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 24 August 2018, The Conversation, How hydrogen power can help us cut emissions, boost exports, and even drive further between refills. Hydrogen could become a significant part of Australia’s energy landscape within the coming decade, competing with both natural gas and batteries, according to a new CSIRO roadmap for the industry. Hydrogen gas is a versatile energy carrier with a wide range of potential uses. However, hydrogen is not freely available in the atmosphere as a gas. It therefore requires an energy input and a series of technologies to produce, store and then use it. Why would we bother? Because hydrogen has several advantages over other energy carriers, such as batteries. It is a single product that can service multiple markets and, if produced using low- or zero-emissions energy sources, it can help us significantly cut greenhouse emissions. Compared with batteries, hydrogen can release more energy per unit of mass. This means that in contrast to electric battery-powered cars, it can allow passenger vehicles to cover longer distances without refuelling. Refuelling is quicker too, and is likely to stay that way. The benefits are potentially even greater for heavy vehicles such as buses and trucks which already carry heavy payloads, and where lengthy battery recharge times can affect business models. Read more here 25 July 2018, The Guardian, South Australia on track to meet 75% renewables target Liberals promised to scrap. Liberal energy minister, who inherited policy criticised as a mix of ‘ideology and idiocy’, says he’ll ensure it does not come at too high a price. South Australia’s energy minister says the state is on track to have 75% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025 – the target set by the former Labor premier Jay Weatherill and once rejected by his Liberal government. And Dan van Holst Pellekaan pledged to ensure it does not come at too high a price. The Liberal party was highly critical of Weatherill’s target when it was announced during this year’s South Australian election campaign, with the then state opposition leader, Steven Marshall, pledging to scrap it and the federal energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, likening the then premier to a clean energy addicted gambler “doubling down to chase his losses”. Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull had earlier described Weatherill’s renewable energy policy as “ideology and idiocy in equal measure”. But several expert analyses have found the state is likely to meet or nearly meet the aspirational target, which was not tied to a policy mechanism. The Australian Energy Market Operator has projected South Australia would have 73% renewable power by 2020/21 while consultants Green Energy Markets found it could reach 74% by 2025 without any additional policies being introduced. The South Australian energy and mining minister, Dan van Holst Pellekaan, said that was also his understanding. “That’s what the reports I’ve read are saying,” he said. “We need to harness it properly so consumers aren’t paying too high a price along the way.” Read more here 5 March 2018, Renew Economy, Victoria town’s breakthrough deal on network tariffs as it pursues 100% renewables. A small Victorian town that is hoping to achieve 100 per cent renewable energy as early as 2020 has achieved what appears to be a groundbreaking deal on network charges that could pave the way for similar projects around the country. Newstead, a town of less than 1,500 people in central Victoria, has negotiated new network charges with its electricity distributor, Powercor, that will remove some of the hurdles of building a small solar farm and sharing the output with the community. The two-year trial on new network fees will mean that the community can install solar and share the output without being hit by further network charges for each kilowatt they consume. Equally importantly, they appear to break the nexus between lower energy use and soaring grid charges, and will help ensure that everyone benefits from a local renewable energy transition, and not just those who can afford it. The Powercor tariffs – specially constructed for the people of Newstead, but with a broader energy market transition in mind – introduce a fixed daily network charge of $1 day, and a monthly “demand” charge of $2/kW. It completely removes fees based on kilowatt-hour consumption. Tosh Szatow, from energy consultants Energy for the People, which has been advising the Newstead community group, Renewables Newstead, says the new tariffs will have two significant benefits. One is the way it will make community-owned solar farms, and sharing that solar output, more attractive, because it will eliminate the perverse incentive for individuals to preference rooftop solar, over a shared solar farm, despite the latter option having a lower $/kW installed cost. Read More here 28 February 2018, Energy Live News, Project aims to inject hydrogen into UK gas network. A project that aims to inject hydrogen into a gas network in the UK has officially been launched. The HyDeploy