Lift-off on climate

The groundswell of direct action on climate change, abroad and at home, from the school strikers to Extinction Rebellion, is echoing in the federal parliament. Shadow minister for climate change and energy Mark Butler announced today that Labor will move for a climate-emergency declaration, joining the crossbenchers and the Greens who have their own motion in train. It is real progress, never mind who gets the credit.

Late yesterday afternoon, a dozen MPs from Labor and the crossbench, members of Parliamentary Friends of Climate Action, met in a committee room to hear a briefing from experts on the dire health threats to Australians from global warming of more than 1.5 degrees. Ahead of the meeting, co-chair Helen Haines revealed that she would move a motion for a national strategy on climate and agriculture, seconded by Centre Alliance’s Rebekha Sharkie. Deputy chair Zali Steggall told the meeting that climate action was the whole reason she had gone into politics: “We are working hard, it’s not business as usual.” Also attending were Adam Bandt, plus Labor MPs Ged Kearney, Anika Wells, Peta Murphy, Mike Freedlander, Libby Coker and Josh Burns.

Read the story from The Monthly by Paddy Manning - “Lift-off on climate.”

Direct action fund would cost taxpayers $23b if used to meet Paris climate targets

Taxpayers would pay up to $23.6 billion for Australia to meet international climate targets if the Turnbull government were to continue with its "direct action" emissions-reduction fund as its main policy.

Adam Bandt said the Parliamentary Budget Office
 analysis showed the emissions reduction fund was
 "an empty vessel built to appease the Trumps
 in the Coalition". 

Following a request by the Greens, the federal Parliamentary Budget Office estimated the cost of using the fund to meet the target the Coalition submitted at the Paris climate summit – a 26 to 28 per cent emissions cut compared with 2005 levels by 2030.

The fund pays businesses and farmers through an auction process, with the cheapest bids winning contracts to cut emissions.

Read Adam Morton’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Direct action fund would cost taxpayers $23b if used to meet Paris climate targets.”

Power prices, energy security, emissions cuts - and carbon pricing - on the table in climate review

The government will review
 climate policies next year.

The Coalition will consider a form of carbon pricing for power companies as part of a long-awaited review of Australia's climate policies, Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg has confirmed.

The review of the Coalition's direct action policy will focus on electricity price rises, energy security and cutting greenhouse gas emissions but will also look at whether to introduce an emissions intensity scheme for electricity generators – a type of carbon price different to the abolished scheme brought in by the Gillard Labor government.

The possible resurrection of carbon pricing is likely to trigger intense internal debate within the Coalition once the review gets under way next year, while environment groups and the federal opposition are likely to claim the terms of reference for the departmental review lack ambition, given the threat posed by climate change to the planet.

Read the story in today’s Melbourne Age by Adam Morton and James Masola - “Power prices, energy security, emissions cuts - and carbon pricing - on the table in climate review.”

Direct Action paying polluters to avoid clearing land they would never have cleared – report

A Green Institute report found 75% of Direct
Action’s vegetation projects were paying to stop
 clearing in regions dominated by mulga
plants, which are usually not cleared for at least
15 years, since they are allowed to regenerate
before being harvested for cattle fodder.

Australia’s “Direct Action” policy aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions is paying polluters millions of dollars to avoid pollution they probably would not have emitted anyway, according to in-depth analysis.

The centrepiece of the government’s Direct Action scheme, introduced by the former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, is the emissions reduction fund (ERF). Through a reverse auction, it pays polluters to pollute less – mostly paying farmers not to clear their land. So far about $1.7bn has been spent through the ERF.

The analysis for the Green Institute, a not-for-profit organisation supporting green policies, says much of that clearing wouldn’t have happened anyway, so shouldn’t count as real abatement.

The authors, Margaret Blakers and Margaret Considine, looked at each of the projects funded and found 75% of the fund’s vegetation projects were paying to stop clearing in regions dominated by mulga plants.

Assuming those projects were paid the average price per hectare, the government paid about $360 per hectare for avoided deforestation and about $205 per hectare for regeneration.

Read The Guardian story - “Direct Action paying polluters to avoid clearing land they would never have cleared – report.”

Adani coal mine would wipe out Direct Action gains within a year, estimates show

The Emissions Reduction Fund is
 the centrepiece of the Australian
 Government's policy suite to
 reduce emissions.

