Monday 25 August 2014

Australian Premier Tony Abbott under fire as 'environmental vandal' - LA Times

Australian Premier Tony Abbott under fire as 'environmental vandal'

By Carol J. Williams contact the reporter

Australia Environmental Issues National Government

Australian leader delivers on promise to repeal carbon tax on worst polluters

Australian prime minister wants to see Tasmanian forest removed from World Heritage list, opened to logging

Great Barrier Reef in danger from massive Queensland coal mine, environmentalists warn

In
less than a year as Australian government leader, Prime Minister Tony
Abbott has drawn more ire from environmentalists than most
anti-regulation crusaders manage in a full term in office.

He delivered last month on his chief campaign promise to make the land Down Under the first to repeal a functioning carbon tax on the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases.

His government has also
approved the massive Carmichael Coal Mine development in Queensland that
environmentalists say threatens to damage the Great Barrier Reef with
its runoff and to blast the atmosphere with an additional 130 million
tons of carbon dioxide each year.

He invited loggers
to Parliament House in Canberra in March to bolster his Liberal Party
government's push, unsuccessful so far, to open pristine Tasmanian
forest to logging by having the UNESCO World Heritage designation of the
183,000-acre preserve revoked.

He
put a climate change skeptic in charge of the country's Renewable
Energy Target program, then slashed $435 million in funding for its
commitment to producing at least 20% of energy needs from renewable sources by 2020. A study published
last week said the new policy would add $10 billion to oil and gas
company profits without noticeably lowering household electricity bills.

And in the interest of streamlining the environmental impact assessments on new energy projects, Abbott has shifted authority from federal agencies
to Australia's state and territorial governments to review the
voluminous expert research and analysis and to greenlight proposals,
potentially in as little as 10 days.

The prime minister's
ramrodding of regulation and tax rollbacks has stirred accusations from
environmental scientists that the new administration is an "environmental train wreck"
and from political opposition leader Bill Shorten, who called Abbott an
"environmental vandal" who is "sleepwalking Australia" to economic
disaster.

But
the conservative deemed "unelectable" by his own party before leading
it to parliamentary victory and himself to the government seat in
Canberra has been playing to an appreciative audience in the business
and industrial circles he courted to win the Sept. 7 election.

When
Abbott laid out his vision for removing obstacles to logging the
Tasmanian old-growth forest, he called the Australian Greens party "the
Devil," drawing a rousing ovation from timber industry stalwarts in the
visitors' gallery.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt has also made
progress in selling the Carmichael mining venture to the public with the
Indian private investor's promise of more than 3,900 jobs once the mine
is fully functional and $300 billion for the economy over the next 60
years.

Abbott's
predecessors from the Labor Party managed to shepherd the country
through the recession with less damage to citizens' well-being and
living standards than was borne in most Western countries, thanks to
lucrative resource sales to China.

But the slowdown in energy and
commodities exports over the last three years and Labor's infighting
that saw one faction depose another turned much of the country against
the more environmentally friendly former government, especially those
seeing potential dollar signs from expansion of coal seam fracking and
other industrial expansions that have bogged down amid improved
regulation to protect the air, water and climate.

Some recent
assessments of Abbott's hard line on the environment have suggested,
though, that his policies might not survive his early days in office as
young Australians are vehemently opposed to them.

A June poll by the Lonergan Research firm found 97% of Australians surveyed supported continued World Heritage listing for the Tasmanian forest, which includes 2,000-year-old growth and the world's tallest flowering trees.

Timber
industry jobs account for only 1% of Tasmanian employment, compared
with 15% in tourism, the Guardian newspaper reported in its account of
the March parliamentary reception for Tasmanian loggers. It called
Abbott's hopes for harvesting the habitat of the endangered Tasmanian
devil "visionless and destructive dogma."

Follow @cjwilliamslat for the latest international news 24/7

Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times

Thursday 21 August 2014

Hunt launches personal attack on head of Australian solar lobby : Renew Economy

Hunt launches personal attack on head of Australian solar lobby

By Sophie Vorrath on 21 August 2014

Australia’s
federal environment minister, Greg Hunt, has launched an extraordinary
attack on the head of the Australian Solar Council, John Grimes, after
comments the ASC chief made on ABC radio, criticising the Coalition’s
“broken promises” on support for renewable energy.

