What you will find on this page: LATEST NEWS; Fossil fuel emissions have stalled; Analysis: Record surge of clean energy in 2024 halts China’s CO2 rise; does the world need hydrogen?; Mapped: global coal trade; Complexity of energy systems (maps); Mapped: Germany’s energy sources (interactive access); Power to the people (video); Unburnable Carbon (report); Stern Commission Review; Garnaut reports; live generation data; fossil fuel subsidies; divestment; how to run a divestment campaign guide; local council divestment guide; US coal plant retirement; oil conventional & unconventional; CSG battle in Australia (videos); CSG battle in Victoria; leasing maps for Victoria; coal projects Victoria
Huge task to decarbonise
Source: Australian Delegation presentation to international forum held in Bonn in May 2012
Latest News 13 May 2016, The Conversation, South Australia is now coal-free, and batteries could fill the energy gap. South Australia’s last coal-fired power station closed on Monday this week, leaving the state with only gas and wind power generators. The Northern Power Station, in Port Augusta on the northern end of the Spencer Gulf, has joined Playford B – the state’s other coal-fired power station which has already been retired. The coal mine at Leigh Creek that supplied brown coal to the power stations also closed earlier this year, so there is no easy option for re-opening the power stations. The immediate impact of the closure was a brief wobble in wholesale electricity prices, with more energy brought in from Victoria’s brown coal power stations (adding to carbon emissions). But how could it affect the state in the long term? Could South Australia run out of power? Average electricity demand in South Australia is 1.4 gigawatts, and the state record for peak demand of 3.4 gigawatts was set in January 2011. In the past two years the highest demand was 2.9 gigawatts. Rollout of rooftop solar panels is one of the reasons demand from the grid has been going down. The impact on the peak demand – the time of day when most people are using appliances – is less clear, because if the peak occurs after sunset, solar panels will not reduce it. Read More here 10 May 2016, The Hill, Oil companies abandon Arctic drilling rights. Major oil companies have abandoned hundreds of leases for offshore drilling rights in the United States’s portion of the Arctic Ocean. Federal government documents obtained by environmental group Oceana show that ConocoPhillips Co., Italy’s Eni and Iona Energy, Inc., abandoned all their leases in the Chukchi Sea, to the north and west of Alaska. Royal Dutch Shell has abandoned numerous leases and said it plans to relinquish all but one. Oil companies have, in total, abandoned 2.2 million acres of Arctic drilling rights, Oceana said, and 80 percent of all area in the American Arctic leased in a 2008 sale has been or will be abandoned. For Shell and ConocoPhillips, the decisions came just before a May 1 deadline to pay millions of dollars to keep its leases active. Shell spokesman Curtis Smith confirmed Oceana’s account, saying the decision came “after extensive consideration and evaluation.” Shell spent about $2.5 billion over seven years in preparation to drill a single exploratory well last summer in the Chukchi following a disastrous attempt in 2012. It concluded after drilling that the exploration was not worth the costs of drilling in the remote area, so it decided to abandon Arctic drilling for the foreseeable future. Read More here 2 May 2016, Renew Economy, Australia heads back to bottom of barrel on climate, clean energy. Last Friday, ACT Environment Minister Simon Corbell stood up at the Local Energy and Micro-Grids conference in Sydney to announce that the ACT was going to accelerate its push to renewable energy, and would supply 100 per cent of its electricity needs from renewable energy by 2020, almost all of it from wind and solar. The new target will be achieved at no added cost to the previous target of 90 per cent, and the ACT will still retain its ranking as the city with the cheapest electricity in Australia. In fact, if Canberra households embrace the energy efficiency measures on offer from the government, they will hardly see a rise in their bill at all. Corbell told the conference, co-hosted by RenewEconomy, that not only are such targets achievable and affordable, they have to happen. “The science tells us that and the decisions at the COP (conference of the parties, or Paris climate conference) tell us that. We have to keep global temperature rises well below 2°C.” So Corbell and his government have decided to do something about it. And that makes Corbell and his government unique in Australia. No other Australia political leader, in a position of actual power, has implemented energy and industry policies that actually fit with the science. Yes, others, including the Greens, have equally ambitious policies. But Corbell is the only one who has dared take on the incumbents and walked the walk, as well as talking the talk. In doing so, he has single-handedly kept the large-scale renewable energy industry alive as federal policy fights brought the sector to a standstill.Read More here 28 April 2016, Tomgram: Michael Klare, The Coming World of “Peak Oil Demand,” Not “Peak Oil”. In a Greater Middle East in which one country after another has been plunged into chaos and possible failed statehood, two rival nations, Iran and Saudi