It’s
happening again.
I have to
pretend I am a New Zealander.
I don’t
really have to of course – but as an Australian living in Asia it is somewhat
embarrassing confessing that I am from Down Under when our politicians back
home continue to make such horrific policies and decisions in matters relating
to both Immigration and Climate Change.
Where we once
seemed to have such a great international reputation as being laid back and
friendly people – Australians are now fast being recognised as a heartless and
Neanderthal bunch.
I am often
asked “Why?” when I am out and about
with my Chinese or Singaporean or Indonesian friends and I am verbally attacked
on matters of Australian environmental politics so I find it easier now to just
say I am a Kiwi.
“Five, sucks, seven, eight”
This is no
easy task.
The New
Zealand accent bears some similarity to the ‘strine’ that we Aussies speak but
the Kiwi’s use of vowels is as dysfunctional as it is disturbing.
It is in fact
an abomination.
The United
Nations International Climate Change Conference – or COP21 - will be held in
Paris in December of this year. It is now 18 years since the Kyoto Protocol was
first established.
Australia
eventually signed the Protocol in 1998 but it did not ratify it until a Labor
Government was elected in 2007. The then
Prime Minister Mr. Kevin Rudd declared that Australia would set a target of
reducing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions by 60% on 2000 levels by 2050. Mr. Rudd
also committed that Australia would establish a national emissions trading
scheme by 2010 and set a 20% target for renewable energy by 2020.
All seemed to
be heading on track with Australia’s Renewable Energy Targets (RET) with some
quite substantial investment in both the solar and wind sectors until February
2014 when the current Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Abbott declared that the RET’s
would be ‘reviewed’ and the proposed tax on Carbon would be repealed.
Australia now
has the inglorious record of being the only country in the world to ever repeal
environmentally focused carbon reduction legislation.
The Renewable
Energy sector in Australia has been in rapid decline since then and the
likelihood of Australia reducing it’s Greenhouse gas emissions and achieving
the targeted 20% of renewable energy now seems most unlikely.
This is a
terrible shame.
Senator
Christine Milne – who until very recently was the head of the Australian Greens
Party declared, “The RET was working
brilliantly until Tony Abbott realized renewables were undermining the profits
of the coal-fired generators and that’s why he decided to smash it……… he’s
removed all certainty from the renewable energy sector and handed it over to
his mates in the fossil fuel sector.”
The enormous
black and brown coalmines of my country and together with iron ore they have
been the mainstay of the economy. They rake in billions of dollars of annual export
earnings for Australia and taxation revenue for the Federal government and the
mining resources sector were the primary reason that Australia did not fall
into recession in both of the Global Financial Crises.
They have
made my country wealthy with such an abundance we have been blessed with.
However coal
and coalmines and coal power generators are very rapidly becoming as uneconomic
as they are unpopular.
The two are
intrinsically linked.
The beginning
of the end is nigh for coal.
Consumers and
voters such as myself want Australia to step up and come up with a rapid and
sustainable plan to endeavour to move to a low carbon economy. We would like to
transition our love affair with harmful natural resources to the large-scale
development of renewable energy.
Our land is
vast and empty and is as equally blessed with long days of sunshine and more
than 35,000 kilometers of wind swept coastline as it is with coal resources. It
is ideal for huge arrays of solar and wind power farms that could easily
ultimately provide for the majority of Australia’s domestic and commercial energy
needs.
It is both
disappointing and perplexing to me that the Australian Prime Minister Tony
Abbott very recently directed the state owned Clean Energy Finance Corporation
(CEFC) to cease all investment in wind and ‘small scale’ solar projects.
The CEFC was
set up in 2013 by the then Labor Government.
Abbott
publically described Wind Turbines as being ‘visually awful’ and “they make a
lot of noise”.
I am not sure
if he was asked whether he thought that the horrendous black scars of open cut
coal mines or the chimneys of billowing smoke of our coal fired power stations were
visually attractive.
I will try
and find out.
The
Australian electorate and we expatriates abroad are not sure what he is
thinking when he does and says such things.
It really is
embarrassing.
The offshore
wind farm potential alone in Australia is enormous and countries like the UK,
Germany and Denmark have very clearly demonstrated their ability to generate
commercial volumes of clean wind energy. The UK generates more than 13
gigawatts of power from wind and while Australia’s total consumption of
electricity exceeded 220 gigawatts in 2014 – Australia has significantly more
offshore areas than the UK where offshore wind farms can be constructed without
any impact on local communities.
The sunless
Germany produced nearly 26 gigawatts of solar energy in 2014 and their
renewable energy production now makes up 30% of their total volume.