Hunt described Grimes as a “total failure of an industry leader” on
Brisbane’s 621 Mornings program on Thursday, and said he should be
“utterly ashamed” of comments he made suggesting the environment
minister had been “sidelined” in a government that was firmly
anti-renewables.

The comments by Hunt come just a few weeks after he accused the left of “being against electricity”,
and comes as polling shows that the government is under severe pressure
over its renewables policy, and the outcome of its controversial RET
Review panel.

Chief executive of the Australian Solar Council, John Grimes

Grimes, who was speaking ahead of today’s launch of the “Save Solar”
campaign – a campaign that will target marginal federal seats across
Australia – accused Prime Minister Tony Abbott of personally leading a
push to curtail renewables growth in Australia.

“After the election, promise after promise (has been) broken,” Grimes
said. “One million solar roofs gone, the RET he wants abolished – he
and Joe Hockey are working hard for that outcome. … (And) moderate
voices like [Environment Minister] Greg Hunt have been sidelined in the
Cabinet.

“This is just not what the people were voting for, and certainly not what they want.”

But Hunt took exception to the comments, insisting his party was
committed to the future of renewable energy in Australia, with a focus
on long-term stability.

“We spoke a week ago and I was absolutely crystal clear that we remained committed to the renewable energy target,” Hunt said.

“He knows that, [yet] he said things which were extraordinary and
completely at odds with what he said to me in private. It is a deep
personal moral duty to myself to say the same thing in private as the
same thing in public.

“Mr Grimes should be utterly ashamed of himself today – he is
somebody who says one thing in private and another thing in public.”

Grimes later told the ABC presenter that Hunt had warned that there would be consequences if the Save Solar campaign continued.

“Greg Hunt is a man of his word,” Grimes said. “He called me… to warn
me off, and to tell me to shut down our pointed marginal seat campaign.

“They are so scared about the voice of Australian people on this
subject …they will apply any pressure and destroy any character to stop
this movement,” Grimes said.

“Greg Hunt, so under pressure on this issue that he has to attack my
personal credibility… that just shows everybody just how far this
government has gone and why this campaign is so important.”

Grimes told ABC Radio that the Solar Council would begin its Save
Solar campaign with a meeting at the RSL in Redcliffe, north of
Brisbane, tonight.

“The first marginal seat we’re targeting is right here in Queensland,
kicking off today, the seat of Petrie,” he said. “This is an area, like
other places in Queensland, where people have absolutely embraced
solar.

“But this is only the first – we’re going to roll this campaign out across New South Wales and Victoria as well.”

IPA/News Corp's bogus claims of ABC anti-fossil fuel bias

The Conversation 21 August 2014, 1:00pm 11

Energy Environment Media

The IPA and The Australian have commenced a
spurious attack against the ABC over its coverage of the fossil fuel
versus renewables debate, writes Dr Kerrie Foxwell-Norton from Griffith University via The Conversation.

It’s tempting to view The Australian’s latest broadside at the ABC as just another salvo fired between our nation’s two biggest media organisations.

But the coverage, based on an Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) report
analysing the ABC’s coverage of energy issues, also serves as a
fascinating case study of how we should define bias in environmental
journalism.

The IPA is a think-tank broadly identified with the most conservative
elements of the public policy debate, and its findings were given prominent coverage in The Australian.

Titled ''Public broadcaster or green activist? How the ABC spins Australia’s energy choices'',
the report argued that the ABC was more favourable in its reporting of
renewable energy resources than of coal mining and coal seam gas (CSG).

It’s worth noting that the numbers could have been spun differently.

For example, according to the IPA’s figures, the ABC’s coverage was
either ''neutral'' or ''favourable'' in the majority of its stories on
coal mining and CSG: 68.3% for coal mining and 56.4% for CSG.

(Source: IPA)

Yet the next day, The Australian followed up with an editorial by the report’s author James Paterson, in which he called for the ABC to be privatised so that its journalists'' alleged personal preferences can be curtailed by the

''... commercial imperative to seek advertising.''

As arguments go, claiming that journalism will be improved by trying to appease advertisers certainly wins points for novelty.

[Ed: Not entirely novel, as the morality of commerce was a theme
IPA benefactor Rupert Murdoch expounded in his speech at the IPA 70th
anniversary dinner on 4 April 2013.]

Bias in the eye of the beholder

The problem with calling out bias is that doing so often reveals more
about one’s own preferences — if you doubt this, have a look at any
newspaper’s letters page.