Arabia, have been bedrock exceptions to the rule. Iran, at the moment, remains so, but the Saudi royals, increasingly unnerved, have been steering their country erratically into the region’s chaos. The kingdom is now led by a decrepit 80-year-old monarch who, in commonplace meetings, has to be fed his lines by teleprompter. Meanwhile, his 30-year-old son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has gained significant control over both the kingdom’s economic and military decision-making, launched a rash anti-Iranian war in Yemen, heavily dependent onair power. It is not only Washington-backed but distinctly in the American mode of these last years: brutal yet ineffective, never-ending, a boon to the spread of terror groups, and seeded with potential blowback. Meanwhile, in a cheap-oil, belt-tightening moment, in an increasingly edgy country, the royals are reining in budgets and undermining the good life they were previously financing for many of their citizens. The one thing they continue to do is pump oil — their only form of wealth — as if there were no tomorrow, while threatening further price-depressing rises in oil production in the near future. And that’s hardly been the end of their threats. Read More here 12 March 2018, Climate News Network, Alberta’s oil exports face ocean of trouble. Alberta’s oil exports are at serious risk. Last month the first supertanker capable of holding two million barrels of oil sailed for the first time from America’s newly upgraded – and only – terminal able to handle crude-carrying giants of this size: the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP). She was bound for China, and her maiden voyage signals a major shift in global oil shipping patterns, economics, and the highly competitive oil refinery business. The LOOP terminal is deep in the Mississippi Delta. A 29-kilometre pipeline stretches across the shallow Gulf of Mexico coastal shelf to a point deep enough to allow similar Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) to unload their vast tonnages. Nearby a complex of salt caverns and surface tanks stores both oil imports headed for US refineries and fast-increasing volumes of oil bound for export. The LOOP terminal is a speculator’s venture on steroids. Built with private capital, it is North America’s first oil port dedicated to the planet’s largest crude tankers, handling two-way oil flows. It’s designed to thrive on fierce global fights over not just oil supply and demand, but the multi-billion dollar bets corporate oil traders and hedge funds place, hoping to buy low and sell high – now or years hence. Two cargoes at once. Any VLCC from any country can now unload or load oil at the LOOP. They can carry it – two million barrels at a time – to ports across the globe, at a price lower than smaller tankers. That will probably prove fatal to the plans of the Canadian province of Alberta to expand unrefined bitumen exports by either the proposed Trans-Mountain pipeline to the British Columbia coast or the planned Keystone XL pipeline to Texas. Bitumen, or asphalt, is the feedstock which tar sands and oil sands producers remove from the ground, thick enough to require mining, not pumping. It then has to be diluted with light crude oil or other chemicals before it can go through a pipeline (hence the term diluted bitumen). Read More here 28 February 2018, Carbon Brief, OECD: Fossil fuel subsidies added up to at least $373bn in 2015. Fossil fuel subsidies totalled at least $373bn globally in 2015, according to a new report which for the first time combines figures from two key intergovernmental organisations.The new figure harmonises estimates up to 2015 from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the International Energy Agency (IEA), which largely assess different countries in their estimates of fossil fuel subsidies. The report shows support in 76 countries dropped significantly in 2015 compared to 2014, when it sat at $551bn. However, the estimates do not cover all fossil fuel subsidies, therefore are likely to still be a substantial underestimate of global fossil fuel subsidies. The OECD inventory of fossil fuel “support”, released last week alongside the report, also includes new, separate figures for subsidies in 2016 for the 35 OECD countries and eight large developing nations. (The OECD is a collective of market-based economies, first formed in 1960, which aims to be a “forum for governments to work together to share experiences and seek solutions to common problems”.) The report shows subsidies in these countries was at least $151bn in 2016. Reductions of fossil fuel subsidies in more developed OECD countries have stalled over the past few years, the inventory shows, with most reform instead occurring in developing nations, such as Indonesia and India. The OECD inventory also shows UK support for fossil fuels was at least $6.5bn in 2016. The UK has been one of only a few OECD countries to introduce new measures benefitting production of fossil fuels in recent years, the report says. Carbon Brief digs into the global figures for fossil fuel subsidies and looks, in particular, at where the support for fossil fuels in the UK is going. Read More here 21 February 2018, RenewEconomy; Frydenberg fumes as Weatherill does the vision thing on renewables and storage. The war of words between federal environment and energy minister Josh Frydenberg and South Australia premier Jay Weatherill