Government accused of policy paralysis while uncertainty reigns over renewable energy targets

The full moon sets behind a wind farm in
 the Mojave Desert in California,
January 8, 2004.

The bickering between state and federal governments on renewable energy targets is creating massive uncertainty, according to climate change and energy specialists.

David Blowers from the Grattan Institute says investors, utilities, industry and householders are in the dark about what to expect in 2017.

Mr Blowers said the only certainty was that electricity prices would rise for everyone.

"Electricity prices have already been factored into next year and they're going to be higher," he said.

"Tackling a new energy system makes that inevitable.

"Replacing a lot of generation stock and infrastructure with a whole lot of new stuff is expensive, so prices will rise.”

Mr Blowers said it might be unpalatable, but there must be give and take on both sides if politicians are to reach consensus and enable investment.

Read the ABC story - “Government accused of policy paralysis while uncertainty reigns over renewable energy targets.”

Discussing 'Potential Pathways to Decarbonisation'

Dr Sarah Bice.

“Potential Pathways to Decarbonisation” were discussed at a public session organized on November 10 by the Grattan Institute.

The panel for the Energy Futures Seminar featured Jeremy Bentham, who was the lead on Shell’s recently published plan to achieve net-zero emissions and transform four sectors of the energy system: power, industry, transport and buildings; Ross Garnaut, a Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Australian National University and a Vice-Chancellor's Fellow and Professorial Fellow of Economics at The University of Melbourne; Tony Wood, the Director of the Energy Program at the Grattan Institute; and Dr Sarah Bice from the University of Melbourne’s School of Government.

The global community has committed to deep decarbonisation by mid-century, yet, it is far from clear how we might get there, despite the progress made through last December’s Paris Agreement.

Listen to a recording of this event, including a Q&A with the audience.

Attacks on wind and solar policies turn to state initiatives

The assault on climate policies and renewable energy initiatives has taken a new form: having obliterated almost all of the effective policies at federal level, the focus is now switching to state-based targets, using the old arguments of higher costs and little abatement as the basis for the attack.

The new stance is being led by conservative institutions such as the Grattan Institute – with the enthusiastic support of the lobby groups that represent the coal and gas-fired generators, and the federal government, which shows no inclination to move on from Abbott-era policies.

The Grattan Institute over the weekend released another major report analysing events in South Australia in recent months. Parts of it were immediately seized upon by those seeking to place renewables, and wind and solar in particular, in a poor light and promote the interests of the gas industry.

The report is one of many that have highlighted the complexities of the situation in Australia, and the poor policy framework.

Read the thoughts of Giles Parkinson on RenewEconomy -“Attacks on wind and solar policies turn to state initiatives.”

Experience pooled to discuss low-carbon transition

Several people with wide experience in Australia’s energy infrastructure recently gathered in Canberra to discuss a low-carbon transition.

The event featured Tony Wood, of the Grattan Institute; Olivia Kember, of The Climate Institute; Steve Hatfield-Dodds from the CSIRO; Tim Nelson from AGL Energy; Frank Jotzo from the Australian National Univeristy’s Crawford School; Salim Mazouz, from The Centre for International Economics; and Kathryn Smith from the Climate Change Authority.

Canberra’s ANU hosted the symposium.

Watch the symposium here - “Australia’s electricity sector: policy options to support a low-carbon transition.”

Grattan Institute considers post-Paris energy options

The Grattan Institute considers
post-Paris energy options.

The Commonwealth Government has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. Despite bipartisan agreement on the need to reduce emissions, Australia lacks a comprehensive, credible domestic policy framework capable of achieving this target.

To reach Australia’s 2030 emissions target and potentially more ambitious targets in the future, the suite of policies in place to meet the government’s current target of reducing emissions by five per cent below 2000 levels by 2020 will need a substantial overhaul

Read “Post Paris: Australia’s climate policy options” by Tony Wood and David Blowers from the Grattan Institute.

Humanity needs to replicate tenacity, innovation, determination, inventiveness, commitment adaptation and damn sheer hard work to escape this dilemma

H

uman tenacity, innovation, determination, inventiveness, commitment adaptation and damn sheer hard work have allowed us to build an earthly superstructure that we now discover rests on massively inadequate foundations.

Responding from innate human needs we built from the ground up, but lacking vision at the time we were unable to comprehend that this human experiment would become so grand that its demands would outstrip earth’s natural recovery abilities and seriously disturb its equilibrium.