The irony of a conservative and influential organisation like the IPA
being given space in the nation’s most prestigious newspaper to attack
the ABC and defend fossil fuels is evidently lost on Paterson. Let’s not
forget that The Australian has itself been the subject of similar accusations.

Investigative journalist Wendy Bacon’s research has suggested that mainstream newspapers in general, and The Australian
in particular, have shown a bias towards climate scepticism. These
findings did not make such a favourable appearance in the pages of The
Australian.

The flaw in Paterson’s accusation of ABC bias is that he conflates
media “framing” of an issue with the wider question of how to cover
stories properly. As the influential New York University journalism
professor Jay Rosen blogged this week,
journalists who slavishly strive for ''balance'' are doing the public a
disservice by walking a line between two sides instead of attempting to
find out who is right. Simply tallying up stories that are ''pro'' or
''anti'' on a given issue is nothing more than a useful starting point,
and doesn’t explain the broader context of that reporting.

The ABC’s framing of issues is about much more than ''lefty
journalists'' being given free reign at our nation’s public broadcaster.
(As an aside, the ABC is consistently rated as Australia’s most trusted media outlet.)

Neither is it simply a question of whether journalists are beholden to the views of their bosses — although the IPA and The Australian illustrate this issue almost poetically.

Beware false balance

In the IPA’s rush to promote its ideology of small government and the
rectitude of the market, it actually missed some far more crucial and
interesting questions about responsible environmental journalism.

For example, in an era of climate change and fossil fuel depletion,
is it biased journalism to report favourably on renewable resources and
to cast coal mining as a potential negative? Or is it just common sense?

If good journalism is partly about holding a mirror up to society – and that society shows broad support for renewable energy – is it biased journalism to reflect this?

And when the evidence for human-caused climate change is inarguable
and governments around the world are calling for action, is it
“objective journalism” to demand that the few who still reject the science get an equal hearing?

Good journalism and the bigger picture

On one measure though, the IPA report makes an important, if
unintended, point. The report accuses the ABC of framing coal seam gas
and coal mining as bad for the environment, while failing to take
account of their economic benefits.

The report outlines the relative costs of black coal, brown coal,
gas, wind, solar and hydroelectric power. The non-renewable options are,
of course, the cheapest.

(Source: IPA)

Paterson then asserts that journalists need to decide whether to
frame their stories based on economic or environmental effects, as
though these two considerations cannot possibly co-exist and the only
option is to support one or the other.

The better strategy is to consider both. In this case, that means
acknowledging the effects of fossil fuels on the climate, while also
reporting the economic costs of moving to renewable resources.

All journalism and media, regardless of their ownership structures
and public or commercial status, have an obligation to the Australian
public to provide reliable information so that, as a nation, we can
debate how best to secure a positive environmental and economic future.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Wednesday 20 August 2014

Criticism over Great Barrier Reef deals for Gina Rinehart's mining company | Environment | theguardian.com

Criticism over Great Barrier Reef deals for Gina Rinehart's mining company

Australia’s environment protection system is called ‘broken’ over reports of concessions on conditions and payments

Oliver Milman
theguardian.com,
Wednesday 20 August 2014 10.35 AEST

Australia’s system of environmental protections has been labelled
“broken” after it emerged that Gina Rinehart’s mining company was able
to negotiate down a compensation payment demanded by the government.

Documents obtained under freedom of information show that the
previous Labor government demanded $800,000 a year in “biodiversity
offsets” from GVK Hancock due to the environmental impact of its
proposed coal terminal in Queensland.

But the documents state GVK Hancock considered this amount “excessive” and put in a counter-offer of $375,000 a year.

The government acquiesced to this bargaining, with a figure of $600,000 a year eventually deemed an “adequate” amount.

This change meant that $50,000 a year, rather than $100,000 a year,
would be given to the Great Barrier Reef marine park authority to help
manage the reef’s world heritage area. The rest of the money was given
to fund Indigenous rangers and conservation projects.

GVK Hancock, which will be spending around $10bn on the coal project,
requested that the offsets strategy be delayed until after the project
began.

The company also wanted to change a stipulation that coal dust should
not enter the Great Barrier Reef environment. The government agreed to
both of these requests.

GVK Hancock was given approval in October 2012 for the coal terminal at Abbot Point, which sits adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef near the Queensland town of Bowen.

