Aussie Enviro

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/9550904

In today's edition of no shit sherlock. So... solutions ? If only there was some solution, like... not flying... No? okay then, societal collapse it is.

Finally, after a devastating decade of climate and energy transition chaos, inaction and underinvestment under the LNP luddites, we appear to have a government that appreciates Australia’s comparative advantages.

Superabundant renewables, world-leading reserves of critical minerals and strategic metals, an advanced industrial base and strong human capital – are key to locking in our economic prosperity for decades to come.

On Tuesday night, the federal government announced $21.0 billion of new funding initiatives under the Future Made in Australia Act strategic framework in Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ 2024-2025 Federal Budget.

Adding to the around $45 billion of capital support in the 2023 budget, this is another substantial downpayment on the $100 billion of new capital and budget support needed this decade to drive investment in zero emissions industries of the future for Australia.

And notwithstanding last week’s travesty of a Gas Strategy that inexplicably centres methane in our energy mix for decades and decades to come, we can see the burgeoning pivot from our dig-and-ship petrostate to a fit for purpose economy gearing up for the opportunities of a post carbon world. Fortunately, there was no sign of any new support in the budget for methane.

Unlike our trade partners, preeminently the US with the $1tn Inflation Reduction Act’s ‘green new deal and South Korea’s US$313bn public financing of decarbonisation in March 2024, our government has taken a more careful, incremental approach to rolling out state investment in cleantech and renewables.

This is probably by virtue of political necessity given the fomenting of the climate wars and distraction and delay by the Federal opposition, which somewhat mutes the scale of what is being targeted. But now, in combination with the last Budget, we see real forward momentum.

Key initiatives in Budget 2024-25 include:

– A new $7bn Critical Minerals value-adding Production Tax Credit.

– $3.2bn additional funding for ARENA technology commercialisation.

– A $6.7bn Hydrogen Production Tax Incentive and $1.3bn of additional Hydrogen Headstart funding (we presume this will be domestic use oriented e.g. green iron).

– $209m into the Net Zero Economy Authority.

– $168m to prioritise approval decisions for renewable projects of national significance.

– $500m Battery Breakthrough Initiative.

– $179m in additional employment & skills supports for regions + $56m in Building Women’s Careers program + $91m to accelerate the development of the clean energy workforce & expanding the New Energy Apprenticeship Program.

– $777m for strong First Nations workforce participation and development.

The implementation of the Future Made in Australia Act (FMIA) will be guided by a framework comprising a ‘net zero transformation’ stream, where Australia has grounds to build enduring comparative advantage; and an ‘economic security and resilience’ stream, which will identify sectors that are critical to our resilience and vulnerable to supply disruptions.

Five industries are highlighted as aligned with the National Interest Framework: Renewable hydrogen; Critical minerals processing; Green metals; Low carbon liquid fuels; Clean energy manufacturing, including battery and solar panel supply chains.

The Government will establish a ‘new front door for investors’ with major, transformational investment proposals related to Future Made in Australia to make it simpler to invest in Australia and attract more global and domestic capital. This is a strategically important initiative – collaboration with global technology leaders is going to be key to FMIA’s success.

The development of the production tax credit (PTC) model for critical minerals and green hydrogen to incentivise onshore value-adding is a strong step forward, a clear acknowledgement that Australia can’t simply leave it to free markets when other countries have made such significant public interest interventions, undermining global trade.

Some question this over-emphasis on renewable hydrogen, but our read is this is capacity building for mostly domestic applications, including production of green iron for export, a key opportunity for Australia in future global trade.

This will also leverage Energy Minister Bowen’s 82% Renewables by 2030 initiative, turbocharged by the 32GW Capacity Investment Scheme which is driving the rollout of utility scale firmed renewables by underpinning and catalysing private investment, meaning Australia can power our new refineries and regional cleantech manufacturing precincts with renewables so as to export ‘embodied decarbonisation’.

The world is in a technology, trade and finance decarbonisation race to the top as the global energy transition speeds up. This is Australia’s biggest investment, employment, and export opportunity in a century to reorient from our fossil fuel reliant past.

We clearly needed this budget to respond strategically, proportionally and fast, which it has done.