Humanity was for millennia simply another life form that plodded about the planet competing with others for space and resources upon which they depended until its inherent desire to know, understand and exploit whatever it found, led to the unlocking of fossil fuel energy, bringing on the Industrial Revolution and, in the last 200 years or so, the drip-feed of disaster that has measurably unsettled earth’s atmosphere.

Aided by the abundant amounts of apparently free energy in fossil fuels, our wants quickly overtook our needs and grandiose dreams replaced more utilitarian goals of simply answering our necessities.

The unsettling of earth’s atmosphere, measured in tiny numbers, but illustrated through large, complex and difficult outcomes, can only be addressed if we are able to re-apply those qualities that got us to where we are, but with a different intent.

The commitment it took to get us to where we are today was unquestionably impressive, but will we be able to replicate that commitment to extricate ourselves from this present dilemma.

An event in Melbourne earlier this week illustrates that our commitment will probably fall well short of what is needed.

The event, “Climate Change: What happens after the Paris conference?” at the 200-seat Village Roadshow theatrette at the State Library was booked out within two days of being announced.

Organizers, Melbourne’s Grattan Institute and the Melbourne Energy Institute quickly organized a waiting list, which equally quickly blew out to 300 names, but it was at this point the commitment of people died.

The event went ahead as scheduled, but the official count of the audience was 160, illustrating that 40 of those who had pre-booked had decided something more important needed attending to, and the 300 on the waiting list simply missed out on what was an illuminating and educative session.

The speakers were the Energy and Program Director at the Grattan Institute, Tony Wood; the lead secretary, Strategy and Planning at the Department of Economic Development, Anthea Harris; and the Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Melbourne’s School of Earth Sciences, David Karoly, while the moderator was the Environment Editor from the Melbourne Age, Tom Arup.

Tony Wood explores Labor's twisty journey to climate change response

T

Tony Wood.

ony Wood explores the difficulties and challenges faced by Labor in articulating its response to climate change.

The program director, Energy, at the Grattan Institute has written about “The latest turn in the twisty history of Labor’s climate policies” on The Conversation.

Her said, “Developing and effectively implementing a response to the “great moral challenge of our time” has so far beaten two Labor Prime Ministers and looks challenging for the current alternative prime minister, Bill Shorten.

“Whatever the status of this week’s leaked policy document, a reflection on the Labor Party’s gyrations on climate change policy over the past decade may provide some insight into what we might see next. The political drama will be heightened next month, when the government announces its post-2020 emissions reduction target and then its own policy to meet that target. “

An energy revolution is at hand in Australia

A

n energy revolution is at hand in Australia, as the arrival of home batteries combines with the falling cost of solar panels to transform the centralised grid.

But for its benefits to be spread fairly and efficiently, governments must avoid the mistakes of the past by rejecting expensive subsidies and by setting charges that reflect the true cost of providing electricity.

In the first phase of large-scale growth in solar, lavish feed-in tariff schemes introduced between 2008 and 2011 encouraged 1.4 million households to install panels on their roofs – the highest proportion of households of any country.

Read the Grattan Institute story - “Sundown, sunrise: how Australia can finally get solar power right”.

Ideology again stands in the way of genuine mitigation efforts

I

deology is being employed to protect Australia’s status quo.

Under the guise of earnest effort the Abbott-coalition has done some climate change mitigation window dressing, but just today Lisa Cox and Tom Arup have written in the Melbourne about a Grattan report that declares the efforts were “designed to fail”.

The story - “Direct action's emissions safeguards 'designed to fail': Grattan Institute” – says, “Proposed safeguards to limit greenhouse gas emissions from big polluters have been designed by the Abbott government to fail, according to the Grattan Institute.”

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.

Planning a carbon-rich world strikingly different from what's needed now

City planning in a carbon-rich world is strikingly different from what will be needed, and essential, if we are to endure in a carbon-constrained world.

A new book released just this week by Melbourne’s Grattan Institute examines the planning that it claims is “broken”, particularly Melbourne and Sydney.

The book: “City Limits: Why Australia's Cities are Broken and How We Can Fix Them” had been published by Melbourne University Press.

A story in today’s Melbourne Age headed: “Melbourne's planning disaster: jobs boom in CBD while affordable housing grows everoutwards in suburbs” discusses the disconnect between where the jobs are and where people can afford to live.

What wasn’t alluded to, but is a clear implication, is the wider cost to society in the carbon dioxide emissions resulting from the constant commuting forced upon people when jobs are in one place and their homes are in another, frequently an hour or more way.

Any reasonable response to climate change demands that we live with easy walking or cycling distance of where it is we work – some people have advocated that we live in a “10-minute world”, meaning that most everything needed for day-to-day survival is within 10 minutes of where we live.