The company, a joint venture between Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting
and Indian resources firm GVK, plans to export 60m tonnes of coal a year
through the Abbot Point terminal from 2017.

The coal will be taken to the port via a 500km rail line that
connects to two large GVK Hancock mines in central Queensland – the
Alpha and Kevin’s Corner projects. The Alpha project, which plans to
remove 32m tonnes of coal a year, has been challenged in court by environmentalists and farmers, who are concerned over its impact on groundwater.

The Abbot Point terminal will involve the clearing of 28ha of wetlands and the controversial dredging and dumping
of 5m tonnes of seabed within the Great Barrier Reef marine park. The
previous government set a number of conditions on the development, to
offset the impact on seagrasses, which are vital to the survival of
dolphins, turtles and dugongs.

Adam Walters, a campaigner at Greenpeace, said the negotiation over
offset payments showed “the system is broken”. “These indirect financial
offsets allow the government minister to claim some sort of victory
when approving these projects but it’s not an honest system, it’s not
based on solid science,” he said.

“The offsets package is meant to be a measure of last resort if it’s
not possible to avoid damage. The quantum of that should be determined
by the environmental impact, you shouldn’t be able to haggle the amount
down.”

Bruce Lindsay, project officer for Environmental Justice Australia, said offsets were inherently flawed.

“Financial offsets aren’t good practice, as they are about giving a
lump of cash for ecosystems that can’t be compensated for,” he said.
“The first impulse of developers is to buy their way out of things and
offsets allow them to do this. The tail is increasingly wagging the dog.

“The government should have a strong negotiating position and use it
for the best environmental outcomes, but it seems they just capitulate.”

In June, a Senate committee published a report into environmental
offsets, which is where land is set aside by mining, oil and gas
companies to compensate for habitat destroyed during development.
Sometimes these offsets are financial, such as the funding of
conservation work for species impacted by mining.

The committee recommended
that offsets be “used only as a last resort” and called for stricter
rules around the use of offsets in “red flag” areas such as world
heritage and critically endangered ecosystems.

A spokeswoman for the Department of the Environment said developers
could comment on any conditions as a matter of “natural justice”.

“Consistent with these legal requirements, Hancock was provided with
the opportunity to comment on the proposed decision, conditions, and
financial contribution before a final decision,” she said. “The then
environment minister [Tony Burke] made the final approval decision.

“Offsets provide environmental benefits to counterbalance the impacts
that remain after avoidance and mitigation measures are undertaken.

“The overarching test of both the policy and the guide is that
suitable offsets must deliver an overall conservation outcome that
improves or maintains the viability of the aspect of the environment
that is protected by national environment law and affected by the
proposed action.”

A spokesman for GVK Hancock said: “It’s important to not just look at
one aspect of our approval conditions at Abbot Point, as we will
contribute in excess of $25 million on a range of contributions and
environmental management programs in the Abbot Point area, despite the
proposed dredging having no significant residual impact to commonwealth
matters of national environmental significance.”

Tuesday 19 August 2014

From the Reef to the RET: the politicisation of environmental science in Australia

19 August 2014, 6.28pm AEST

From the Reef to the RET: the politicisation of environmental science in Australia

The future of Australia’s climate and respect for environmental
science stand to be the biggest losers in all of the forms of
class-mobilised politicisation that are impacting Australia currently.
Somewhere between the vocation of politics and the vocation of science,
Australia has lost its way – to the point where our international
standing is seriously on the line.

Sociologist Max Weber argued ‘politics is the art of compromise’,
while science is able to deliver societal progress for those who will
listen to it. Neither are being achieved in Australia at the moment. The
government is perfecting a paradigm for how to lose friends and
alienate people, and bases its advice on those who have neither
scientific method or credibility. This is a dangerous reductivism.

The revelations on Four Corners
last night that the advice of the grandfather of Great Barrier Reef
studies, John Veron, and Australia’s leading reef scientists was all but
ignored in approving the fine silt dredging at Abbot Point is the
latest case in point.

Instead, the entire process was politicised by parachuting in a coal
mining-compliant bureaucrat from Canberra, Bruce Elliot. Yes, the
stringent protections are supposed to be there, but they were also
purported to be there in Gladstone – and Four Corners made it very plain
to see what happened there.

