Health care’s climate footprint

This report is the first in a series of research and policy papers Health Care Without Harm and its partners, including Arup, aim to produce over the next three years. 

The series will define health care’s climate footprint and outline a set of actions the sector can take to align itself with the ambition of the Paris Agreement while simultaneously achieving global health goals. 

Future paper topics will include a global road map for health care decarbonization and resilience; strategies for national and sub-national governments to develop and implement climate-smart health care policies; decarbonizing the health care supply chain; recommendations for sustainable, climate-resilient, decarbonized health development assistance; and more.

Read the report from Health Care Without Harm and Arup - “Health care’s climate footprint."

Utopia or nightmare? The answer lies in how we embrace self-driving, electric and shared vehicles

Emerging transport disruptions could lead to a series of nightmare scenarios and poorer transport systems unless we have sensible and informed public policy to avoid this. Of course, some foresee a utopian scene: self-driving electric vehicles zipping around our cities serving all our transport needs without road accidents or exhaust fumes. But the shift to this transport utopia might not be as straightforward as some think.

In a newly published paper, we explore some potential problems linked to vehicle electrification, autonomous vehicles, the sharing economy and the increasing density of cities. We examined what could happen if these four trends are not all properly managed together.

Read by the piece on The Conversation by Michael Kane and Jake Whitehead - “Utopia or nightmare? The answer lies in how we embrace self-driving, electric and shared vehicles.”

Back to square one in energy policy: we now have a plan to produce a plan

A year and a day — that’s how long it took Frydenberg to kill off “Finkel”.

Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull (left) and federal environment
and energy minister John Frydenberg during a press conference
at parliament house in Canberra on 17 October 2017.

On 7 October 2016, just nine days after a series of tornados took out at least 22 transmission pylons in South Australia and set off a cascading series of events resulting in a state-wide blackout, federal environment and energy minister John Frydenberg commissioned chief scientist professor Alan Finkel to review the stability of our energy system. Finkel’s expert team met with regulators around the world, considered 390 submissions, held 120 meetings and commissioned modelling from multiple experts.

On 8 October this year, word trickled out that the clean energy target (CET), Finkel’s centrepiece, was dead.

A week later, Frydenberg announced the national energy guarantee (Neg). In just three weeks, with no public process, no modelling, no consultation with the Coag energy council, whose approval it requires, the newly formed Energy Security Board (ESB) had knocked together an alternative “conceptual framework”, described in an eight-page letter and a media release, that proposes to push responsibility for reliability and emissions reduction to electricity retailers.

Read the story by Simon Holmes à Court on The Guardian - “Back to square one in energy policy: we now have a plan to produce a plan.”