Carbon cuts made by the federal government's Direct Action climate change plan by 2020 would be wiped out by pollution from a single coal mine in just over a year, new data revealed at a Senate estimates hearing shows.

Officials from the Clean Energy Regulator said that projects paid for from the first three auctions of the Emissions Reduction Fund – the backbone of Direct Action – would trim pollution by just 42 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent by 2020.

Even if all the remaining funds were spent – with a fourth auction planned for November 16 – emissions reductions are projected to total only 92 million tonnes by the year 2020, officials told senators.

By contrast, the Adani coal mine proposed for Queensland's Galilee Basin would trigger emissions of about 79 million tonnes a year – nullifying the ERF's pre-2020 abatement in little over a year if it proceeded.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Adani coal mine would wipe out Direct Action gains within a year, estimates show.”

Direct Action doesn't motivate big carbon emitters

Australia’s largest listed, carbon intensive companies say management lost focus on carbon matters, abandoned energy projects and didn’t have the commercial imperative to produce long-term strategic action on reducing emissions after the carbon tax was repealed, new research finds.

Our research looked at the comparative views of emitters before and after the repeal of the carbon tax legislation, in interviews with 18 senior managers from nine carbon-intensive listed companies.

Two years have passed since Australia’s carbon tax was repealed. It was introduced by the Labor government and came into effect in 2012.

The carbon pricing scheme asked big emitters to pay for each tonne of emissions above a threshold of 25,000 tonnes, in carbon units, and these were at a fixed charge of: $23 a tonne in 2012, $24.15 a tonne in 2013 and $25.40 a tonne in 2014.

Read the piece on The Conversation - “Direct Action not as motivating as carbon tax say some of Australia’s biggest emitters.”

Coalition Government has 'tamed' the CCA

It was baseball great Yogi Berra who said:
 "When you come to a fork in the road, take it!

Australia’s Coalition government discovered that it could not dismantle the Climate Change Authority created by its Labor predecessors, what with its bothersome analyses that Australia needed to do more on climate action, but it has found that it could be tamed.

The reconstituted CCA – containing a majority of board members appointed by the Coalition and sympathetic to its policy stance (including the architect of its own Direct Action policy), and with a much reduced staff – delivered its long-awaited and long-delayed report on climate policy options on Wednesday.

And it looks remarkably like something that the Coalition would have chosen to write itself. Or at least its moderate faction.

It is similar to what the proponents of Direct Action had always imagined their policy would become, once the Coalition fessed up to the fact that climate targets it signed to in Paris will not be reached with only wishful thinking, half-baked plans such as the emissions reduction fund, and without some sort of biting policy.

But the policy “toolkit” that the CCA recommends also looks a lot like the climate policy that Labor brought to the election campaign. That’s why the Coalition was relieved that CCA chose to delay its report until now, leaving the conservatives free to brand Labor’s idea as an economy-killer and putting off what will be an intense internal debate.

Read Giles Parkinson’s story on RenewEconomy - “Tamed CCA gives Coalition breathing space, but no path to Paris targets.”

Climate data 'hits me right in the gut' - economics writer

‘The temperature data is now at such a point that it requires absurd levels of conspiracy theory to suggest climate change is not occurring’

Greg Hunt - wilfully resistant to
 combatting climate change.

Last week it was announced that June was the warmest June on record – making it the 14th consecutive month of a record being set. It comes at a time our government and many in the media remain wilfully resistant to efforts to combat climate change, and at a time when the data should worry everyone.

One of the best things about the election result has been the cabinet reshuffle, which has seen Greg Hunt no longer the minister for the environment.

I once called him the emptiest suit in the history of Australian politics, and maybe that was wrong because given how he exited the role, perhaps a better descriptor is the biggest troll in Australian politics.

On leaving the job Hunt, told reporters that “I feel as if my work is done.”

No minister for the environment could look at the data of global temperatures and think their work is done – especially if the majority of their work involved pushing the con of Direct Action onto the public.

The temperature data is now at such a point that it requires absurd levels of conspiracy theory to suggest climate change is not occurring.

Read Greg Jericho’s story in The Guardian - “I spend my time writing about the economy, but the climate data hits me right in the gut.”

Price hike blame game: a sad product of a dismal climate change debate

Dismal climate change debate
prompts power price hikes.