project hopes to establish the potential for blending hydrogen – up to 20% by volume – and is working towards a one-year live trial on part of Keele University’s private gas network, starting in 2019. Led by Cadent, formerly National Grid Gas Distribution, in partnership with Northern Gas Networks and technical experts, the project is currently gathering data from laboratory tests and safety checks on gas appliances in customers’ homes. That includes testing appliances with blends of hydrogen, with data to be submitted to the Health and Safety Executive in April. David Parkin, Director of Safety & Network Strategy at Cadent, said: “HyDeploy will provide important practical evidence to help us understand how hydrogen could help to reduce carbon emissions from heat in a practical and affordable way for UK customers.” Source Carbon Brief, 13 June 2024: Analysis: What record global heat means for breaching the 1.5C warming limit. Global temperatures in 2023 blew past expectations to set the warmest year on record, even topping 1.5C in one of the main datasets. This warmth has continued into 2024, meaning that this year is also on track to potentially pass 1.5C in one or more datasets. Crossing 1.5C in one or even two years is not the same as exceeding the 1.5C limit under the Paris Agreement. The goal is generally considered to refer to long-term warming, rather than annual temperatures that include the short-term influence of natural fluctuations in the climate, such as El Niño. Nonetheless, recent warming has led to renewed debate around whether the world might imminently pass the 1.5C Paris Agreement limit – sooner than climate scientists and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have previously estimated. Here, Carbon Brief provides an updated analysis of when the world will likely exceed the Paris 1.5C limit (in a scenario where emissions are not rapidly cut), using both the latest global surface temperature data and climate model simulations. The findings show that, while the best estimate for crossing 1.5C has moved up by approximately two years compared to Carbon Brief’s earlier 2020 analysis, it remains most likely to happen in the late 2020s or early 2030s – rather than in the next few years. Understanding global temperature targets Human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses have substantially warmed the planet over the past 150 years. On top of this human-driven warming, there is year-to-year natural variability largely associated with El Niño and La Niña events. A big El Niño or La Niña event can result in global temperatures up to 0.2C warmer or cooler, respectively, than they would otherwise be. As the world has been warming by around 0.2C per decade, a large El Niño event can represent an early look at what typical global temperatures will be a decade in the future. Or, to put it another way, human emissions are adding a permanent super-El Niño’s worth of heat to the climate system each decade. Read more here 30 May 2024, The Conversation: Sleight of hand: Australia’s Net Zero target is being lost in accounting tricks, offsets and more gas.In announcing Australia’s support for fossil gas all the way to 2050 and beyond, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has pushed his government’s commitment to net zero even further out of reach. When we published our analysis in December on Climate Action Tracker, a global assessment of government climate action, we warned Australia was unlikely to achieve its net zero target, and rated its efforts as “poor.”… The land sleight of hand Because we have very few real emissions policies, our emissions in many sectors are actually rising. The best way to understand this trend is to remove the energy and land use sectors, so we can clearly see how much other areas are rising. When you do, the data shows Australia’s emissions jumped by 3% from 2022 to 2023 and are now 11% above 2005 levels, with the largest growth from transport. Yet just as the Coalition did, our current government says emissions are dropping. How can this be? Yes, energy emissions are dropping. But the real rub is in the famously malleable land use change and forestry sector. This area is the only sector which can act as either a carbon sink or carbon source. If forests are regrowing fast, the sector acts as a sink, offsetting emissions from elsewhere. Our own calculations show that successive governments have kept increasing their projections for how much carbon they believe the land use sector is storing. That’s happened every year since 2018. If you keep changing how big a carbon sink land use is, you seem to make the task of cutting emissions a lot easier. The topline figure of a 25% fall in emissions sounds great. But in reality, there’s been very little change, if we avoid land use. The Albanese government has now repeatedly changed how it calculates how much carbon the land sector is storing, as well as future projections. Between the end of 2021 and 2023, the government’s figures changed markedly. Land use as a way to capture carbon soared, from 16 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year to a