The overall $9bn surplus announced demonstrates this government’s financial credentials and builds in a strong financial fiscal position for the second consecutive year, a marked contrast to the previous mob’s nine-year run of deficits. Now the Albanese government is also starting to show us the money, and invest in a more sustainable economic future for Australia.

It shows a government that understands both this imperative to act to transition Australia to its future as a clean, green superpower and the opportunity cost and risks of not moving to secure Australia’s place in the new net zero world economy.

However, while the budget is pleasing, we would encourage the government to consider more ambitious capital support in future budgets to massively accelerate renewable energy and electrify everything; stimulate value-adding onshore of our world leading critical mineral and metals resources; and rebuild our manufacturing base so we can make things here and secure our position in cleantech supply chain. This will attract an influx of private capital to energy transition.

Over the last year we have seen the allocation of some $45bn of mostly capital support for decarbonisation and reindustrialisation: $15bn to the National Reconstruction Fund; $20bn Rewiring the Nation funding (into the CEFC); the $4bn Critical Minerals Fund; $1.9bn into Powering the Regions; $1bn into the Solar Sunshot; $2bn into the Hydrogen Headstart.

We applaud the extra $3.2bn funding into ARENA.

We continue to call on the government to give the Future Fund a $20bn equity mandate for mining value-adding, to underpin majority Australian equity ownership.

CEF will continue to advocate for more patient, strategic capital support, in terms of debt, private equity, common user infrastructure and equity to derisk and crowd-in the $200-400bn of private capital needed over the coming decade or so.

We note the reference to leveraging Export Finance Australia’s National Interest Account, expanded to include support for projects where domestic capability is critical to protect our national security interests.

$3.5bn in new energy bill relief for households will help offset a fraction of the fossil fuel sector hyperinflation that has driven bill shock. The only permanent solution to the energy price crisis is firmed renewable energy.

On this point, and on the downside of this Budget, we particularly note the absence of any additional stimulus on ‘electrifying everything’, and only $28m of new funding to better integrate consumer energy resources into the grid.

This is disappointing when household electrification and grid modernisation is key to cheap, clean, secure energy for all Australians and a cornerstone opportunity that should be aligned and commensurate with the industrial stimulus that is the key feature of this Budget.

We also note that the expensive imported high emissions diesel fuel subsidy is set to rise to an average of $11bn annually over the forward estimates. This is a massive headwind to domestic energy security, decarbonisation and electrification. As CEF has previously argued, after 60 years, it is past time for this to be capped at $50m pa per corporation (which will leave 100% of our farmers unaffected).

We note there is $32m over the forward estimates for carbon capture and storage (CCS) funding of regional cooperation initiatives, but this looks like funding to build bilateral regulatory frameworks.

If Japan or South Korea want to pay >US$100/t for Australia to take liquified CO2 and sequester it, CEF can live with that – bring on a substantial, regulated carbon price in our major trade partners. They won’t pay for vapourware or years of serial underperformance like at Gorgon!

And there is still no update on the decade-long wait for multinational corporate tax reform to level the playing field currently tilted against Australian firms doing the right thing for Australia.

The $14m to strengthen high-quality critical minerals benchmarks with trade partners is a small step in the right direction. CEF hopes this underpins the massive effort required by Foreign Minister Penny Wong to build an international Asian collaboration with global technology leaders and our key trade partners, including international trade price signals e.g. a ‘green premium’ for minerals processed using renewables, or the development of an Asian carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) to leverage the EU CBAM.

Australia must play the energy transition long game, but we must front-load it this decade, as the climate crisis heats up and as every other advanced economy in the world commits unprecedented investment into decarbonisation, foregrounding national and energy security and shoring up sovereign supply chains.

We are hopeful that this evening’s emphatic entry of Australia into the global race is a harbinger of the government’s intention to seize its once in a century opportunity to remake Australia as a zero-emissions trade and investment leader. This will reap the massive economic, employment and climate benefits for all Australians into the future.

Tim Buckley is director of Climate Energy Finance and AM Jonson is chief of staff. Blair Palese is founder of the Climate Capital Forum.