Recent news reports highlighting that the price of generating electricity in South Australia has increased three to four times its historic levels have left politicians, commentators and renewables advocates in an agitated state. One side of the debate blames renewables, the other argues vociferously that it’s the fault of evil fossil-fuel generators and that renewables actually reduce the price of electricity.

This blame game is a sad product of the dismal debate Australia has had about climate change and the transition to a low-emissions electricity sector over the past decade. Transitions tend to be painful. The challenge for policymakers is not to avoid the transition because it’s painful – running away at the first sign of high prices does not make a brave politician. It is to make the transition as painless as possible.

But a debate about how best to make the transition is not the debate the country has been having. Instead we have oscillated from arguing that climate change does not need a substantial response, to introducing policies such as Direct Action that have no perceived impact on consumers and limited impact on the environment, to advocacy for an immediate transition to cheap, job-creating renewable electricity. The result is a policy mess, with no clear direction forward.

Read The Guardian story - “The electricity price hike blame game: a sad product of a dismal climate change debate.”

Coalition's climate policy announced after July 2 election

 The Coalition is deferring until after the election
 its internal reckoning over climate policy.

For years Greg Hunt has been suggesting different things to different people about his climate policy. This week he was almost caught out.

Most people who understand how it works – environmentalists, business leaders, analysts – know the Coalition’s Direct Action policy cannot meet Australia’s promised long-term greenhouse gas reductions exactly as it stands. For years Hunt has reassured them – don’t worry, the framework is there.

The so-called safeguards mechanism within the policy (which sets emissions “baselines”, or limits, for big polluters) can be tightened so it becomes a type of emissions trading scheme. The baselines can be gradually reduced and then companies that can’t meet them forced to buy pollution permits. But Hunt is keeping quiet about that, playing a long game, waiting for the cabinet, and his party, to catch up with the scientific and economic realities of climate change, biding his time until a scheduled “review” next year.

Read The Guardian story - “Greg Hunt plays the long game on his glaringly obvious emissions trading scheme.”

Direct Action doubts from the ANU's Crawford School

Paul Burke from the ANU's Crawford School
has serious doubts about Direct Action.

Direct Action is the centrepiece of Australia’s current greenhouse gas reduction efforts. To date, A$1.7 billion in subsidies has been committed from the government’s Emissions Reduction Fund to projects offering to reduce emissions.

The scheme replaced Australia’s two-year-old carbon price in 2014 and is a key part of the government’s plan to reduce emissions by 5% below 2000 levels by 2020, and 26–28% below 2005 levels by 2030.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt has called Direct Action a “stunning success” and “one of the most effective systems in the world for significantly reducing emissions”.

In a new article in Economic Papers, I look into the economics of Direct Action and how it is working. I conclude that the scheme is exposed to funding projects that would have happened without government funding.

Read the piece on The Conversation by a Fellow from the Crawford School at the Australian National University, Paul Burke - “Direct Action not giving us bang for our buck on climate change.”

Australian rush to buy cheap CERs

T

he recent Australian rush to buy millions of cheap, soon-to-be-cancelled CP1 CERs has fuelled concerns that the government plans to use them to cover any shortcomings of its Direct Action Plan, even though using international units goes against its long-standing policy.

Australian landfill owners have driven demand for 20-40 million CP1 CERs costing €0.12-0.15 (A$0.18-0.23) in recent weeks, according to European traders. Unused CP1 CERs will be cancelled on Nov. 18 as the compliance period for the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period ends.

The landfill owners are buying the CERs as part of a deal with the government to compensate for future income it earned by passing on the costs from Australia’s now-dismantled carbon tax.

Read the Carbon Pulse story - “Concerns grow that Australia will rely on cheap CERs to meet emissions targets”.

Turnbull climate sensitive despite pledges to Direct Action

T

Malcolm Turnbull - subtle
changes to
climate change approach.

he Turnbull government is signalling a new approach to climate policy despite its pledge to stick with the “Direct Action” climate plan, abandoning Tony Abbott’s attempt to abolish two key renewable energy agencies and considering tougher “safeguards” to ensure the policy actually reduces emissions.

Staff at the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena), a body set up by the former Labor government to increase the use of renewable energy, were told on Monday they were being transferred from the industry department to the department of the environment.

Read the Guardian story - “Turnbull government signals new approach to climate policy”.