has resumed, as Frydenberg stumbled into the middle of the state’s election campaign and found his modest announcement trumped by Weatherill’s big vision. Frydenberg arrived in Adelaide on Wednesday to, among other things, promote two small ($500,000) grants to help progress two pumped hydro projects in the Spencer Gulf, a week after the state government had backed those same projects and three other pumped hydro plans to boot. But Frydenberg’s announcement was overwhelmed by Weatherill’s proposal to lift the share of renewable in the state to 75 per cent by 2025 (it is already at 50 per cent), and add 750MW of energy storage through pumped hydro, batteries and hydrogen. He backed this up with announced plans to turn the old Holden site into a renewables-based micro-grid, and a separate proposal for a hydrogen-based micro-grid in the middle of Adelaide. Read more here 16 February 2018, The Guardian, It’d be wonderful if the claims made about carbon capture were true. The International Energy Agency warned this week that, under current energy policies, Australia is unlikely to meet its 2030 climate commitments. While the agency had lots to say about the plunging costs of renewables and the need for strong market signals to encourage the retirement of old and inefficient coal generation, Josh Frydenberg, the federal environment and energy minister, seized on the agency’s support for carbon capture and storage (CCS) – despite the technology’s long history of big promises and meagre results. Last April, Frydenberg visited the newly opened Petra Nova CCS project in Texas. In a video posted to social media the minister, decked out in the obligatory hi-vis vest and hard hat, yells above the noise that the $1bn project is “helping to reduce the carbon footprint by some 40%”. It’d be wonderful if it were true. An estimated 6.2% of the Petra Nova power station’s emissions are captured, compressed and then piped 130km to help extract stubborn oil out of a depleted oil field. In the process, an estimated 30% of the carbon dioxide leaks back into the atmosphere, not to mention the emissions that will ultimately be released when the extracted oil is consumed. Last month, the Minerals Council of Australia was spruiking the “21 large-scale CCS facilities in operation or under construction around the world including in Canada and Texas”. Sounds impressive, if you still trust the MCA’s spin. You shouldn’t – 19 of the 21 projects have nothing to do with coal; there are exactly two “large scale” coal CCS projects globally. And, no, they’re not large. The Canadian project, Boundary Dam, has averaged only 0.591 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over each of its first three years. The $1.5bn project would need to be scaled up 31 times to capture the emissions of New South Wales’s Bayswater power station – an inconceivable investment. Read More here 2 October 2023, The Conversation: Too hard basket: why climate change is defeating our political system. When I was first asked to write an opening piece in The Conversation’s series on climate change and the energy transition, I wanted to say no. I didn’t want to think about what I and anyone else who has been paying attention knows is coming; not just next summer, which is likely to be a scorcher like the one the northern hemisphere has just endured, but in the summers after that for centuries to come. It may already be too late to save the world as we know it. Coral reefs, low-lying atolls and coastal strips, glaciers, Arctic summer sea ice, will all likely be gone in the near future with predictable and unpredictable consequences for the life that depends on them, including ours. Or should I write “be under threat” instead of “likely be gone”, to soften the story? No, already there has been too much softening and taking comfort in uncertainty. The focus on rising temperatures itself makes the future seem more benign than it’s likely to be. What is a degree or two warmer here or there on a linear graph? But linear graphs are not the main story. The main story is Earth’s complex climate systems, and the risk that the continuing burning of fossil fuels is pushing some systems towards tipping points, including the way ocean and atmospheric currents move heat and moisture around the globe, with unpredictable cascades of non-linear consequences. The climate scientist, the late Will Steffen explained there is a point at which Earth’s cascading feedbacks drive it past a global threshold and irreversibly into a much hotter state. This is the biggest risk, and it is existential. The Albanese government’s softly-softly response. The Albanese Labor government is not denying the risk. In his 2023 Intergenerational Report Treasurer Jim Chalmers included climate change as one of the five major forces affecting future wellbeing. It’s one among many, and the emphasis is on the economic opportunities and jobs offered by the energy transformation. This downplays both the risk and the changes needed to combat it. Chief Climate Councillor Tim Flannery said: Climate dwarfs everything else in this report. If we don’t fix it, nothing else matters. Media commentary, however, has been mostly about the consequences of an ageing population. Soon after it assumed office, the new Labor government ordered a climate and security risk analysis. This has now happened, undertaken by the Office of National Assessments (ONI) and delivered to the government in