The reef case has parallels with taking advice from Maurice Newman on
climate policy. Newman has pursed his own personal crusade against climate science
for many years now and it would be difficult to discount him as the key
lobbyist who has been pushing for the abolition of the renewable energy
target (RET).

As with global warming, so it is with the RET. All the evidence available
shows that abolishing the RET would be really bad for electricity
prices. But presumably because it is a direct threat to the
profitability of energy providers, Abbott has sent back Dick Warburton’s
report with the message: get rid of the RET altogether. Whereas
retaining the RET is the best policy an “infrastructure prime minister”
could give us.

Here, the imprecise science of the economist is to be massaged to
achieve a myopic political own goal that is not only not in the interest
of Australia’s climate welfare, but not even in the interests of the
government’s political welfare. As with repealing the carbon tax, it
will soon come back to bite the government, when electricity prices do
go up.

Even the Daily Telegraph,
which has long campaigned against renewables, is reporting on the most
recent study that shows the impact of revoking the RET on hip-pockets.
Whereas the ‘carbon tax’ was redistributing wealth back to the budget
with no impact on electricity prices, removing the RET will actually
accelerate the increase in those prices, very significantly.

But then, the war on the RET is looking even more suicidal when it is
considered that the Palmer United Party has made it clear that it won’t
be joining Abbott and the government under any circumstances. It won’t
be joining Newman either, with Palmer announcing
a climate change convention immediately after the G20. Newman might
have trouble getting a column in Palmer’s planned newspaper that he
announced on Twitter last night: the ‘Australasian Times’.

But much more complicated and contradictory for PUP is its relation
to coal exports in Australia. The RET is relatively small biscuits
compared to coal mining. It could be a bigger deal if it places
Australia on a high-renewables infrastructure path to decarbonisation.
But environment minister Greg Hunt’s approvals of the GVK Hancock (Alpha
Coal) mine in May, the Carmichael Coal mine project last month and of
Clive Palmer’s China First mine in December last year are a disaster for
the world’s efforts against climate change.

When the yearly exports of coal from these mines are burned, they
will produce more than 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.
Direct Action is aimed at reducing emissions by 131 millions tonnes per
year. There is little point in Hunt pursuing a carbon reduction fund in
the Senate when he is racking up coal mine approvals faster than voters
are seeing their electricity bills rise.

What is the point of insisting on Direct Action in the wake of approving these mines? Given that the price of coal is rapidly diving,
is there any point in selling coal either domestically or overseas? It
is soon going to be difficult for a fossil fuel power plant to turn a
profit, even if the coal was free.

Hunt has consistently run the argument of the now policy-bankrupt Bjorn Lomborg that selling coal to the Indians is a benevolent exercise, that why should we deny India the same lifestyle as a first-world country.

at the end of the day, this is about providing
electricity to up to 100 million people in India (who) can be lifted out
of poverty where there can be electricity for hospitals and schools

There are two problems with this: the first being that it is
incredibly patronising in an economic sense. India’s new prime minister
Narendra Modi has already pledged support for renewables before coal.

The second problem is a deeply historical one, and turns on a
commonplace misunderstanding of the relation of first world empires to
poorer nations. To argue that a first-world nation has a responsibility
to poorer nations to lead them into the more destructive aspects of
their economic activities is risible.

It is a disgraceful affront to populations of developing nations that
have actually been underdeveloped by capitalism and the activities of
imperialist states that go back hundreds of years.

Just as European capitalism under-developed Africa, South America
and India, free market and state-controlled versions of
carbon-intensive capitalism are about to underdevelop the entire planet.

That Hunt, following the arch-apologist for global warming, Lomborg,
could attempt to trade-off the living poor, whose conditions are the
legacy of an earlier phase of capitalist exploitation of labour and
resources, with the prospect of condemning the entire population of the
earth to an extinction-level event is of an order of profanity that will
prove difficult to beat as we approach two, three and four degrees
warming.

← Previous Changing climates Post
11 August 2014
A climate of terror?

A tale of two conspiracy theories: Chemtrails and climate change denial

David Suzuki 19 August 2014, 5:30pm 3

Environment

Who some people believe in phenomena rejected by science,
like chemtrails, but deny real problems demonstrated by massive amounts
of scientific evidence, like climate change. Dr David Suzuki comments.

Last year, I wrote about geoengineering as
a strategy to deal with climate change and carbon dioxide emissions.
That drew comments from people who confuse this scientific process with
the unscientific theory of 'chemtrails'. Some also claimed the column supported geoengineering, which it didn't.

