22 July 2015, The Guardian, Victorian farmers and green groups firm on CSG fracking ban as inquiry fires up. As parliamentary inquiry into ramifications of drilling gets under way, farmers fear state’s moratorium on coal seam gas may be lifted. Farmers and environmental groups have lined up against the oil and gas industry to oppose fracking of unconventional gas in Victoria, as a parliamentary inquiry into its potential benefits gets under way. A parliamentary committee began hearings in Melbourne on Wednesday morning into the economic, social and environmental ramifications of allowing Victoria to be opened up for gas drilling. Victoria has banned unconventional gas exploration, which includes coal seam gas and tight gas, since 2012. Since then, the expansion of coal seam gas in New South Wales and Queensland has sparked fierce protests from green groups and some local residents. In January, Victoria’s Labor government extended the ban until the committee handed down its findings. A review conducted by the former Coalition government recommended that regulations around fracking for gas be relaxed. Advocates for gas drilling claim Victoria would benefit financially and households would enjoy lower gas prices if supply were increased. Read More here
Category Archives: The Mitigation Battle
21 July 2015, The Conversation, One year on from the carbon price experiment, the rebound in emissions is clear: Just over a year ago, Australia concluded a unique public policy experiment. For the preceding two years and two weeks, it had put a price on a range of greenhouse gas emitting activities, most significantly power generation. Now, 12 months since the price was removed, is a good time to assess the results of the experiment. The immediate effect of the carbon price was to increase the costs faced by most electricity generators, by an amount that varied between individual power stations depending on that station’s emissions intensity (the emissions per unit of electricity). These costs were then passed on in higher prices to consumers.
Simple economics suggests that two effects should have followed. First, less emissions-intensive generators should have been able to increase their market share, resulting in an overall reduction in the average emissions intensity of electricity. Second, higher prices should have led consumers to reduce their consumption, cutting the total demand for electricity. When the price was removed, both of these effects should have been reversed. Let’s look at what happened in the National Electricity Market (NEM), which is the wholesale electricity market in every state and territory except Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
My analysis, using detailed NEM operational data from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) finds that emissions intensity, which was increasing until shortly before June 2012, fell continuously (see graph below) for most of the two years to June 2014. Since then, it has increased consistently. All these changes were caused by changes in the market shares the different types of generation, just as expected. Read More here
18 July 2015, The Conversation, Australia’s ‘Carnival of Coal’ – can you feel the love? As the latest State of the Climate report reaffirms 2014 to be “the hottest on record”, the NSW Liberal Party is pressing ahead with plans for a “Carnival of Coal” in August. The party’s upper house whip, Peter Phelps, has appealed to members to download a sticker for MP office doors in support of the upcoming carbon love-in. It says: I loved carbon before it was coal. The Liberal paleo-love for coal, which Tony Abbott has declared “good for humanity”, is at least a point of differentiation with Labor. Labor does not promote such slogans at all – even if, in Victoria, the Andrews Labor government is still issuing coal exploration licences. Both parties are capable of romancing the coal industry. But Liberal parties around the country have had much more success in convincing voters that either coal is more important than climate, or have decided that – with a population drip-fed on attention-deficit-consumerism and its reality television advertorials – their connection can be comfortably sublimated. Whatever its form, the love for coal in Australia is going to end badly, like all relationships based on fantasy. To slightly misquote a 19th-century philosopher: the demand to give up the illusion that coal is good for humanity is the demand to give up a condition which needs such an illusion. Read More here
17 July 2015, The Independent, Iran nuclear deal: Oil majors have already started the scramble to tap the country’s rich resources. The race to exploit Iran’s vast and under-utilised oil and gas reserves has begun after the country struck a crucial deal to curb its nuclear programme in return for relaxing foreign sanctions on its energy and finance industries. Easing the sanctions imposed by the US, the EU and the UN in 2012 paves the way for a massive leap in Iran’s oil and gas production that will require Western production expertise. The Iranian government and the oil majors have been quietly courting each other in the run-up to the agreement, with companies such as BP, Shell, Eni, Statoil and Total all thought to be seriously considering a move into the country. Read More here