late 2022. But you wouldn’t know it. The analysis has not been released, and there is no indication it will be. Since then the government has barely said a word about the ONI findings or about climate security risks, although it has said plenty about the risk we face if, as seems likely, China supplants the United States as the dominant power in our region. Read more here 14 September 2023, Climate Home News: Overshoot Commission calls for research into solar geoengineering. Dimming the sun could “complement” emissions cuts, says panel of leaders, while acknowledging concerns about the risks. Governments should expand research into controversial solar geoengineering, while placing a moratorium on large-scale experiments outdoors, a panel of leaders has recommended. The Overshoot Commission was set up last year to examine ways of reducing risks if and when global heating surpasses 1.5C. In a report published on Thursday, it called for an acceleration in emission reductions, more resources to adapt to the impact of climate change and scaling up technologies to suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The Commission also called for international discussions and scientific research on solar radiation modification (SRM). The technology aims to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the planet’s surface. This could be achieved by pumping aerosols into the high atmosphere or by whitening clouds. Its proponents say it could be a relatively cheap and fast way to counter extreme heat. But it would only temporarily mask the impact of rising emissions, not tackle the root cause. The regional effects of manipulating the weather are hard to predict and risk worsening climate impacts in some places. The report acknowledged the technology’s potential drawbacks, but refused to take the option off the table. “It would be imprudent not to investigate or discuss SRM because present evidence suggests the possibility it could complement other approaches,” the Commission wrote. During a press conference, its president Pascal Lamy said appeals not to discuss solar geoengineering “feel fickle” and “not the way to go”. Read more here 14 September 2023, The Conversation: How rising water vapour in the atmosphere is amplifying warming and making extreme weather worse. This year’s string of record-breaking disasters – from deadly wildfires and catastrophic floods to record-high ocean temperatures and record-low sea ice in Antarctica – seems like an acceleration of human-induced climate change. And it is. But not only because greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. What we are also observing is the long-predicted water vapour feedback within the climate system. Since the late 1800s, global average surface temperatures have increased by about 1.1°C, driven by human activities, most notably the burning of fossil fuels which adds greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide and methane) to the atmosphere. As the atmosphere warms, it can hold more moisture in the form of water vapour, which is also a greenhouse gas. This in turn amplifies the warming caused by our emissions of other greenhouse gases. Some people mistakenly believe water vapour is a driver of Earth’s current warming. But as I explain below, water vapour is part of Earth’s hydrological cycle and plays an important role in the natural greenhouse effect. Its rise is a consequence of the atmospheric warming caused by our emissions arising especially from burning fossil fuels. Water vapour: the other greenhouse gas. For every degree Celsius in warming, the water-holding capacity of the atmosphere increases by about 7%. Record-high sea temperatures ensure there is more moisture (in the form of water vapour) in the atmosphere, by an estimated 5-15% compared to before the 1970s, when global temperature rise began in earnest. Read more here 13 September 2023, The Conversation: Devastatingly low Antarctic sea ice may be the ‘new abnormal’, study warns. For most of us, Antarctic sea ice is an abstraction – something far away we may have seen on a documentary. But the radiant white sheets of ice floating on the seas around the snowy continent are a crucial component of Earth’s climate processes. Sea ice insulates the ocean, reflects heat, drives currents, supports ecosystems and protects ice shelves. It also has an annual seasonal cycle – some of the ice melts, then freezes again. Every year, the cycle of freeze and melt around Antarctica has been extremely reliable. Until recently. In a new study published today in Communications Earth & Environment, we have found a preliminary indication that Antarctic sea ice may have entered a new state of diminished coverage. A sudden, dramatic loss. For many years, while the Arctic lost sea ice, the Antarctic did not. Then, in the spring of 2016, Antarctic sea-ice coverage dropped dramatically. Over two years, the Antarctic lost as much sea ice as the Arctic had lost in three decades. Since then, Antarctic sea ice has been below average almost constantly. This past Southern Hemisphere summer, Antarctic sea ice was the lowest it has ever been, with dire consequences. In late 2022 we saw the heartbreaking loss of 10,000 emperor penguin chicks, when the sea ice they lived on melted before they had grown their waterproof feathers. On February 19 2023, Antarctic sea ice set a new record minimum of 1.77 million square kilometres, 36% below the 1979–2022 