The reaction got me wondering why some people believe in phenomena rejected by science, like chemtrails, but deny real problems demonstrated by massive amounts of scientific evidence, like climate change.

Chemtrails believers claim governments around the world are in
cahoots with secret organizations to seed the atmosphere with chemicals
and materials – aluminum salts, barium crystals, biological agents,
polymer fibres, and so on – for a range of nefarious purposes. These
include controlling weather for military purposes, poisoning people for
population or mind control and supporting secret weapons programs based
on the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP.

Scientists have tested and used cloud and atmospheric seeding for
weather modification and considered them as ways to slow global warming.
With so many unknowns and possible unintended consequences, these
practices have the potential to cause harm. But the chemtrails
conspiracy theory is much broader, positing that military and commercial
airlines are involved in constant massive daily spraying that is
harming the physical and mental health of citizens worldwide.

I don't have space to get into the absurdities of belief in a plot
that would require worldwide collusion between governments, scientists
and airline company executives and pilots to amass and spray
unimaginable amounts of chemicals from altitudes of 10,000 metres or
more. I'm a scientist, so I look at credible science — and there is
simply none for the existence of chemtrails. They're condensation
trails, formed when hot, humid air from jet exhaust mixes with colder
low-vapour-pressure air. This, of course, comes with its own
environmental problems.

But what interests me is the connection between climate change denial
and belief in chemtrails. Why do so many people accept a theory for
which there is no scientific evidence, while rejecting a serious and
potentially catastrophic phenomenon that can be easily observed and for
which overwhelming evidence has been building for decades?

To begin, climate change denial and chemtrails theories are often conspiracy-based.

A study by researchers at the University of Western Australia found

'...endorsement of a cluster of conspiracy theories ... predicts
rejection of climate science as well as the rejection of other
scientific findings.'

Many deniers see climate change as a massive plot or hoax perpetrated
by the world's scientists and scientific institutions, governments,
the UN, environmentalists and sinister forces to create a socialist
world government — or something.

Not all go to such extremes. Some accept climate change is occurring but deny humans are responsible.

Still, it doesn't seem rational to deny something so undeniable!

In a Bloomberg article, author and Harvard Law School professor Cass R. Sunstein points to three psychological barriers to accepting climate change that
may also help explain why it's easier for people to believe in
chemtrails — people look to readily available examples when assessing
danger, focus 'on risks or hazards that have an identifiable perpetrator', and pay more attention to immediate threats than long-term ones.

Researchers Ezra Markowitz and Azim Shariff of
the University of Oregon Psychology and Environmental Studies
departments add a few more, including that human-caused climate change 'provokes self-defensive biases' and its politicization 'fosters ideological polarization'.

People who subscribe to unbelievable conspiracy theories may feel helpless,
so they see themselves as victims of powerful forces — or as heroes
standing up to those forces. Whether it's to deny real problems or
promulgate imaginary ones, it helps reinforce a worldview that is
distrustful of governments, media, scientists and shadowy cabals
variously referred to as banksters, global elites, the Illuminati or the New World Order.

The problem is that science denial is, in the case of chemtrails, a
wacky distraction and, in the case of climate change denial, a barrier
to addressing an urgent, critical problem.

Science is rarely 100 per cent certain, but it's the best tool we
have for coming to terms with our actions and their consequences, and
for finding solutions to problems.

The science is clear: human-caused climate change is the most
pressing threat to humanity, and we must work to resolve it. We don't
have time for debunked conspiracy theories.

With contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington. Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Friday 15 August 2014

Abbott's piss and wind power on renewable energy | The Saturday Paper

Abbott's piss and wind power on renewable energy

Sophie Morris

Irrespective of the Warburton review’s findings, the uncertainty Tony Abbott has created is killing the green energy sector.

AAPIMAGE

Prime Minister Tony Abbott talks with a solar hot water system installer in Canberra.

Forget inner-city sophisticates. The next battle
over environmental policy will be played out in the outer ’burbs, where
a person’s home is their castle and rooftop solar cells the very
expression of their sovereignty.

At least that is the hope of the Australian Solar Council. At the
Redcliffe RSL Club north of Brisbane next Thursday, they will launch a
bid to save the Renewable Energy Target.

