When the new carbon price policy was announced, I was fairly skeptical about it – especially given the failure of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Media reporting suggested that there were serious deficiencies in the policy, as many or more as the CPRS.

However, I’ve taken the time to acquaint myself more closely with the “Clean Energy Future” carbon price policy and am now much more supportive. It is a good step in the right direction, and while it is not perfect, it is a significant and important platform to reduce Australia’s carbon pollution.

There are a few elements of the package that I really like:

• Higher 2050 target: The new target is 80% reduction in carbon emissions on 2000 levels
• Creation of a $10 billion clean energy finance corporation, to directly stimulate the clean energy sector
• Fixed initial price that moves to a emissions trading scheme: a permanent fixed price would be a disaster and an ETS means a total cap on emissions
• Limitations on overseas carbon offsets that can be used in Australia, from 80% to 50%
• Individuals and groups can purchase and retire carbon permits, thereby hastening carbon reductions

Will this help us reach our target of limiting global warming to 2 degrees C? Not by itself. International action is still required.

Bottom line: I’m glad to see that Australia has gone from being a laggard to a leader with this policy.

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3. Costs to reduce pollution cheaper than expected: Grattan Institute

Over at Grist, there is a report that confirms (yet again, as if more proof was needed) that investment in clean-tech is three times more effective than government spending on oil and gas jobs.

Cleantech generates 17 jobs for every $1 million spent on it, compared to just 5 for every $1 million we throw at an oil and gas industry that doesn’t need it but will fight to its dying breath to preserve the government largesse shoring up its bottom line.

… Robert Pollin, an economist who studied the impact of green stimulus dollars for the Commerce Department, said clean energy gets a better payoff because kick-starting a new industry requires a lot of manpower.

The slide above is from the LEAN presentation, focusing on US Commerce Dept data. In my view, the case is clear. Australia needs to end our inefficient, polluting subsidies to the fossil fuel industry if we serious about job creation.

The argument that I’ve heard bandied around – that there are fewer jobs in clean energy than fossil fuel – is wrong. Let’s not forget that the fossil fuel industry slashed jobs and destroyed communities in the 1980s when privatisation happened. The fossil fuel industry is no friend to workers – their primary concern is to make a profit, not build communities. The creation of jobs is a by-product of their destructive profit motive.

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1. Clean Energy Jobs and Climate Dinosaurs
2. Assessment of the “Clean Energy Future” policy
3. 100% renewable energy in Australia by 2020

I heard this morning on ABC NewsRadio that the natural gas giants in Australia are pushing back on Federal Government plans to include gas in the carbon price.

Image courtesy of TruEnergy.

The negotiations over the carbon price are following the same, predictable line that the negotiations over the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme followed: the carbon lobby and various other industries that contribute significant amounts of carbon pollution to our air are asking for exemptions and compensation.

Don Voelte, the CEO of the largest Australian-owned oil and gas producer Woodside, says LNG can help deliver a “better world” and should be excluded from the carbon tax.

“Everywhere else in the world understands gas,” he said.

“People in the United States see gas as the saviour – cheap, clean, transitional fuel to a better world.

“Gas is good and Australia is penalising it. We don’t get it.”

Before trotting out the line that Australia is “going it alone” (a bald-faced lie which the ABC did not correct), Don Voelte claimed that if the carbon price was to go ahead, it would be “game off” for gas.

In fact, gas (far better than coal) is a fossil fuel, is non-renewable and is a source of significant greenhouse gas emissions – predominantly from the burning of gas, and from “fugitive emissions”. Fugitive emissions are green house gases that are released through as a by-product of extracting the resource (whether coal, gas, uranium, or whatever). Typically, large amounts of methane and carbon is released as fugitive emissions from the extraction of gas. As the gas industry has expanded in recent years, the raw amount of fugitive emissions has grown significantly in Australia.

The point of the carbon price – as explained simply by Julia Gillard – is to make polluting more expensive. If gas is much less polluting than coal – the “cheap, clean” fuel that is “good” that Don Voelte claims – then it will have a clear advantage over coal under a carbon price. If it pollutes – which it does – then it should pay for the pollution. It will obviously pay less than coal.

UPDATE

Some good commentary at the Business Spectator about the role of the media and big (polluting) business in the anti-carbon lobby.

Australia is experiencing a crescendo of nonsense in relation to our contribution to halting anthropogenic climate change. The danger is that by shouting loudest, longest, the proponents of some highly inconsistent arguments are gaining the upper hand.

The government’s round-table meeting on Friday with the heads of some of Australia’s largest companies – BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, BlueScope Steel, Woodside, Woolworths and NAB – was, by all accounts, a kind of shouting match over the levels of compensation our biggest carbon emitting corporates will receive under the government’s proposed carbon tax.