We have
significantly more daylight hours and massive amounts more open space for mega-scale
solar arrays than Germany.
All that is
needed is sensible politics and appropriate capital investment by a responsible
government.
“Sensible”
and “Responsible” government?
Yes I know.
However simply
removing the subsidies that are given to the coal and oil sectors would have a
big impact - and then giving the same subsidies to the RE sector.
That would be
big.
The
government seems to have got it the wrong way around.
A 2014 report
conducted by the Overseas Development Institute and Oil Change International
group titled, “The Fossil Fuel Bailout” suggested that exploration by coal and
energy companies in Australia was subsidized by as much as 4 billion dollars
per year by Australian taxpayers. This came in the form of tax breaks and
direct spending.
The same
report estimated that the G20 countries are supporting and subsidizing oil, gas
and coal exploration to the tune of US$88 billion per annum.
Yes that is
US$88 billion per annum.
Fancy that.
The beginning
of the end of the fossil fuel era is well and truly here.
We need to
just accept this in a global collaboration to save the planet. We can’t go on
burning carbon at the rates that we do to produce energy or we will face ever
increasing catastrophic consequences.
There have
been decades long warnings by the scientific community that the global use of
fossil fuels must diminish to halt the devastating effects of Climate Change
and Global Warming. Fourteen of the hottest fifteen years on record have
happened since the year 2000 and 2014 and the increased incidence of flooding,
heat waves and natural loss events are devastating agricultural, oceanography
and society.
Human impact
is – at the very least – accelerating global warming.
This is
indisputable and we must aim to stop it or at least slow it down. A cessation
of the use of fossil fuels to energize our cities and cars and planes is an
absolute requisite by mankind for us to prevent us from harming the planet any
further.
It is choked
already and is in peril.
The science
is quite clear and it is as simple as that.
The future of
the yet untapped coal in the huge Galilee basin in the state of Queensland is a
prime example of the uncertainty of coal mining in Australia. It is an
incredibly large hunk of pristine land covering more than a quarter of a
million square kilometers. Eight coal extraction operations were initially
earmarked for the basin with experts estimating that it contains up to 28,000
million tonnes of dirty thermal coal.
In NSW
however, approval was granted a few days ago for the 1.2 billion open-cut coal
mine called ‘Watermark’ to proceed. The approval that was granted was by the
Environmental Minister Greg Hunt. The mine is to be located on the edge of a
place named the Liverpool Plains – a food basin region rich with agricultural
history. The mine is predicted to dig ten million tonnes of thermal coal per
annum for the next thirty years.
There is
already a loud political and community outcry at the announcement.
As there
should be.
Thermal coal
is the type used to feed the archaic, filthy and highly polluting coal based
Power stations.
A report was
released only a fortnight ago by the Australian Climate Council stating that if
all the coal in the Galilee basin was to be burned - Australia’s carbon dioxide
emissions would double to more than 700 million tonnes each year.
The Climate
Council of Australia is an independent organisation that was set up by
crowd-funding after the current Federal Government abolished and dismantled its
own Climate Commission.
Fancy that as
well.
It was the
people of Australia who had to found and then fund their own Commission of
Climate Change - such was the mistrust in their own government. The Mining
Industry in Australia is powerful and obscenely wealthy organisation that
actively lobbies and influences governments at the State and Federal level.
Whatever
interest these magnates have in Climate Change is dwarfed by their fear of
dwindling profits. These billionaires have already been hard hit by the
plummeting price of iron ore but they have divested resource interests and very
deep pockets to protect the mining interests.
The mining
sector in Australia employed more than 260,000 people as at May 2015. A decade
earlier there were a little over 100,000 employed in mining.
They are a
very large and important sector that has whole communities in most states built
for purpose to mine.
This goes
back more than a century and a half to the Gold Rush days.
The
Australian coal industry is massive. It accounted for more than 13% of
Australia’s total exports in 2012-2013 – down from 15% the year before. It is
Australia’s second biggest export commodity – iron ore being the first.
The
export of coking coal generated $22.4 billion of export revenue in the
2012/13 financial year, with thermal coal bringing in $16.1 billion during
the same period. Coking coal is the type used to produce steel and thermal coal
is used for the production of steam – principally for power generation.
Thermal
coal contains less carbon than coking coal – which is also referred to as
metallurgical coal. There is currently no alternative commercially scaled process
or technology to manufacture steel without the use of coking coal.
Processes
such as electrolysis are capable of producing steel sans coal, however it well
be at least two decades before the process can be scaled up and commercialized.
I
am not sure why I just used the French word ‘sans’ – I just sometimes do.