It’s the last federal policy still supporting renewable energy. Now
that the carbon tax is gone, the Abbott government has the RET firmly in
its sights.

“This government has badly misread the public view about solar energy
in particular,” says John Grimes, the chief executive of the Australian
Solar Council.

“They have a blindspot to the fact that almost 1.5 million
Australians have solar cells on their rooftop. It’s people in the
mortgage belts of the cities and rural and regional Australia. These are
the Howard battlers, the people who make and break governments.”

Grimes’s aim is to stir up Coalition MPs in marginal seats to resist a
government push to slash the RET, which mandates that large-scale
renewable energy must provide 41,000 gigawatt hours of energy by 2020.
Small-scale schemes, such as rooftop solar, are expected to contribute
another 5000 gigawatt hours.

Renewables advocates hope they can turn this into another “18C
moment”, referring to Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s decision earlier this
month to put pragmatism above ideology and abandon a plan to dilute the
Racial Discrimination Act, which had generated a backlash from ethnic
communities in marginal seats.

Even if the government does not slash the RET, renewables companies
say it might still strangle the industry just by allowing the
uncertainty over the policy to continue.

“If you want to kill an industry, this is the way you go about it,”
says Lane Crockett, the executive general manager of Pacific Hydro
Australia. Last month, his company shed 10 per cent of its staff.

Treasurer Joe Hockey’s comments to Alan Jones in May that wind
turbines outside Canberra were “utterly offensive” and a “blight on the
landscape” fuelled the perception the government’s aversion to
renewables was motivated more by vested interests than the economics of
energy supply.

Back to top

Warburton review

Supporters of renewables face a campaign from the resources sector
and coal- and gas-fired generators, backed by energy-intensive
industries, which argue that the target is skewing the energy market and
pushing up the cost of electricity because it requires major new
investment. Three peak lobby groups – the Business Council of Australia,
the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the Minerals
Council – teamed up to release a report last month warning that the
“burden of the RET is real and will only serve to undermine Australia’s
competitiveness if not changed”.

Under the RET, renewables must expand, even though there is currently
a significant energy surplus, of up to 8950 megawatts. Thus, further
growth in renewables will hasten the mothballing of coal-fired power
stations.

Some time in the next fortnight, Abbott will receive the report on
the RET that he commissioned from a panel chaired by businessman and
climate sceptic Dick Warburton.

Warburton is coy about the findings but tells The Saturday Paper that
the oversupply of energy, as outlined recently by the Australian Energy
Market Operator, and the impact on electricity prices have been major
factors in the review’s deliberations.

Already, Abbott has made clear his belief that the RET is “very
significantly driving up power prices” and that he favours coal and gas.

This debate can get clouded by numbers, with interest groups on either side manipulating figures to advance their causes.

But modelling by ACIL Allen, commissioned for the Warburton review
and using assumptions that did not favour renewables, including
forecasts that gas and coal prices would fall at odds with other
projections, nonetheless showed “household bills are initially higher
with the RET but lower in the longer-term”. Until 2020, the RET, in its
current form, would add an average $54 a year to household bills, but
they would be lower over the next decade by a similar amount on average
than if the RET were abolished.

Abbott’s push to slash the RET encountered a hurdle in late June,
when Clive Palmer vowed his balance-of-power senators would oppose any
changes until after the next election. Palmer was swayed by arguments
including that renewable energy was popular and that Abbott would be
breaking a promise if he cut the target.

But still, Abbott has not given up hope. He told an Australian
Industry Group lunch last week that energy reform had begun with the
carbon tax repeal and would continue with “some work with the RET”.

“Who knows one day where the market might go and what other forms of
energy might come into their own?” he said. “But right now, we have
massive reserves of coal, massive reserves of gas. Let’s make the most
of them.”

As he enthused about Australia’s “natural advantage” with coal and
gas, no mention was made of massive reserves of sunshine and wind.

Back to top

The 'real 20 per cent' target

The RET was first introduced by the Howard government in 2001 but
significantly increased under Labor from 2009, which also provided
subsidies for rooftop solar cells. By the end of last year, renewables
were providing almost 15 per cent of Australia’s energy supply. But the
industry argues it needs the policy support, an implicit subsidy, until
some time in the 2020s, when renewable energy will become
cost-competitive with fossil fuels.

Abbott’s views have plenty of supporters on the Coalition backbench,
where MPs have been agitating for months for the target to be reduced or
abolished completely and for an exemption for aluminium smelters.