average for the summer minimum. Read more here 27 January 2025, Carbon Brief: A record surge of clean energy kept China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions below the previous year’s levels in the last 10 months of 2024. However, the new analysis for Carbon Brief, based on official figures and commercial data, shows the tail end of China’s rebound from zero-Covid in January and February, combined with abnormally high growth in energy demand, stopped CO2 emissions falling in 2024 overall. While China’s CO2 output in 2024 grew by an estimated 0.8% year-on-year, emissions were lower than in the 12 months to February 2024. Other key findings of the analysis include: As ever, the latest analysis shows that policy decisions made in 2025 will strongly affect China’s emissions trajectory in the coming years. In particular, both China’s new commitments under the Paris Agreement and the country’s next five-year plan are being prepared in 2025. Read More Here 3 November 2020, Carbon Brief: Hydrogen gas has long been recognised as an alternative to fossil fuels and a potentially valuable tool for tackling climate change. Now, as nations come forward with net-zero strategies to align with their international climate targets, hydrogen has once again risen up the agenda from Australia and the UK through to Germany and Japan. In the most optimistic outlooks, hydrogen could soon power trucks, planes and ships. It could heat homes, balance electricity grids and help heavy industry to make everything from steel to cement. But doing all these things with hydrogen would require staggering quantities of the fuel, which is only as clean as the methods used to produce it. Moreover, for every potentially transformative application of hydrogen, there are unique challenges that must be overcome. In this in-depth Q&A – which includes a range of infographics, maps and interactive charts, as well as the views of dozens of experts – Carbon Brief examines the big questions around the “hydrogen economy” and looks at the extent to which it could help the world avoid dangerous climate change. Access full article here Fossil fuel emissions have stalled 14 November 2016, The Conversation, Fossil fuel emissions have stalled: Global Carbon Budget 2016. For the third year in a row, global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry have barely grown, while the global economy has continued to grow strongly. This level of decoupling of carbon emissions from global economic growth is unprecedented.Global CO₂ emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels and industry (including cement production) were 36.3 billion tonnes in 2015, the same as in 2014, and are projected to rise by only 0.2% in 2016 to reach 36.4 billion tonnes. This is a remarkable departure from emissions growth rates of 2.3% for the previous decade, and more than 3% during the 2000’s. Read More here Do you want to understand the complexity of energy systems which support our high consumption lifestyles? Most people don’t give too much thought to where their electricity comes from. Flip a switch, and the lights go on. That’s all. The origins of that energy, or how it actually got into our homes, is generally hidden from view. This link will take you to 11 maps which explain energy in America (it is typical enough as an example of a similar lifestyle as Australia – when I find maps for Oz I’ll add them in) e.g. above map showing the coal plants in the US. Source: Vox Explainers Mapped: how Germany generates its electricity – another example Power to the People – Lock the Gate looks back at the wins of 2015 And there’s lots more coming up in 2016. Some of the big priorities coming up next for the “Lock the Gate” movement are: If you want to give “Lock the Gate” your support – go here for more info This new report reveals that the pollution from Australia’s coal resources, particularly the enormous Galilee coal basin, could take us two-thirds of the way to a two degree rise in global temperature. To Read More and download report The 2006 UK government commissioned Stern Commission Review on the Economics of Climate Change is still the best complete appraisal of global climate change economics. The review broke new ground on climate change assessment in a number of ways. It made headlines by concluding that avoiding global climate change catastrophe was almost beyond our grasp. It also found that the costs of ignoring global climate change could be as great as the Great Depression and the two World Wars combined. The review was (still is) in fact a very good assessment of global climate change, which inferred in 2006 that the situation was a global emergency. Read More here The Garnaut Climate Change Review was commissioned by the Commonwealth, state and territory governments in 2007 to conduct an independent study of the impacts of climate change on the Australian economy. Prof. Garnaut presented The Garnaut Climate Change Review: Final Report to the Australian Prime Minister, Premiers and Chief Ministers in September 2008 in which he examined how Australia was likely to be affected by climate change, and suggested policy responses. In November 2010, he was commissioned by the Australian Government to provide an update to the 2008 Review. In particular, he was asked to examine whether significant changes had occurred that would affect the analysis and recommendations from 2008. The final report was presented