4 June 2015, Timberbiz, RET could revive timber in Victoria. The revised Renewable Energy Target (RET) currently before Parliament would provide a market for otherwise unsaleable timber, according to a document from Victoria’s state-owned forestry business, VicForests, obtained by the ABC. Source: ABC News. Environment Minister Greg Hunt introduced the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Amendment Bill and the legislation locks in the bipartisan deal for a new, lower, 2020 Renewable Energy Target. But, controversially, it reinstates the burning of native forest wood waste as a renewable energy source in the RET scheme. “There is no evidence that its eligibility leads to unsustainable practices or has a negative impact on Australia’s biodiversity,” Mr Hunt said when introducing the bill. “Using wood waste for generation is more beneficial to the environment than burning waste alone on the forest floor or simply allowing it to decompose and to produce methane a very high global warming potential gas.” The changes will help hardwood timber company Australian Solar Timbers (AST) build a two-megawatt power plant that will generate electricity onsite. AST chairman Douglas Head said timber for the plant in New South Wales’ Macleay Valley would come from existing sawmill waste that had little current value. “There is not one new tree that would be cut. Frankly you would not cut a tree to produce electricity alone. It’s got to be cut for some other high-value use,” he said. He said the wood by-products now potentially eligible for burning were “used sometimes as boiler fuels, potting mix, horse stable coverings and in the chicken industry — very low value”. The VicForests document says wood could be used as a brown coal substitute, but Nathan Trushell from VicForests downplayed the prospect of massive forest furnaces. “I think the stark reality for us is we would see some significant economic challenges with Renewable Energy Target credits or not,” he said. “I think if there is opportunity for us in that space, it’s really around small-scale local generation. I think for large-scale co-generation in coal-fired power stations the reality is timber is heavy and expensive to transport. “If we’re looking at our operations in East Gippsland we’re talking about several hundred kilometres to transport that material. I can’t see how economically that would stack up for us. Read More here
hmcadmin
4 June 2015, The Conversation, Climate meme debunked as the ‘tropospheric hot spot’ is found: Before climate sceptics got excited about the “hiatus” or slowdown in global surface warming during the past 15 years or so, they were fond of discussing the “missing tropospheric hotspot” – the alleged lack of anticipated temperature increase in the tropical upper troposphere (roughly 5-15 km altitude). Both the “hiatus” and the “missing hot spot” have been interesting research problems, because models seemed like they might be missing something important. There have been significant advances on both problems in the past year. And the new results do not offer much hope that scientists are fundamentally mistaken about global warming. Read More here
3 June 2015, Renew Economy, Renewable Energy Target bill moves to Senate, with promise of debate over wood waste: The political debate over Australia’s renewable energy target will now move to the Senate, after legislation paring back the target from 41,000Gwh by 2020 to 33,000GWh was passed through parliament’s lower house…Federal Labor yesterday introduced an amendment to the RET bill to have the burning of native wood waste for energy excluded from the legislation, for the reason that it was neither clean nor renewable. “When in Government, Labor opposed its inclusion in the legislation and we oppose it in Opposition,” Butler said in a statement. Excluding it from the target, said, provided for large-scale solar and wind farms to be built to achieve the target of 25 per cent of Australia’s energy generation from renewable sources by 2020. Read More here
2 June 2015, Climate News Network, Glacier loss raises high concern over water supplies: The glaciers of the Everest region of the Himalayan massif—home to the highest peak of all—could lose between 70% and 99% of their volume as a result of global warming. Asia’s mountain ranges contain the greatest thickness of ice beyond the polar regions. But new research predicts that, by 2100, the world’s highest waters—on which billions of people depend for their water supply—could be at their lowest ebb because of the ice loss. Many of the continent’s great rivers begin up in the snows, fed by melting ice in high-peak regions such as the Hindu Kush, the Pamir and the Himalayas. Joseph Shea, a glacial hydrologist at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu, Nepal, and French and Dutch colleagues report in The Cryosphere journal that they used more than 50 years of climate data and sophisticated computer models of predicted climate change to study the pattern of snowpack and seasonal melt in the Everest region. Read More here