8 December 2016, The Guardian, Finkel review criticises climate policy chaos and points to need for emissions trading. Exclusive: Report warns investment in electricity has stalled, and existing policies won’t allow Australia to meet its Paris target. Australia’s chief scientist, Alan Finkel, has said investment in the electricity sector has stalled because of “policy instability and uncertainty” – and he’s warned that current federal climate policy settings will not allow Australia to meet its emissions reduction targets under the Paris agreement. In a 58-page report that has been circulated before Friday’s Council of Australian Governments meeting between the prime minister and the premiers, Finkel has also given implicit endorsement to an emissions intensity trading scheme for the electricity industry to help manage the transition to lower-emissions energy sources. While there is no concrete recommendation to that effect, the report, obtained by Guardian Australia, references the evidence from energy regulators that such a scheme would integrate best “with the electricity market’s pricing and risk management framework” and “had the lowest economic costs and the lowest impact on electricity prices”. Finkel also notes advice from the Climate Change Authority which says market mechanisms have the lowest average cost of abatement, and of the options modelled, an emissions intensity scheme “had the lowest impact on average residential electricity prices”. Read more here
Category Archives: Australian Response
7 December 2016, Climate Home, Full circle: 33 hours in Australian climate policy. It took just over a day for the suggestion of a carbon price to be stamped out by right-wing MPs who hold the prime minister in their thrall. If you have ever wondered how Australian climate policy was high jacked by a minority group of government conservatives, Monday and Tuesday are worth a review. For Malcolm Turnbull and his government, this is a very old dance. The name of the jig is carbon pricing, a policy considered politically mundane across much of the world. The World Bank records carbon pricing in 40 national jurisdictions and more than 20 cities, states, and regions. But in Australia the very notion has had party leaders of the left and right prancing and backflipping for years. This week’s rendition was as uptempo and gymnastic as has been performed yet. On Monday, energy and environment minister Josh Frydenberg was doing the early morning radio rounds. He was asked to fill in the blanks left by the terms of reference his department had released regarding the government’s scheduled 2017 review of climate policy. Would it include a form of carbon pricing? Not on the whole economy, said Frydenberg: that’s Labor’s thing. But he went on: “The review is explicit about looking at sector-by-sector approaches and given that the electricity sector is about one third of the total emissions across the economy it’s only appropriate to see if we’ve got the best mechanisms in place… A number of organisations have recommended an emissions intensity scheme but again this review still has a long way to go.” Analysis: China prepares for world’s biggest carbon market An emissions intensity scheme would necessitate placing a value on carbon. Frydenberg had opened the door and a whole flock of crazy was about to walk through. Read More here
6 December 2016, The Conversation. At first glance, the progress reports on the Great Barrier Reef released last week by the Australian and Queensland governments might seem impressive. The update on the Reef 2050 Plan suggests that 135 of the plan’s 151 actions are either complete or on track. The Australian government’s apparent intention in releasing five recent reports is to reassure UNESCO that the Great Barrier Reef should not be listed as “World Heritage in Danger” (as the World Heritage Committee has previously threatened). Sadly, behind the verbosity and colour of these reports, there is disappointingly little evidence of progress in the key areas needed to make a significant difference to a World Heritage Area that is in crisis. Poor baseline The government framework for protecting and managing the Reef from 2015 to 2050, the Reef 2050 Plan, has been widely criticised as failing to provide a sound basis for the necessary long-term protection of the Reef. As well as providing a shaky basis to build effective actions, the Reef 2050 Plan has few measurable or realistic targets. It is therefore not easy to report on the actual progress. Several of the actions that will have the greatest impacts on the overall health of the Reef are shown in the progress reports as “not yet due”. In some cases, such as climate change, the Reef 2050 Plan is silent, instead simply referencing Australia’s national efforts on climate change. Read More here
6 December 2016, The Conversation, Australia’s political elites are fiddling while Rome burns. Australians are used to the vulgar antics and empty point-scoring that pass for debate in federal parliament. But little could have prepared them for the current descent into pure farce. Politics divorced from political reality The US has been engulfed by a political tsunami few predicted and many are struggling to comprehend. Much of Europe is still weathering the storm of an unprecedented influx of refugees at a time of high unemployment and little prospect of economic growth. Financial markets, climate change negotiations and great power relations are precariously poised. Amid this turbulence, federal parliament’s last sitting week for 2016 was devoted to the backpacker tax, legislation to bring back the Australian Building and Construction Commission, and the political future of Attorney-General George Brandis. There has never been a time when the disconnect between political elites and the public interest was greater than it is today. The major parties seem uninterested or unable to respond to a drastically transformed political agenda. And so the disconnect grows wider by the day – and the contradictions ever sharper.Read More here