May 2011. Since then the Professor has regularly participated in the debate of fossil fuel reduction, as per his latest below: To access his reports; interviews; submissions go here 27 May 2015, Renew Economy, Garnaut: Cost of stranded assets already bigger than cost of climate action. This is one carbon budget that Australia has already blown. Economist and climate change advisor Professor Ross Garnaut has delivered a withering critique of Australia’s economic policies and investment patterns, saying the cost of misguided over-investment in the recent mining boom would likely outweigh the cost of climate action over the next few decades. Read More here Live generation of electricity by fuel type Fossil Fuel Subsidies – The Age of entitlement continues 24 June 2014, Renew Economy, Age of entitlement has not ended for fossil fuels: A new report from The Australia Institute exposes the massive scale of state government assistance, totalling $17.6 billion over a six-year period, not including significant Federal government support and subsidies. Queensland taxpayers are providing the greatest assistance by far with a total of $9.5 billion, followed by Western Australia at $6.2 billion. The table shows almost $18 billion dollars has been spent over the past 6 years by state governments, supporting some of Australia’s biggest, most profitable industries, which are sending most of the profits offshore. That’s $18 billion dollars that could have gone to vital public services such as hospitals, schools and emergency services. State governments are usually associated with the provision of essential services like health and education so it will shock taxpayers to learn of the massive scale of government handouts to the minerals and fossil fuel industries. This report shows that Australian taxpayers have been misled about the costs and benefits of this industry, which we can now see are grossly disproportionate. Each state provides millions of dollars’ worth of assistance to the mining industry every year, with the big mining states of Queensland and Western Australia routinely spending over one billion dollars in assistance annually. Read More here – access full report here What is fossil fuel divestment? Local Governments ready to divest Aligning Council Money With Council Values A Guide To Ensuring Council Money Isn’t Funding Climate Change. 350.org Australia – with the help of the incredible team at Earth Hour – has pulled together a simple 3-step guide for local governments interested in divestment. The movement to align council money with council values is constantly growing in Australia. It complements the existing work that councils are doing to shape a safe climate future. It can also help to reshape the funding practices of Australia’s fossil fuel funding banks. The steps are simple. The impact is huge.The guide can also be used by local groups who are interested in supporting their local government to divest as a step-by-step reference point. Access guide here How coal is staying in the ground in the US Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign May 2015, Politico, Michael Grunwald: The war on coal is not just political rhetoric, or a paranoid fantasy concocted by rapacious polluters. It’s real and it’s relentless. Over the past five years, it has killed a coal-fired power plant every 10 days. It has quietly transformed the U.S. electric grid and the global climate debate. The industry and its supporters use “war on coal” as shorthand for a ferocious assault by a hostile White House, but the real war on coal is not primarily an Obama war, or even a Washington war. It’s a guerrilla war. The front lines are not at the Environmental Protection Agency or the Supreme Court. If you want to see how the fossil fuel that once powered most of the country is being battered by enemy forces, you have to watch state and local hearings where utility commissions and other obscure governing bodies debate individual coal plants. You probably won’t find much drama. You’ll definitely find lawyers from the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, the boots on the ground in the war on coal. Read More here Oil – conventional & unconventional May 2015, Oil change International Report: On the Edge: 1.6 Million Barrels per Day of Proposed Tar Sands Oil on Life Support. The Canadian tar sands is among the most carbon-intensive, highest-cost sources of oil in the world. Even prior to the precipitous drop in global oil prices late last year, three major projects were cancelled in the sector with companies unable to chart a profitable path forward. Since the collapse in global oil prices, the sector has been under pressure to make further cuts, leading to substantial budget cuts, job losses, and a much more bearish outlook on expansion projections in the coming years. Read full report here. For summary of report USA Sierra Club Beyond Oil Campaign Coal Seam Gas battle in Australia Lock the Gate Alliance is a national coalition of people from across Australia, including farmers, traditional custodians, conservationists and urban residents, who are uniting to protect our common heritage – our land, water and communities – from unsafe or inappropriate mining for coal seam gas and other fossil fuels. Read more about the missions and principles of Lock the Gate. Access more Lock the Gate videos here. Access Lock the Gate fact sheets here 2014: Parliament of Victoria Research