies;

-      emerging technologies such as wave energy;

-      measures to improve energy efficiency.

Read Craig’s story - “The Clean Energy Finance Corporation is meant to back winners, not minnows”.