Monthly Archives: August 2016

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25 August 2016, DESMOG, Landmark Climate Bill Passed By California Legislature. After an intense lobbying spree and threats from Governor Jerry Brown to take the measure directly to voters via ballot initiative should it fail to pass, Senate Bill 32 (SB 32) was approved by the California legislature yesterday. When it is signed into law by Brown, SB 32 will extend the climate targets adopted by the state under Assembly Bill 32 (AB32), the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which required California to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The state is well on pace to meet the emissions targets set by AB 32, which is credited with having spurred developments that contributed $48 billion to California’s economy over the past 10 years while creating a half million jobs.SB 32 — together with a second bill that the state legislature just passed and Brown plans to sign, Assembly Bill 197 (AB 197) — will require the state to slash emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, as well as to create a committee to oversee California’s climate programs. The measures will also “prod regulators to take stronger action to cut pollution from refineries and other facilities,” especially in low-income and minority communities, according to the LA Times. “Yesterday, big oil bought a full-page ad in the capital city’s newspaper of record to halt action on climate,” Brown noted. “Today, the Assembly Speaker, most Democrats and one brave Republican passed SB 32, rejecting the brazen deception of the oil lobby and their Trump-inspired allies who deny science and fight every reasonable effort to curb global warming. I look forward to signing this bill — and AB 197 — when they land on my desk.”  Diane Regas, Executive Director of the Environmental Defense Fund, said that the state of California, in passing the bills, had extended its climate leadership position for another generation. “As major economies work under the Paris Agreement to strengthen their plans to cut pollution and boost clean energy, California, once again, is setting a new standard for climate leadership worldwide,” she said in a statement. Read more here

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24 August 2016,Climate Home, Adaptation takes centre stage as IPCC prepares 1.5C study. Tackling climate change is no longer simply about cutting greenhouse gas emissions: flood defences, heat resilient crops and weather warning systems are set to take centre stage. That’s the message from scientists fresh from an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meeting in Geneva last week. The UN science body has started work on a new and potentially devastating report on ways to avoid warming the earth to more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – and the consequences of failure. Due in September 2018, it will set the political tenor for global talks on climate change through to 2020, by which time the new Paris Agreement on climate change is slated to become operational. Critically, it will underpin a UN-led review the same year into how countries are delivering on the Paris deal, and perhaps offer the basis for those national goals to be increased. …… The trouble is it’s effectively too late for that, said Chris Field, co-chair of the IPCC’s last major study and a colleague of Mach’s at the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University. Read More here

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24 August 2016, Renew Economy, Labor ready to sacrifice ARENA for medal in budget Olympics. Federal Labor appears ready to sacrifice the Australian Renewable Energy Agency it established just a few years ago as it reacts to Coalition government taunts that it is not serious about “budget repair”. In a decision that will rank – along with the Coalition’s removal of the carbon price – at the very top of the Stupid List, Labor appears to have accepted the Coalition’s challenge to pass a $6.5 billion omnibus budget repair package that includes stripping $1 billion from ARENA’s legislated funds. The move to strip funds from the agency responsible for bringing in new technologies, business models and ideas that will be critical to efforts to cut emissions appears extraordinary in a country that has possibly the strongest budget in the developed world and one of the worst records on climate and emissions policies. The decision was all but confirmed by Labor leader Bill Shorten in his address to the National Press Club, which represents an institution so obsessed with line items in the budget and being a political insider, it has virtually abandoned its coverage of actual policy. It was the Abbott government that first attempted to strip the remaining funds from ARENA, along with its attempts to abolish other institutions such as the Climate Change Authority and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and the carbon price. ARENA’s abolition remains policy, despite the elevation of Malcolm Turnbull, who has changed little of the Abbott-era climate and clean energy policies, despite his previous vow not to lead a government that did not take climate change seriously. But as the Climate Institute says in its new report on Wednesday, the Australian government is facing a policy train crash if it ever decides to take its commitment to the Paris climate deal seriously. Read More here

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23 August 2016, The Conversation, Australia’s new focus on gas could be playing with fire. Gas is back on Australia’s agenda in a big way. Last week’s meeting of state and federal energy ministers in particular saw an extraordinary focus on gas in the electricity sector. While the meeting promised major reform for the energy sector, the federal energy and environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, highlighted the need for more gas supplies and “the growing importance of gas as a transition fuel as we move to incorporate more renewables into the system”. Gas is certainly a lower-carbon energy source than coal, but gas prices have soared as Australia begins shipping gas overseas. So what might this mean for energy and climate policy? Rising gas. In 2013-14 natural gas-fired generation rose to account for 22% of Australia’s electricity generation, although the figure falls to 12% in the National Electricity Market (NEM), which excludes Western Australia and the Northern Territory, both of which use a large amount of gas. Among the NEM states, South Australia relies the most on gas-powered generation. This means that gas generators generally set the state’s average electricity price, which has usually been higher than those in the eastern states. Average electricity prices in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland tend to be set more often by coal power generators than by gas. Read More here