Paper: Unconventional Gas: Coal Seam Gas, Shale Gas and Tight Gas: This Research Paper provides an introduction and overview of issues relevant to the development of unconventional gas – coal seam, shale and tight gas – in the Australian and specifically Victorian context. At present, the Victorian unconventional gas industry is at a very early stage. It is not yet known whether there is any coal seam gas or shale gas in Victoria and, if there is, whether it would be economically viable to extract it. A moratorium on fracking has been in place in Victoria since August 2012 while more information is gathered on potential environmental risks posed by the industry. The parts of Victoria with the highest potential for unconventional gas are the Gippsland and Otway basins. Notably, tight gas has been located near Seaspray in Gippsland but is not yet being produced. There is a high level of community concern in regard to the potential impact an unconventional gas industry could have on agriculture in the Gippsland and Otway regions. Industry proponents, however, assert that conventional gas resources are declining and Victoria’s unconventional gas resources need to be ascertained and developed. Read More here 28 January 2015, ABC News, Coal seam gas exploration: Victoria’s fracking ban to remain as Parliament probes regulations: A ban on coal seam gas (CSG) exploration will stay in place in Victoria until a parliamentary inquiry hands down its findings, the State Government has promised. There is a moratorium on the controversial mining technique, known as fracking, until the middle of 2015. The Napthine government conducted a review into CSG, headed by former Howard government minister Peter Reith, which recommended regulations around fracking be relaxed. Labor was critical of the review, claiming it failed to consult with farmers, environmental scientists and local communities. Read more here Keep up to date and how you can be involved here Friends of the Earth Melbourne Coal & Gas Free Victoria 20 May 2015, FoE, Inquiry into Unconventional Gas: Check here for details on the Victorian government’s Inquiry into unconventional gas. The public hearings have not yet started, however the Terms of Reference have been released. The state government’s promised Inquiry into Unconventional Gas has now been formally announced, with broad terms of reference (TOR). FoE’s response to the TOR is available here. The Upper House Environment and Planning Committee will manage the Inquiry. You can find the Inquiry website here. The final TOR will be determined by the committee. Significantly, it is a cross party committee. The Chair is a Liberal (David Davis), and there is one National (Melinda Bath), one Green (Samantha Dunn), three from the ALP (Gayle Tierney, Harriet Shing, Shaun Leane), an additional MP from the Liberals (Richard Dalla-Riva), and one MP from the Shooters Party (Daniel Young). Work started by the previous government, into water tables and the community consultation process run by the Primary Agency, will be released as part of the inquiry.The moratorium on unconventional gas exploration will stay in place until the inquiry delivers its findings. The interim report is due in September and the final report by December. There is the possibility that the committee will amend this timeline if they are overwhelmed with submissions or information. Parliament will then need to consider the recommendations of the committee and make a final decision about how to proceed. This is likely to happen when parliament resumes after the summer break, in early 2016. Quit Coal is a Melbourne-based collective that campaigns against the expansion of the coal and unconventional gas industries in Victoria. Quit Coal uses a range of tactics to tackle this problem. We advise the broader Victorian community about plans for new coal and unconventional gas projects, we put pressure on our government to stop investing in these projects, and we help to inform and mobilise Victorian communities so they can campaign on their own behalf. We focus on being strategic, creative, and as much as possible, fun! The above screen shot is of the Victorian State government’s Mining Licences Near Me site. Go to this link to see what is happening in your area Environment Victoria’s campaign CoalWatch is an interactive resource that tracks the coal industry’s expansion plans and helps builds a movement to stop these polluting developments. CoalWatch provides a way for everyday Victorians to keep track of the coal industry’s ambitious expansion plans. To check what tax-payer money has been pledged to brown coal projects and the coal projects industry is spruiking to our politicians. Here’s another map via EV website (go to their website and you should be able to get better detail from Google Maps: Red areas: Exploration licences (EL). These areas are held by companies to undertake exploration activity. A small bond is held by government in case of any damage. If a company wants to progress the project it needs to obtain a mining licence. Exploration Licence applications are marked with an asterix in the Places Index eg. EL4684*. Yellow areas: Mining Licences (MIN). A mining licence is granted with the expectation that mining will occur. A larger bond is paid to government. Green areas: Exploration licences that have been withdrawn or altered due to community concern. Green outline: Existing mines within Mining