Trouble with gas: the Coalition is betting on the fossil fuel for recovery – but the sums don't add up

The agency that runs Australia’s electricity last week gave its verdict on how to deliver what would have seemed fanciful not that long ago – a power grid that within five years should at times be able to run on 75% wind and solar energy.

A worker at an LNG project in Queensland. The outlook for gas
has changed dramatically since the idea it could be a transition
 fuel was floated in the 1990s.

The Australian Energy Market Operator delivered a report on integrating renewable energy into the system with an optimistic message.

As described by its chief, New Yorker Audrey Zibelman, the technical capacity was already there, but markets and regulations would have to be adjusted. There were no “insurmountable reasons” why the grid could not take even higher levels of renewables, as it will need to for Australia to meet the Paris agreement goal of zero greenhouse gas emissions.

Read the story from The Guardian by Adam Morton - “Trouble with gas: the Coalition is betting on the fossil fuel for recovery – but the sums don't add up.”

Scott Pruitt’s dirty politics

How the Environmental Protection Agency
became the fossil fuel industry's best friend.

One afternoon last April, Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, travelled to the Harvey Mine, in Sycamore, Pennsylvania, to declare that the agency had a new direction, which he called “Back to Basics.” It was an unusual place for the nation’s chief steward of clean air, land, and water to set out a policy agenda. Consol Energy, the owner of the Harvey facility, which is part of the largest underground coal-mining complex in North America, has been fined repeatedly by the E.P.A. for violations; in 2016, it had to pay three million dollars for having discharged contaminated wastewater into the Ohio River and its tributaries. Past E.P.A. administrators have spoken of creating jobs as a welcome potential by-product of the agency’s work, especially if they are green jobs, but creating or protecting energy jobs is not supposed to be the mission—protecting human health and the environment is. As the speech that Pruitt gave at the mine demonstrated, he seems to have these priorities reversed.

Pruitt, who is forty-nine, looked cheerful, as he generally does at public appearances. (He declined my requests for an interview.) Unlike many people who have joined the chaotic Trump Administration, he seems unconflicted about his new role, his ideological and career goals fitting together as neatly as Lego blocks. The former attorney general of Oklahoma, Pruitt ascended politically by fighting one regulation after another. In his first year at the E.P.A., he has proposed repealing or delaying more than thirty significant environmental rules. In February, when the White House announced its intention to reduce the E.P.A.’s budget by twenty-five per cent—one of the largest cuts for any federal agency—Pruitt made no objections. His schedule is dominated by meetings and speaking engagements with representatives of the industries he regulates. He has met only a handful of times with environmental groups.

Read the New Yorker story - “Scott Pruitt’s dirty politics.”

EPA keeps US scientists from presenting climate report, agency accused of censorship

The US Environmental Protection Agency has kept three scientists from speaking at an event, in a move condemned by researchers and Democratic members of Congress as an attempt by the agency to silence a discussion of climate change.

EPA administrator Scott Pruitt has rejected
 the scientific consensus on climate change.

The scientists were scheduled to discuss a report on the health of Narragansett Bay, New England's largest estuary, on Monday (local time).

Among the findings in the 500-page report is that climate change is affecting air and water temperatures, precipitation, sea level and fish.

The EPA did not explain why the scientists were told not to speak, but said in a statement that the agency supports the program that published the document with a $US600,000 annual grant. The EPA is the sole funder of the program.

Read the ABC News story - “EPA keeps US scientists from presenting climate report, agency accused of censorship.”

Queensland to spend $30M on disaster recovery centre

Q

ueensland has witnessed the costly reality of climate change and has decided to create a disaster recovery agency.

Queensland Deputy Premier,
Jackie Trad.

According to a story in The Guardian, “The Queensland government is to establish Australia’s first permanent disaster recovery agency to deal with a future of more extreme cyclones and floods brought on by climate change.”

“An ongoing series of natural disasters have cost the state billions since the 2011 floods, which killed 38 people and, according to the World Bank, cost an estimated US$15.9bn ($20bn),” the story says.

Deputy Premier Jackie Trad said the growing number and intensity of disasters like cyclones and floods had been “made clear by key scientists in the field of climate science” and was “the lived experience of regional Queensland”.

The story can be read here - “Queensland to create permanent disaster recovery agency”.