A proposal that it be reduced to a “real 20 per cent” has gained
traction in the Coalition. When the existing target was legislated it
was calculated as 20 per cent of Australia’s 2020 energy requirement.

Since then, electricity use has dropped as the manufacturing sector has shrunk and consumers have embraced efficiencies.

A “real 20 per cent” by 2020 would be about 25,500 gigawatt hours, on
current forecasts, involving much slower growth in renewables.

Liberal MP for the regional NSW seat of Hume, Angus Taylor, has
rallied Coalition MPs to push for the RET to be slashed. His electorate,
centred on Goulburn, includes the wind turbines that Hockey labelled
“offensive” but Taylor says his concern is with the cost of the RET
rather than the aesthetics.

“The key issue is there are cheaper ways to reduce carbon emissions.
We have a scheme that picks one technology and says we will give it
preference over all other technologies,” he says. “Without restructuring
[of the RET], there are going to be very significant economic costs
imposed. We are so far short of that target at the moment. It’s headed
for a train wreck.”

He does, however, see a role for rooftop solar power in regional
areas, as generation on-site cuts out the cost of poles and transmission
wires.

But there are also some Coalition MPs who recognise their
constituents support renewable energy – polls have consistently shown
this – and that changing the target could be risky.

The Redcliffe solar event is in the electorate of Petrie, which is
the government’s second most marginal seat. Liberal MP Luke Howarth
can’t attend the night. He sounds a little miffed at “pushy” lobbying by
the solar council but he does know that more than 38,000 homes in his
electorate have installed solar cells and solar hot water systems.

He says he has told Abbott and Environment Minister Greg Hunt that
the government must continue to support renewable energy. “I support
solar big-time. I’m actively encouraging people to install solar,”
Howarth says. “I support the RET.”

But he leaves room for it to be tweaked, adding: “I wouldn’t want to see it completely abolished, far from it.”

His appraisal of his constituents supports Grimes’s theory that solar
mums and dads are not radical greenies, but home owners who saw a
chance to reduce their electricity bills.

“My electorate is not really wealthy,” says Howarth. “It’s people
getting about their lives, paying the mortgage, raising children. They
want to own their home and invest in their own home.”

Back to top

Industry concerns

The fault lines on the issue in the Coalition may widen if the
government attempts radical change. Labor and the Greens oppose any cut
in the target.

Although the solar council is trying to galvanise voters who have
already installed rooftop solar, or who would like to, they account for
only a small portion of renewable power generation.

Large-scale providers of solar, wind and wave energy are also
speaking out, warning that the uncertainty created by the Warburton
review is strangling investment, causing job losses as projects stall.

In the rural Victorian seat of Corangamite, Liberal MP Sarah
Henderson has declared herself a “strong supporter of renewable energy”,
citing the jobs created by a local solar business.

Such jobs are now precarious. “The industry is at a standstill,” says
Kane Thornton, chief executive of the Clean Energy Council. “Whether
you’re a small solar company considering employing more people or a big
investor building a large project, the commercial viability of the
entire industry is based on the RET.”

Thornton’s worst-case scenario is the abolition of the RET but he
says shifting to a “true 20 per cent” would also be a devastating cut.
Even lack of action from the government, which could just sit on
Warburton’s findings, would leave the industry in limbo.

The lingering uncertainty does not augur well for an industry that
relies on long-term investments. With his promise of no changes until
2016, Palmer has only granted a stay of execution rather than a promise
of a stable future.

Palmer argues it is impossible to provide any guarantees beyond the electoral horizon.

“The reality is for anything that governments change every three
years and no future government can be bound by the actions of the
present government,” Palmer tells The Saturday Paper via text message.

“That applies to everything as the alp and libs have demonstrated in the past words r meaningless.”

In his speech to the Australian Industry Group, Abbott mused that
“who knows” if there might come a day when other forms of energy come
into play. But without continued government support for a shift away
from coal and gas, it is pretty clear the future will still be powered
by fossil fuels.

Tags:

RET Tony Abbott Dick Warburton ACIL Allen Luke Howarth Australian Solar Counci Clean Energy Councill

This
article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper
on Aug 16, 2014 as "Piss and wind on renewable energy". Subscribe here.

Read more

Sophie Morris

is The Saturday Paper’s chief political correspondent.

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