Licences. Purple areas: Geological Carbon Storage Exploration areas for carbon capture and storage. On-shore areas have been released by the State Government, while off-shore areas have been released by the Federal Government. The Coal Watch wiki tracks current and future Victorian coal projects, whether they are power stations, coal mines, proposals to export coal or some other inventive way of burning more coal. To get the full picture of coal in Victoria visit our wiki page. Get more info and see the full list of Exploration Licences current at 17 August 2012 here August 2015, Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis – powerpoint: Changing Dynamics in the Global Seaborne Thermal Coal Markets and Stranded Asset Risk. Information from one of the slides follows. To view full presentation go here Economic Implications for Australia 83% of Australian coal mines are foreign owned, hence direct leverage of fossil fuels to the ASX is relatively small at 1-2%. However, for Australia the exposure is high, time is needed for transition and the new industry opportunities are significant: 1. Energy Infrastructure: Australia spends $5-10bn pa on electricity / grid sector, much of it a regulated asset base that all ratepayers fund much of it stranded. BNEF estimate of Australia’s renewable energy infrastructure investment for 2015-2020 was cut 30% from A$20bn post RET. Lost opportunities. 2. Direct employment: The ABS shows a fall of ~20k from the 2012 peak of 70K from coal mining across Australia, and cuts are ongoing. Indirect employment material. 3. Terms of trade: BZE estimates the collapse in the pricing of iron ore, coal and LNG cuts A$100bn pa from Australia’s export revenues by 2030, a halving relative to government budget estimates of 2013/14. Coal was 25% of NSW’s total A$ value of exports in 2013/14 (38% of Qld). Australia will be #1 globally in LNG by 2018. 4. The financial sector: is leveraged to mining and associated rail port infrastructure. WICET 80% financed by banks, mostly Australian. Adani’s Abbot Point Port is foreign owned, but A$1.2bn of Australian sourced debt. Insurance firms and infrastructure funds are leveraged to fossil fuels vs little RE infrastructure assets. BBY! 5. Rehabilitation: $18bn of unfunded coal mining rehabilitation across Australia. 6. Economic growth: curtailed as Australia fails to develop low carbon industries. Analysis: Record surge of clean energy in 2024 halts China’s CO2 rise
In-depth Q&A: Does the world need hydrogen to solve climate change?
3 May 2016, Carbon Brief, The global coal trade doubled in the decade to 2012 as a coal-fueled boom took hold in Asia. Now, the coal trade seems to have stalled, or even gone into reverse. This change of fortune has devastated the coal mining industry, with Peabody – the world’s largest private coal-mining company – the latest of 50 US firms to file for bankruptcy. It could also be a turning point for the climate, with the continued burning of coal the biggest difference between business-as-usual emissions and avoiding dangerous climate change. Carbon Brief has produced a series of maps and interactive charts to show how the global coal trade is changing. As well as providing a global overview, we focus on a few key countries: Read More here/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3915730/EIA%20coal%20power%20plants.png)
21 April 2015, Climate Council, Will Steffen: Unburnable Carbon: Why we need to leave fossil fuels in the ground.Stern Commission Review
Australia’s Garnaut Review
November 2014 – The Fossil Fuel Bailout: G20 subsidies for oil, gas and coal exploration report: Governments across the G20 countries are estimated to be spending $88 billion every year subsidising exploration for fossil fuels. Their exploration subsidies marry bad economics with potentially disastrous consequences for climate change. In effect, governments are propping up the development of oil, gas and coal reserves that cannot be exploited if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change. This report documents, for the first time, the scale and structure of fossil fuel exploration subsidies in the G20 countries. The evidence points to a publicly financed bailout for carbon-intensive companies, and support for uneconomic investments that could drive the planet far beyond the internationally agreed target of limiting global temperature increases to no more than 2ºC. It finds that, by providing subsidies for fossil fuel exploration, the G20 countries are creating a ‘triple-lose’ scenario. They are directing large volumes of finance into high-carbon assets that cannot be exploited without catastrophic climate effects. They are diverting investment from economic low-carbon alternatives such as solar, wind and hydro-power. And they are undermining the prospects for an ambitious climate deal in 2015. Access full report here For the summary on Australia’s susidisation of it’s fossil fuel industry go to page 51 of the report. The report said that the United States and Australia paid the highest level of national subsidies for exploration in the form of direct spending or tax breaks. Overall, G20 country spending on national subsidies was $23 billion. In Australia, this includes exploration funding for Geoscience Australia and tax deductions for mining and petroleum exploration. The report also classifies the Federal Government’s fuel rebate program for resources companies as a subsidy.