whopping 88 megatonnes a year as of 2022. This is a staggering 17% of Australia’s 2022 fossil fuel and industry emissions. By changing these projections, our national emissions over 2022-23 magically appear to have fallen 6% in a year. Every time the government recalculates how much carbon the land use sector is storing, the less work it has to do on actually cutting emissions from fossil fuels and industry sectors. That means it only needs emissions from fossil fuel use, industry, agriculture and waste to fall 24% by 2030, rather than 32%. These changes to land use accounting may sound arcane, but they have very real consequences. No credible pathway – The only pathway we have left to limit warming to 1.5°C is political. Leaders must take up their responsibility to actually act and develop measures to rapidly cut carbon emissions.Cutting emissions means not emitting them. Relying on offsets or changing how much we think the land is absorbing is not enough. Sadly, our current government seems set on a sleight of hand. Rather than cutting fossil fuel and industry emissions 50% or more by 2030, as it should, the Australian government’s changes to land use accounting mean it has to do much less.This is not a credible pathway towards net zero. READ MORE HERE 23 May 2024, The Conversation: What is ‘Net Zero’, anyway? A short history of a monumental concept. Last month, the leaders of the G7 declared their commitment to achieving net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest. Closer to home, the Albanese government recently introduced legislation to establish a Net Zero Economy Authority, promising it will catalyse investment in clean energy technologies in the push to reach net zero. Pledges to achieve net zero emissions over the coming decades have proliferated since the United Nation’s 2021 Glasgow climate summit, as governments declare their commitments to meeting the Paris Agreement goal of holding global warming under 1.5°C. But what exactly is “net zero”, and where did this concept come from? Stabilising greenhouse gases In the early 1990s, scientists and governments were negotiating the key article of the UN’s 1992 climate change framework: “the stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic [human-caused] interference with the climate system”. How to achieve that stabilisation – let alone define “dangerous” climate change – has occupied climate scientists and negotiators ever since. From the outset, scientists and governments recognised reducing greenhouse gas emissions was only one side of the equation. Finding ways to compensate or offset emissions would also be necessary. The subsequent negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol backed the role of forests in the global carbon cycle as carbon sinks. Read more here The conversation, 5 December 2023: Fossil CO₂ emissions hit record high yet again in 2023. Global emissions of fossil carbon dioxide (CO₂), in yet another year of growth, will increase by 1.1% in 2023. These emissions will hit a record 36.8 billion tonnes. That’s the finding of the Global Carbon Project’s 18th annual report card on the state of the global carbon budget, which we released today. Fossil CO₂ includes emissions from the combustion and use of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) and cement production. Adding CO₂ emissions and removals from land-use change, such as deforestation and reforestation, human activities are projected to emit 40.9 billion tonnes of CO₂ in 2023. The world’s vegetation and oceans continue to remove about half of all CO₂ emissions. The rest builds up in the atmosphere and is causing increasing warming of the planet. At current emission levels, the remaining carbon budget for a one-in-two chance to limit warming to 1.5°C will likely be exceeded in seven years, and in 15 years for 1.7°C. The need to cut emissions has never been so urgent. Read more here 8 September 2025, CarbonBrief: Guest post: How the role of carbon storage has been hugely overestimated. Removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere is widely expected to play a key role in meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. But this will only be effective for slowing climate change if the CO2 can be stored securely and indefinitely. This requires “geological carbon storage”, where captured CO2 is injected deep underground, where it can stay trapped for thousands of years. While the current deployment of CO2 removal (CDR) technologies around the world is small, almost all facilities aim to store captured CO2 in sedimentary basins. However, in our study in Nature, we show that current policy approaches to using these formations on a larger scale could be suffering from a false sense of abundance. We find that – once technical, social and environmental risks are considered – the world’s available reserves of geological carbon storage are significantly more limited than most estimates suggest. Our research shows that, of nearly 12,000bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) of theoretical carbon storage capacity, just 1,460GtCO2 is risk-free. Significantly, we find