We're wasting too much energy on nuclear talk

Late last Friday - a timeslot where ministers are known to announce policies they are most proud of - the Minister for Energy, Angus Taylor, ordered a parliamentary inquiry into nuclear energy.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Minister for Energy
 and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor. 

In a country currently engulfed in a gas price crisis, caused by the voracious appetite of the gas industry to export cheap gas and sell Australians expensive gas, are we really willing to believe that the solution to expensive gas is even more expensive energy from nuclear reactors? While renewables keep coming down in price, nuclear is only the energy source that keeps getting more, and more, expensive over time.

And if policymakers are trying to solve an energy crisis in 2019, why would they select a form of power generation that has a legacy of expensive delays and failures and, optimistically, takes a decade to build? It just doesn't add up. Globally, reactors have taken decades. Of all nuclear reactors currently under construction, two-thirds are behind schedule and nearly half of those were delayed again in the last year.

Read the story from The Canberra Times by Richie Merzian - “We're wasting too much energy on nuclear talk.”

Mining sector met NSW ministers almost every week over four years

Mining and resources companies were given an extraordinary level of access to the highest rungs of the New South Wales government in the past four years, securing roughly 188 meetings with ministers in 235 weeks.

 The NSW Minerals Council has obtained regular access
to resources, planning and finance ministers, and the
offices of premiers and deputy premiers.

An analysis of four and a half years of the state’s ministerial diaries shows the NSW Minerals Council has obtained regular access to resources, planning and finance ministers, and the offices of premiers and deputy premiers.

The council was given 61 meetings with NSW ministers, more than anyone except the NSW Farmers Association and Penrith city council.

Further meetings were granted to multinational resource and energy companies such as Shenhua, Whitehaven, Glencore, AGL, Rio Tinto, BHP, Origin Energy, Santos, Anglo American and Centennial Coal.

Read the story from The Guardian by Nick Evershed and Christopher Knaus - “Mining sector met NSW ministers almost every week over four years.”

Australia’s slow march towards a National Energy Guarantee is gathering pace

The finer policy details of the of the proposed National Energy Guarantee (NEG) have begun to leak onto newspaper front pages and websites, ahead of Friday’s crucial meeting of federal and state energy ministers.

Is the long journey towards a bipartisan emissions policy nearing its end?

The good news is that the leaked information suggests solid progress has been made over the past couple of months on both the emissions and reliability components of the policy.

Many of the more extreme and dramatic suggestions contained in the Energy Security Board’s February consultation paper appear to have died a quiet death. What we’re left with is a more sober proposal that does its best to use existing markets and practices – more evolution than revolution.

Read the story from The Conversation by a Grattan Institute Energy Fellow, David Blowers - “Australia’s slow march towards a National Energy Guarantee is gathering pace.”

Chance or coincidence puts Shepparton in step with international goals

S

hepparton people banded together on Thursday, well about 150 of them, to demand the State Government provided the city with better rail transport.

Some of those among the pyjama-clad train travellers would have been eager to see trains used as the easily outstrip private transport with regard carbon dioxide emissions, while others sought only travel convenience, being another marker in Shepparton’s maturation.

By coincidence or chance, this push for improved rail transport to and from the Goulburn Valley comes as there is an international initiative aimed at ensuring the creation of more low-carbon transport.

Transport Ministers participating in the International Transport Forum (ITF) Annual Summit agreed in their Declaration from Ministers on Transport, Trade and Tourism on the value of pursuing low-carbon transport towards COP21.

The summit’s declaration says the Ministers, “Recognize that the new international climate agreement, which is to be forged and agreed by COP21, should encourage mainstreaming of low carbon transport in global policies on climate change and sustainable development.”

A report from the summit - “Transport Ministers from 54 countries call for global policies to mainstream low-carbon transport” – said, “Company CEOs, transport initiative leaders and government representatives discussed strategies and innovations to mitigate transport-related climate change impacts related to trade and tourism during this session.

“Ministers from the EU, France, the Netherlands, Norway, the UK, and others shared detailed and ambitious plans on transport advancing climate action.”