But no, it’s not those company representatives being inconsistent or nonsensical – they are doing their job, putting their shareholders first and attempting to protect the profitability of their businesses.

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1. Thoughts on carbon price talking points
2. Exchange rate movements had bigger impact than a carbon price
3. Assessment of the “Clean Energy Future” policy

The climate denialists in the Coalition has a simple message about the carbon price:

It’s a tax.

Taxes raise prices.

Prices on electricity, fuel and other things therefore will go up.

What about the alternative? The problem for progressives is that our arguments are nuanced. We don’t necessarily see the world in Manichean absolutes, black and white, good and evil.

It's not rocket science.

Electricity prices without a carbon price will continue to rise. Doesn’t really make intuitive sense, but that’s without knowing that degrading energy infrastructure pushes up prices. We haven’t had a carbon price in the last three years (or really, at all) yet elecricity prices have continued to go up – because of the old power lines, substations and other infrastructure.

Energy produced from non-renewable sources cost more than renewables because you need to continually mine coal (or gas or uranium).

Once you build the wind farm or soal plant, you don’t need to pay for the fuel.

The wind and sun are free, so there are almost no ongoing cost.

A carbon price will lead to lower energy prices… because it will mean we use more wind, solar and geothermal energy that don’t have expensive fuel costs.

Whatever our message, we on the progressive side of politics need to significantly simplify our key message about the carbon price and renewables.

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1. Gas should be included in carbon price
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3. Assessment of the “Clean Energy Future” policy

The Clean Energy Council has revealed that up to $9 billion in renewable energy investment could be put at risk by the election of the Baillieu Government.

This equates to 650 new jobs each year by 2016, and a massive 3000 megawatts of renewable energy capacity.

Windfarms like this one in Codrington, Victoria, would be under threat.

The risk comes from the Liberal Party’s opposition to investment in wind farms – which will drive Victoria’s renewable energy sector, as well as contribute in large part to Victoria’s 20% carbon reduction by 2020.

Under Bailleiu’s “2km setback” policy, it would be more difficult to build a windfarm in Victoria than a new coal mine.

The Brumby Labor Government is leading Australia in investment in renewables and carbon pollution reduction targets.

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1. 100% renewable energy in Australia by 2020
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The target in Australia of 20% renewable energy by 2020 is the lowest it can respectfully be. There is no reason for the target number other than “it sounds good”.

We’re currently around less than 5% in Australia.

A recent report by Zero Emissions Network and the University of Melbourne Energy Research Institute shows that it is technically feasible to reach 100% renewable energy by 2020.

Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan in brief:

• The plan shows that it is technically possible to reach 100% renewable energy for Australia within a decade and the technology to achieve this transition is commercially available now. (Solar thermal with molten salt storage replaces baseload power currently sourced from fossil fuels.)
• Australia has one of the best solar resources in the world – solar thermal power in the ZCA plan will supply 60% of Australia’s electricity.
• Wind will supply 40% of Australia’s electricity in the ZCA plan. This is comparable to Denmark’s 50% by 2025 goal, and Spain’s 25% by 2020. In another comparison, China’s wind energy industry has been growing by 100% per year for the last four years.
• The plan sets out detailed resource and labour requirements. A transition to 100% renewable energy will create around four times more permanent jobs than currently exist in the domestic fossil fuel sector.
• The ZCA Plan will generate an investment of $370 billion over ten years – a stimulus to the Australian economy that is equivalent to 3% of our GDP over ten years.
• The investment required for the transition is affordable at $8 per household per day.

I had the pleasure of speaking to some of the authors of the report from the Energy Research Institute a week ago, to discuss some renewable energy policy.

It’s my firm belief that as we move towards 20% over the next decade, it will become clear that transitioning to a clean economy is easier than we believe it to be now. If we succeed in reaching 20% by 2020, I think we can ramp up quickly to close to 100% by 2030.

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Future Proof, a new community project aimed at promoting the uptake of solar panels, has launched its pilot program in Alphington.

We aim to prepare our communities, homes and businesses for a low-carbon future – to make them future proof – by making Melbourne and Australia leaders in renewable energy use.

Future Proof aims to address the major problems facing homeowners wanting to buy solar power: expense, complexity and risk.

Future Proof removes cost as a hurdle to solar adoption through organising “solar communities” into bulk-buying collectives. Homeowners can help each other understand the complicated process of buying solar panels, and ensure they get the best deal and highest quality panels.

If you live in Alphington, click on the image above (or here) to sign up and express your interest in installing solar panels on your home.

