2 February 2016, The Guardian, Queensland gives Adani environmental permit for Carmichael coalmine. Huge project clears one more hurdle, but financial uncertainty still hovers over the mine and related rail and port construction at Abbot Point. Adani has secured an environmental permit from the Queensland government to build Australia’s largest coal mine. The Indian conglomerate was issued an environmental authority for its Carmichael mine, west of Bowen in north Queensland, by the department of environment and heritage on Tuesday. It is one less hurdle for Adani’s highly contested plans, after its Australian chief complained last week that delays in government approvals were “incentivising” green activists to plot further legal challenges to stymie the company’s progress. Adani still needs to obtain significant bank funding to realise its $16.5bn mine, rail and port project. It must convince the Queensland government it has obtained “financial closure” before it will be allowed to begin dredging near Great Barrier Reef waters to expand the Abbot Point export facility. A lull in world coal demand and moves in India to rely less on imported thermal coal have cast doubt on the future of the mine. Adani still has to obtain a mining lease from the Queensland government. The state land court last year recommended resources minister Anthony Lynham approve the lease after a legal challenge by conservation group Coast and Country failed to persuade the judge that the mine would have any impact on Asian coal consumption. Read more here
Category Archives: Australian Response
1 February 2016, Renew Economy, Australia emissions surging to record high despite Paris climate deal. Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are posed to surge to a record high after 2020, and may not reach a peak before 2030 – despite the government’s claim it has been reducing emissions and its support for the Paris climate deal. A new analysis from industry analyst Reputex – a division of global ratings agency Standard & Poor’s – confirms what we already know: despite the Coalition’s rhetoric, emissions in Australia actually rose 1.3 per cent in 2014/15, for the first time since the Coalition was last in power a decade earlier.
But the Reputex survey also notes that Australia’s emissions growth is now among the highest in the world, with the government’s own forecast showing emissions will grow 6 per cent to 2020, despite its “Direct Action” plan and the billions spent in the Emissions Reduction Fund. Ironically, the emissions growth would have been faster, but for the fact that Australia’s economic growth has been downgraded sharply from the optimistic assumptions of successive Labor and Coalition governments. Read More here
28 January 2016, Renew Economy, Hunt under pressure as Australia loses climate cred, gains carbon risk. Australia’s poor record on climate change action and energy market reform has been highlighted by two major global publications this week, bringing environment minister Greg Hunt under renewed pressure to defend his department’s policy. The first, the latest rankings of the Yale environmental performance index – described by Hunt himself as “the most credible, scientifically based, hard data-based analysis in the world – shows Australia has dropped 10 places in its overall ranking on “protecting human health and ecosystems”, leaving it at 13 out of 180 countries examined (just below Saudi Arabia). According to reports, where Australia lost most of its ground on the index was in the categories of electricity generation, where it is ranked at number 150 out of 180, and in climate. This point has been seized upon by Opposition climate spokesman Mark Butler, who said in a statement on Thursday that the index downgrading showed that the Turnbull government was taking Australia backwards on climate change “at a shocking pace”. Butler – who launched the first round of consultation on the Labor party’s 2030 emissions reduction target on Wednesday – also noted that while nearly every other country had improved its EPI score, Australia had turned up very close to the bottom of the pack on carbon trends. “I think the rest of the world is waking up to the fact that although there’s a different person at the front of the government, the policies haven’t changed,” Butler told Fran Kelly in an ABC Radio interview. “We have inadequate targets, we have a government that has no renewable energy policy beyond 2020, and we have a policy in Direct Action that’s actually seeing emissions rise again after having come down 8 per cent during our term in government, they will rise by 6 per cent between now and 2020 according to the government’s own official data.” Read More here
15 January 2016, Renew Economy, Australia snubs 1st major post-Paris summit after killing renewables target. ABU DHABI: Australia has chosen not to send any government representatives to the first major post Paris climate change conference, as new data confirms how the Coalition government has effectively killed the renewable energy target as an effective policy mechanism. In 2015, the world invested a record $US329 billion in renewable energy. But in Australia, the RET – the country’s primary policy mechanism – has attracted just $15 million in investment in nearly two years. The data, from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, confirms that since the Abbott government announced its review into the RET in early 2014, the scheme has been at a standstill. That remains the case – even though renewable energy certificates have jumped to record levels of $74/MWh – because utilities and financiers refuse to sign contracts, due to the lack of policy certainty and because they believe that the Coalition could change the target again. Indeed, more than half Australia’s investment in renewable energy in 2015 (of $A4.1 billion) comes from households and businesses, who spent $2.2 billion in 2015 adding rooftop solar PV to their home and commercial premises. Read More here