17 April 2017, The Guardian Stop swooning over Justin Trudeau. The man is a disaster for the planet. Donald Trump is so spectacularly horrible that it’s hard to look away – especially now that he’s discovered bombs. But precisely because everyone’s staring gape-mouthed in his direction, other world leaders are able to get away with almost anything. Don’t believe me? Look one country north, at Justin Trudeau. Look all you want, in fact – he sure is cute, the planet’s only sovereign leader who appears to have recently quit a boy band. And he’s mastered so beautifully the politics of inclusion: compassionate to immigrants, insistent on including women at every level of government. Give him great credit where it’s deserved: in lots of ways he’s the anti-Trump, and it’s no wonder Canadians swooned when he took over. But when it comes to the defining issue of our day, climate change, he’s a brother to the old orange guy in Washington. Not rhetorically: Trudeau says all the right things, over and over. He’s got no Scott Pruitts in his cabinet: everyone who works for him says the right things. Indeed, they specialize in getting others to say them too – it was Canadian diplomats, and the country’s environment minister, Catherine McKenna, who pushed at the Paris climate talks for a tougher-than-expected goal: holding the planet’s rise in temperature to 1.5C (2.7F). But those words are meaningless if you keep digging up more carbon and selling it to people to burn, and that’s exactly what Trudeau is doing. He’s hard at work pushing for new pipelines through Canada and the US to carry yet more oil out of Alberta’s tar sands, which is one of the greatest climate disasters on the planet. Read More here
Tag Archives: oil
3 January Jeremy Leggett Blog, State of The Transition: As fossil fuel diehards take over The White House, the evidence of a fast-moving global energy transition has never been clearer. As captains of the fossil fuel industries and their lobbyists prepare to take over the White House – appointed by a President elected by a minority, claiming to represent the people on an anti-elite ticket yet possessing by far the highest cumulative wealth of any cabinet ever – they will face evidence breaking out all around them of a fast-moving global energy transition threatening to strand the fossil fuels they seek to boost. “World energy hits a turning point”, a Bloomberg headline read on 16th December. “Solar power, for the first time, is becoming the cheapest form of new electricity,” the article marvelled. Analysis of the average cost of new wind and solar in 58 emerging-market economies – including China, India, and Brazil – showed solar at $1.65 million per megawatt and wind at $1.66. Google leads the giant corporations eagerly going with this flow. The largest corporate buyer of renewable energy announced on 6th December that it expects to hit its target of 100% renewable power in, wait for it, 2017. Google is a huge consumer of power, and going solar means deep emissions cuts, especially when solar infrastructure is hooked up with all the digital efficiency-enhancement fandangoes that Silicon Valley giants are zeroing in on in the fast emerging era of artificial intelligence in an internet of things. Read More here
1 December 2016, The Guardian, Obama’s dirty secret: the fossil fuel projects the US littered around the world. Seemingly little connects a community in India plagued by toxic water, a looming air pollution crisis in South Africa and a new fracking boom that is pockmarking Australia. And yet there is a common thread: American taxpayer money. Through the US Export-Import Bank, Barack Obama’s administration has spent nearly $34bn supporting 70 fossil fuel projects around the world, work by Columbia Journalism School’s Energy and Environment Reporting Project and the Guardian has revealed. This unprecedented backing of oil, coal and gas projects is an unexpected footnote to Obama’s own climate change legacy. The president has called global warming “terrifying” and helped broker the world’s first proper agreement to tackle it, yet his administration has poured money into developments that will push the planet even closer to climate disaster. For people living next to US-funded mines and power stations the impacts are even more starkly immediate. Guardian and Columbia reporters have spent time at American-backed projects in India, South Africa and Australia to document the sickness, upheavals and environmental harm that come with huge dirty fuel developments. In India, we heard complaints about coal ash blowing into villages, contaminated water and respiratory and stomach problems, all linked to a project that has had more than $650m in backing from the Obama administration. In South Africa, another huge project is set to exacerbate existing air pollution problems, deforestation and water shortages. And in Australia, an enormous US-backed gas development is linked to a glut of fracking activity that has divided communities and brought a new wave of industrialization next to the cherished Great Barrier Reef. While Obama can claim the US is the world’s leader on climate change – at least until Donald Trump enters the White House – it is also clear that it has become a major funder of fossil fuels that are having a serious impact upon people’s lives. This is the unexpected story of how Obama’s legacy is playing out overseas. Read more here
30 November 2016, The Conversation, Will the latest electricity review bring climate and energy policy together at last? The Australian government is reviewing our electricity market to make sure it can provide secure and reliable power in a rapidly changing world. Faced with the rise of renewable energy and limits on carbon pollution, The Conversation has asked experts what kind of future awaits the grid. Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM) is under review following the state-wide blackout that hit South Australia in September. The review, led by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, will “develop a national reform blueprint to maintain energy security and reliability”. Importantly, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) specifically agreed that the review would consider Australia’s commitment under the Paris climate agreement, and how climate and energy policy can be integrated. Before we consider how the NEM might need to change, it is important to understand how it came about. State responsibility Electricity supply began as a state responsibility. Originally, state-based utilities owned and operated the entire supply chain, from generation to transmission, distribution and retail. With the exception of the Snowy Hydro Scheme, there were no interstate transmission lines. Accessibility and affordability were (and still are) key concerns for the states. As such, electricity prices were equal for all citizens, irrespective of their location or the actual cost of bringing electricity to them. This is still partly reflected in network tariffs today. In the late 1980s, concerns about rising costs to government, but also a worldwide ideological move towards privatisation of public services, drove a shift away from publicly owned utilities. This began with a New South Wales inquiry, which found that NSW could avoid billions of dollars in new investment by connecting its network with Victoria. This set the scene for the development of a more interconnected grid and more general reform. In particular, this was followed by a report from the former Industry Commission in 1991 and the Hilmer Reviewon National Competition Policy in 1993. These reports were dominated by market logic. They argued that competition would make the system more efficient. Governments specifically agreed to reforms that would lead to a fully competitive national electricity market. This involved breaking up and selling the three layers of the electricity sector: generation, networks and retail. Read More here