that, if all available safe carbon storage capacity were used for CO2 removal, this would contribute to only a 0.7C reduction in global warming. In short, geological carbon storage is not limitless – on the contrary, its practical potential is a rather scarce planetary resource. Read more here 7 September 2025, Aljazeera: Millions displaced in severe Pakistan flooding as India impacted too. Four million people have been affected by devastating floods in Pakistan, and thousands of farmers across the border in India are also experiencing the loss of their crops as experts say global warming has worsened the scale of the monsoon rains both nations are now suffering. Over the past week, heavy rains swelled three rivers that run through Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, causing widespread devastation in the country’s agricultural heartland. Entire towns have been submerged, Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder reported from Multan, Pakistan, on Sunday. “The floods have left thousands of farms inundated. Valuable crops are lost,” he said, noting that the government was trying to offer relief to those affected. According to Punjab Relief Commissioner Nabil Javed, the flooding of the Ravi, Sutlej and Chenab rivers has forced more than two million people to flee their homes. Pakistani authorities have set up hundreds of relief camps, medical facilities and veterinary posts to help both people and livestock. Since June, more than 900 people have died in Pakistan as a result of the monsoon floods, the United Nations said. Read more here 5 September 2025, The conversation: Insurers have detailed data on your home’s flood risk. So, why don’t you? Buying a house is one of the most high-stakes decisions many people will make in their lives. Yet many households are investing millions without an adequate understanding of a property’s exposure to growing climate risks. In Australia, perhaps the starkest climate hazard is flood. Flooding ranks as one of the most financially damaging weather-related disasters, with costs rising sharply over the past five years. So, how do you find out a given property’s flood risk? This information certainly exists. It is embedded in the insurance premiums we are charged. But in Australia, unlike many comparable countries, this information is not readily available to all households. Changing that would help them make smarter, more informed decisions – and could benefit us all. The growing threat of floods Flooding is a growing problem for households across the nation, and forecast to grow as the climate changes. Yet, flood risk is not always easy to identify. It reflects the complex interplay of two key elements. The first is topography, the layout of natural and built features on the land, such as hills, rivers, roads, and buildings. The second is hydrology, the way water sources including rainfall, rivers and groundwater are distributed and interact with the environment and human systems. Read more here 22 July 2025, DeSmog: Extreme Weather Events are the New Frontline of Online Climate Denial – Report. Social media posts by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones received 408 million views – more than emergency services and mainstream media combined. Climate science deniers are flooding social media with false claims during extreme weather events, drowning out reliable information and putting lives at risk. A new report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which researches and campaigns against online hatred and disinformation, finds that anti-climate figures are increasingly spreading false information about wildfires and hurricanes fuelled by climate change. CCDH looked at some of the most popular misleading social media posts spread by influential climate science deniers between April 2023 and April 2025, using DeSmog’s climate disinformation database to identify the most prominent deniers. Analysing Facebook, Instagram, X, and YouTube, it found that three quarters of the most popular misleading posts about extreme weather events focused on hurricanes and wildfires. These posts received hundreds of million of views across the two year period, spreading doubt about the causes of the disasters and even maligning the work of emergency responders. The wildfires in Los Angeles (LA), California, earlier this year, which killed at least 30 people and destroyed thousands of homes, accounted for 38 percent of the posts. Hurricane Helene, which hit south-eastern U.S. in September 2024 and caused more than 250 deaths, accounted for 14 percent of the posts. Baseless claims made by U.S. conspiracy theorist Alex Jones during the LA wildfires received 408 million views on X. Jones claimed without evidence that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was “confiscating food” and that the fires were a “globalist” plot. These posts received more views on X than the information distributed on the platform by 10 key emergency response accounts – including FEMA, the fire department, and local government – and the 10 largest U.S. news outlets. 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.