It
means ‘without’.
Technologies
for reduced coke consumption in combination with natural gas and electricity
are being developed and trialed however the carbon release levels remain very
high in steel production.
The
world needs to get much better at steel recycling to have a measurably positive
impact on Climate Change. Steel is an almost unique material in its capacity to
be infinitely recycled without loss of properties or performance. It is
estimated that only 30% of the world’s steel is currently recycled where a
figure of near 80% could actually be achieved.
We
need to wean ourselves off both coal and steel as much as - and as soon as - we
possibly can.
A spokesman
for the Australian Climate Commission - Professor Tim Flannery - said that
Australia was currently responsible for more than one and a half percent of
global CO2 emissions.
“We are the 15th largest
emitter in the world and the largest per capita emitter on the planet,” Professor Flannery reported.
I recently
heard that we are thirteenth but I can’t recall the source.
In April of
this year three French Investment Banks - BNP
Paribas, Credit Agricole and Societe General - announced publically that
they would not be funding any of the $16.5 billion required to finance the Galilee
basin projects – which are largely being driven by the Giant India Resourcing Company
- Adani. These French banks have all
historically been investors in the coalmining sector in Australia and they are
allegedly declining to invest on mostly environmental grounds.
This means
that now eleven major international lenders have refused to finance the coal
extraction project - and none of the four ‘big’ Australian banks have yet to commit
either. The preliminary engineering works that were being undertaken in the
basin have now ground to a halt and many Australian environmental supporters –
including myself – are hoping that this particular batch of coal will forever
stay in the ground.
We are hoping
that the coal from the Watermark mine stays in the ground as well.
$1.2 billion
would go a long way in the Australian Renewable Energy sector. The public
street lighting for every town and city in every state of the country could be
converted to off-grid photovoltaic LED for less than that.
That’s a lot
of clean and green off grid wattage.
It is
heartening to see that the export markets for coal from Australia seem to be
diminishing too. China’s use of coal reduced by nearly 3% in 2014 and it seems
that a similar or greater number will occur in 2015. This is very consistent
with the fact that other countries are investing more and more in renewable
energy programs to meet their carbon reduction commitments.
I am not a lone
Australian voice hoping that both the global and local regulatory frameworks
and the trend towards renewable energy options will soon make new coal mining
ventures dinosaurs in the modern era.
I may well be
in a majority.
All of the
big nations of the world are in the process of escalating the rates they
propose to reduce their GHG emissions and these will be committed to at the
Paris conference. Commitments of between 30% and 40% by the year 2020 appear to
be commonplace and are completely achievable.
The tipping
point though is now and it is simply by virtue that there is near parity in the
unit production cost of RE against traditional coal or gas generated grid power
- with the obvious benefit of no production of carbon.
This tipping
will escalate further when a global price on carbon is eventually calculated,
priced and traded as a commodity. Carbon pricing is inevitable in some shape or
form as governments mandate that the production of it is and should be a cost
or penalty through a balance sheet deficit.
Such stimulus
incentivizes the big polluters in the Mining and Energy sectors to reduce their
carbon footprints.
The
technology is certainly there and both governments and capital markets are now
investing heavily.
I wait with
baited breath to see what number Mr. Abbott and his government come up with in
the way of Australia’s GHG reduction targets by 2020 - and I hope that it will
be comparable to the EU and the United States and Great Britain and Canada.
It needs to
be at least 20% and hopefully more.
I have my
doubts though and my concerns.
There’s a lot
of clout in coal back home and there has been for a long time.
The poem ‘My
Country’ was written by a lady named Dorothea MacKellor. She describes her love
of Australia as a great “Sunburnt Country
– a land of sweeping plains”.
I love my sun-drenched
country too.
It is a huge
and mostly empty continent blessed with an abundance of natural resources and a
saturation of sunshine.
It is well
and truly time that we stop mining the carbon and start mining the sun – on a
grandiose scale. We owe it the future generations and our great continent is
the perfect place for clean energy.
The days of
extracting dirty coal and the vile pollution that comes from the now archaic
process of burning this to produce electricity must come to an end if Australia
is to play it’s part in saving the planet.
And play our
part we must.
The argument
that our contribution to Greenhouse Gas emissions is tiny compared to the super
powers is now statistically quite incorrect and it just doesn’t cut it.
The coal we
dig out of the ground has long burnt in the steel furnaces and power plants of Japan
and China and India as well as in our own backyard.
C’mon
Australia – lift your game.
I am well and
truly pussed off - and I really don’t wish to pretend to be a Kiwi any more.
No comments :
Post a Comment