Cop25: What was achieved and where to next?

The annual UN climate talks closed in disappointment on Sunday in Madrid, after two weeks spent trying to hash out a deal.

Leaders from UN Climate Change and Chile's
Cop25 presidency lead talks in Madrid 

Countries failed to agree on many of the hoped for outcomes, including rules to set up a global carbon trading system and a system to channel new finance to countries facing the impacts of climate change.

Countries agreed in Paris in 2015 to revisit their climate pledges by 2020. But many countries were pushing this year for a clear call for all countries to submit more ambitious climate pledges next year. This is seen as a key means of ensuring countries put a focus on improving their current pledges, as well as empowering civil society to hold them to account.

But countries such as China and Brazil opposed placing any obligation on countries to submit enhanced pledges next year, arguing it should be each country’s own decision. They instead argued the focus should be on pre-2020 action by developing countries to meet their previous pledges (see below).

As talks reached their final days, tensions grew after a draft decision removed any call for countries to “update” or “enhance” their climate plans by 2020. Instead, it only invited them to “communicate” them in 2020 – far weaker language which put no obligation on enhanced ambition.

Read the Climate Home News story by Jocelyn Timberley - “Cop25: What was achieved and where to next?”

Why trackless trams are ready to replace light rail

I began my life as an activist academic in 1979 when the Western Australian government closed the Fremantle railway, saying buses would be better. Patronage immediately fell by 30% and I ran a four-year campaign to save the railway. We won. I have been writing books and running campaigns ever since on why trains and trams are better than buses. But I have changed my mind. The technology has changed, and I think it will end the need for new light rail.

CRRC Zhuzhou Institute developed the rubber-tyred autonomous
 rail transit (ART) system, or trackless tram, which has already
been trialled in Zhuzhou, China.

“Trackless trams” are based on technology created in Europe and China by taking innovations from high-speed rail and putting them in a bus.

I went to China to check out the CRRC trackless tram (they call it autonomous rail transit, or ART). I came back convinced it’s a transformative transit technology.

Read the piece from The Conversation by the Professor of Sustainability from Curtin University, Peter Newman - “Why trackless trams are ready to replace light rail.”

We need to change how we control energy, AEMC says.

The nation's power grid has managed to retain enough generation capacity to keep the lights on as coal generators have closed but its reliability is still too weak because energy infrastructure was not designed for recent influx of solar and wind energy.

Australia has the supply to keep up with
demand, but our grid is not up to the task.

The situation is laid out in the Australian Energy Market Commission’s latest annual electricity market performance report to be released on Tuesday.

In the Reliability Panel report, the AEMC warned the east coast energy network could become unstable as it made the transition from coal to more gas and renewable energy generation unless action was taken to change how the grid functioned.

Read Cole Larimer’s story from The Age - “We need to change how we control energy, AEMC says.”