Michael considers machinations of carbon tax/Direct Action

M

ichael Harris delves into the machinations of the carbon tax and Direct Action.

The Senior Fellow in the School of Economics at University of Sydney explores the complexities on The Conversation asking, “Let’s consider what we’re measuring and why.”

Read his story - “The carbon tax wasn’t a ‘slug’ to the economy and Direct Action may be a waste of money”.

Minister claims success for Direct Action, but!

A

ustralia’s Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, claims that the government’s direct action scheme is already reducing the country’s carbon dioxide emissions.

Environment Minister, Greg Hunt,
claiming success for Direct Action.

A Melbourne Age story tells of Mr Hunt’s almost triumphalist views that Direct Action has secured Australia’s climate future, arguing that projected targets for curtailing greenhouse gas emissions.

The story - “Has Greg Hunt's direct action scheme fixed climate change policy in Australia?” – reports that, “Mr Hunt said the tender process was "a stunning success", and interest did exceed what some critics had expected.”

The Age says, “The numbers being bandied about, though, warrant closer examination.”

Signature policy wins praise from expected quarters

W

hat else but a “stunning outcome” could Greg Hunt attribute to the first play in the Australian coalition’s signature Direct Action policy?

Greg Hunt - claiming emissions
 auctions a "stunning outcome".

The Federal Environmental Minister said auctions to award emissions reduction contracts worth $660.4m for businesses to prevent 47m tonnes of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere produced a “stunning outcome”, exceeding expectations.

However, amidst the clamour from the minister, the Climate Institute has said the first auctions showed the policy would fall well short of meeting even Australia’s “woefully inadequate” emissions reduction target.

The Guardian has written about the event in the story headed: “Greg Hunt calls Australia's Direct Action auction a success, despite criticism”.

Just a few pages of 'The Corporation' will illustrate Direct Action's weaknesses

R

ead Joel Bakan’s “The Corporation” and it will be evident within pages that this will simply not work.

Tony Wood, energy program
director with
 the Grattan Institute.

Our power companies that respond, without question, to the fundamentals of corporations and that is that their first and only responsibility is to make a profit for shareholders.

The social and environmental needs of the communities they serve barely make it onto the agenda.

An ABC story - “Top polluters to set own limits virtually penalty free, according to Direct Action policy paper” – reports that “Australia's 140 top polluters will set their own limits for future pollution virtually penalty free, according to the Government's latest Direct Action policy paper.”

The story reports that Grattan Institute energy program director Tony Wood said the ideas proposed in the paper simply would not work.

"The safeguard mechanism was always a critical element of the Direct Action plan, but there is nothing in this safeguard mechanism that puts any absolute limit on a whole range of sectors," he said.

Direct Action seems to about 'mate's rates' on emissions

D

irect Action appears to be about “mate’s rates” for Australia’s worst polluters.

The Guardian reports, “So-called ‘safeguards mechanism’ will at best mean business as usual for Australia’s major polluters and at worst lead to far more greenhouse gas output.”

The story - “Direct Action set up to allow large rise in emissions, says Climate Institute” – reports, “The final element of the Abbott government’s Direct Action climate change policy will at best mean major polluters continue business as usual and at worst lead to significant increases in their greenhouse gas emissions according to the Climate Institute thinktank.”

Direct Action appears to be about support, not control

T

he Abbott’s Government’s much lauded “Direct Action” appears to be about directly supporting Australia’s worst polluters, rather than acting to seriously slow country’s carbon dioxide emissions.

Today’s Melbourne Age tells us that the Abbott government has proposed a major concession to the heavy-polluting electricity industry in its direct action climate change policy by exempting individual companies from caps on emissions.

Lisa Cox and Peter Hannam write - “Power sector to get special treatment under Direct Action” – “The government is beginning public consultation for the so-called safeguards mechanism for its $2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund, which will pay major polluters to reduce their pollution.”

Inadequate Direct Action faces deteriorating circumstances

Australia’s Federal Government has introduced the broadly considered inadequate “Direct Action” to counter climate change in the face of advice predicting clearly deteriorating circumstances.

And just today a report has been released that warns of rather difficult times ahead for people living in New South Wales.

The report, headed: “Understanding and adapting to climate change impacts in New South Wales” explains just how different the conditions will be in New South Wales as this century unfolds.