One of the world’s leading energy experts, and the man dubbed the “Einstein of energy efficiency” has debunked the claims that nuclear energy is essential to meet climate goals, saying that choosing nuclear over renewables and energy efficiency will make the climate crisis worse.

“Carbon-free power is necessary but not sufficient; we also need cheap and fast,” says Lovins, the co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, now known as RMI, and who has been advising governments and companies on energy efficiency for half a century.

“We therefore need to count carbon and cost and speed. At actual market prices and deployment speeds, new nuclear plants would save manyfold less carbon per dollar and per year than cheaper, faster efficiency or modern renewables, thus making climate change worse.

“The more urgent you think climate change is, the more vital it is to buy cheap, fast, proven solutions—not costly, slow, speculative ones.”

The comments by Lovins, made in a keynote presentation at the annual Energy Efficiency Summit in Sydney on Wednesday, are particularly relevant in Australia, where one side of politics is threatening to stop wind, solar and storage, and tear up Commonwealth contracts, and keep coal generators open until such time that nuclear can be built.

The federal Coalition, and its conservative boosters in the media and so called think tanks, argue that nuclear is the best way to get to net zero by 2050, ignoring the pleas and warnings from climate scientists who say that unless emissions cuts are accelerated, then the planet has little chance of keeping average global warming below 2.0° or even 2.5°c.

A common refrain from the Coalition, and conservative parties across the world for that matter, is that nuclear should be included as part of an “all of the above” strategy. To be fair, it is also used by Labor when justifying their infatuation with fossil gas and its proposed future beyond 2050.

“When someone says climate change is so urgent that we need “all of the above,” remember Peter Bradford’s reply: “We’re not picking and backing winners. They don’t need it. We’re picking and backing losers.”

“That makes climate change worse,” Lovins says,. No proposed changes in size, technology, or fuel cycle would change these conclusions: they’re intrinsic to all nuclear technologies.”

He noted that renewables add as much capacity every few days as global nuclear power adds in a whole year. “Nuclear is a climate non-solution (that) isn’t worth paying for, let alone extra.

“Nuclear power has no business case or operational need. It offers no benefits for grid reliability or resilience justifying special treatment. In fact, its inflexibility and ungraceful failures complicate modern grid operations, and it hogs grid and market space that cheaper renewables are barred from contesting.”

Lovins says that grids in Europe have shown that renewable dominated grids can be run with great reliability “like a conductor with a symphony orchestra” with comparatively little storage, and little is needed if politicians and grid operators embraced the full potential of energy efficient and demand site incentives.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/9363398

I just used to accept the 7% increase per c figure but as indicated

This figure comes from research undertaken by the French engineer Sadi Carnot and published 200 years ago this year.

Their work has shown it's much more

For Australia, we helped develop a comprehensive review of the latest climate science to guide preparedness for future floods. This showed the increase per degree of global warming was about 7–28% for hourly or shorter duration extreme rain, and 2–15% for daily or longer extreme rain. This is much higher than figures in the existing flood planning standards recommending a general increase of 5% per degree of warming.

and they explain why

We now know there’s more to the story. Yes, a hotter atmosphere has the capacity to hold more moisture. But the condensation of water vapour to make rain droplets releases heat. This, in turn, can fuel stronger convection in thunderstorms, which can then dump substantially more rain.

This means that the intensity of extreme rainfall could increase by much more than 7% per degree of warming. What we’re seeing is that thunderstorms can likely dump about double or triple that rate – around 14–21% more rain for each degree of warming

Encountered this fellow during bushcare today. He was sitting right on top of the bridal veil roots we were pulling, looking suspiciously like a rock.

We probably shouldn't have handled him (I hope turtles don't get dizzy from being turned upside down). We put him back down and hid him under some other groundcover as a local Kookaburra was loitering.

Another one on the way .... to extinction! Not one mention of climate change in the article :)

the species was already facing many threats and the additional risk posed by high temperatures could have brought it to the brink of extinction without intervention.

“The site data shows the temperatures this summer exceeded previous known maximums, she said.

Looks like they would have nearly all died, with GHG emissions still increasing, I can't see how were doing anything but kick the can down the road

https://archive.ph/ArJOi

So certainly for Australia, it's south-west WA where that declining rainfall trend is going to be most acute," Australian National University climate scientist Nerilie Abram said.