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From USA Today.

A funny cartoon, with a serious message. Many politicians and leaders don’t understand the benefits of switching to a low carbon economy.

Shifting to a low carbon economy and embracing ecologically sustainable development will bring untold benefits for humanity, and for Australians.

There is no doubt about the science of climate change, and the predictions of dire consequences if we don’t act.

Skeptics should give the planet the benefit of the doubt. They should think: “even if climate change is not real, or not as bad as scientists are warning, we should still have an ambition of a sustainable, clean future for our planet and our children”.

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Sean Kidney, convenor of the Carbon Bonds Initiative, is up in Copenhagen at the moment and is writing up some very interesting tidbits from the side-show.

I was particularly interested in this comment regarding renewables:

2. More practically, Q-Cells, one of the world’s largest photovoltaic solar companies, claims that solar cells have reached grid price parity in key markets, such as Italy and Germany. That means that solar cells are price comparable with fossil fuel energy (gas in Italy’s case) coal and gas for Germany. Big news! Why would you still build coal, let alone high-emission-potency gas?

Meanwhile, in Australia, we have a rather lacklustre 20% renewables target – slightly better than business as usual, but not by much.

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1. Thoughts on carbon price talking points
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3. Most subsidies still go to dirty, polluting fossil fuels

Another report from the New York Times tells how in the US, most government subsidies for energy research goes to polluting fossil fuels and unsafe nuclear energy:

Despite a lot of promises, no one so far has wanted to pay the extra costs to make wind and solar more than a trivial energy source. Research is uncertain and expensive, and the benefits seem far away.

So while all kinds of domestic energy technologies are being advanced in the name of energy independence, most of the money and attention are still focused on the dirty but cheaper standbys: offshore oil, oil sands and coal, in all its various incarnations, from straight out of the pit to black-coal liquid.

“You have fossil fuels competing with renewable fuels,” said Benjamin Kroposki, a senior scientist at the Renewable Energy Laboratory. “Renewables lose every time.”

One example is the shotgun approach to tax incentives, loan guarantees and other spending in the 2005 energy act, the first major energy legislation enacted by Congress in a decade: $13.1 billion for oil, gas and coal, $12 billion for nuclear energy and $7.7 billion divided up among a wide assortment of renewables like ethanol, hydroelectric, wind and solar.

Now that they are in control of Congress, Democrats have promised to increase the amount going to renewable energy sources, taking the money from tax breaks for oil companies.

But even additional money for renewable energy will be going up against government tax policies that encourage more energy consumption. Companies can still deduct purchases of sport utility vehicles and utility bills, for example, while consumers get a break to build bigger homes with deductions for interest payments on mortgages, even on second homes, that far outweigh their energy saving credits.

Meanwhile, fuel efficiency standards for automobiles have changed only slightly over the decades, and the federal government still does not have a building code to encourage energy efficiency.

The graphic (from NYT) shows that fossil fuels are projected to rise significantly, while renewables remain well below the levels the world (and the US) need to reach by 2020 and 2030.

(Via Sean Kidney.)

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The New York Times reports that money is being funneled to dangerous nuclear energy over safe, clean and unlimited solar and wind energy projects:

Scientists are hoping to expand the range of sunlight’s wavelengths that can be absorbed, and to cut the amount of energy the cells lose to heat. One goal is to make materials to force photons to ricochet around inside the silicon to give up more of their energy.

For decades, conventional nuclear power and nuclear fusion received dominant shares of government energy-research money. While venture capitalists often support the commercialization of new technologies, basic research money comes almost entirely from the federal government.

These days, a growing amount of government money is headed to the farm-state favorite, biofuels, and to research on burning coal while capturing the resulting carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping smokestack gas.

(Via Sean Kidney.)

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CleanTechnica reports that, due to its gross feed-in tariff, Germany has run out of solar panels.

A burst of new business at the end of 2009 put Germany close to adding a record of solar power to the grid, according to the head of Germany’s BSW solar industry association, Carsten Koernig. He estimates that in this year alone; it will be very close to 3 Gigawatts.

While he is not sure what the final end-of-year number will be, he is sure of one fact. It can’t be over 3 gigawatts, simply because there is no more capacity than that in the pipeline.

German supplies have completely sold out. Demand for parts, especially, and equipment such as inverters has outstripped supply. Germany’s very consumer-oriented feed-in tariff legislation makes it profitable for any homeowner to install panels on their roofs to supply the grid – - and so they do just that.

This shows the importance of a gross feed-in tariff in supporting and stimulating the renewable energy sector. The NSW government recently announced a gross feed-in tariff.

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