."But for other parts of the country, we also have other impacts of climate change, which again, will continue to worsen for as long as we're continuing to emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere."

We don't take cliante change seriously in Australia, neither does the rest of the world. The Premier of WA has stated that WAs rising greenhouse gas emissions are good for the planet.

On the otjer side.of the nation the Barrier Reef is closer to dead.

I dong blame politocans though, to take it seriously means changes to lifestyles that voters won't tolerate. This will get much much worse

The challenge is way beyond anything we're prepared to countenance as yet, both in terms of mitigation and in terms of adaptation - Professor Kevin Anderson:

In short: A new North West town for 8,000 people will no longer be built as part of a massive renewable energy project when it re-seeks environment approvals. The federal environment law has been criticised for rejecting more renewable projects than fossil fuel ones. What's next? The proponent behind the North West energy project expects to submit an environmental application this year.

...

It would have been halfway along the lonely stretch between tourist mecca Broome and the iron ore shipping capital of Port Hedland.

A new town for 8,000 workers, their families and all the services and additional people you would need for such a population in Australia's remote North West region.

A town built using the latest in sustainability principles to service one of the world's largest renewable energy projects which covers more than 6,500 square kilometres of spinifex-dominated sand plains.

With a 26 gigawatt capacity — which is enough energy to meet a third of Australia's demand in 2020 — the Australian Renewable Energy Hub wind and solar project would have created green hydrogen and ammonia for export.

Well that was the plan.

The New South Wales government will announce within days it will extend the operations of Australia’s biggest coal-fired power station for as long as four years.

The decision involves provide taxpayer subsidies to Origin Energy’s Eraring power station for two years with permits to run for two more, according to several people who have been briefed on the plans.

The cost of the subsidies are due to be discussed by the Minns government’s expenditure review committee as soon as this Friday. Environmental groups and local MPs were also due to be briefed on the plans later this week and prior to 10 May.

Unlike most of its competitors, Origin does not have long-term contracts for the four-unit plant. The subsidy would be aimed at capping the price of coal but may also extend to other aspects of the plant’s operations including an expansion of its coal-ash dams.

“They are responding to the demands of the fossil fuel sector,” said Tim Buckley, head of Clean Energy Finance, who has compiled reports on how NSW can retain a reliable power system without Eraring.

In March, Buckley estimated keeping the power station operating could cost the government as much as $150m a year for just two of its four units.

The previous Perrottet government had been told it could cost the government as much as $1.6bn to keep Eraring running for 18 months, Guardian Australia has been told. That sum, though, involved capping the price of thermal coal when it trading near its peak in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The NSW government is engaging with Origin on its plans for Eraring Power Stations and will not comment while the process is ongoing,” Energy minister Penny Sharpe said, without elaborating.

Guardian Australia also sought comment from Origin Energy.

In an update to the ASX on Tuesday, Origin said “we remain in discussion with the NSW government on the closure date for the Eraring power station”.

Stephanie Bashir, chief executive of Nexa Advisory and an energy industry veteran, said “extending the life of Eraring is a big mistake”.

“This decision by the Minns government will mean that people in NSW will be paying an additional $120-150m a year on their energy bills to keep open an inefficient and unreliable coal-fired power station,” Bashir said. “They’re already paying higher electricity bills than households and businesses in other states.”

Bashir said the subsidy would send “the wrong signal to anyone thinking about investing in renewables in NSW. And it will make the Albanese Government’s emission reduction targets much harder to achieve.”

Bashir and Buckley said the government had many other options to spend the subsidy in way that would reduce emissions and bolster the grid. These include accelerating the rollout of rooftop solar panels and batteries for households and homes at a time when the cost of both were plummeting. skip past newsletter promotion

Jacqui Mills, climate and energy campaigner with the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, said:

“We’ve heard from reliable sources that the government will in the next week announce their intention to spend millions of dollars in taxpayer money to extend the life of Eraring Coal Plant.”

“This is a terrible idea that will drive up power bills for households, undermine investment in clean, renewable energy and increase NSW emissions,” Mills said.

“Since the government came to power they’ve been presented with countless alternatives to the extension of Eraring. Instead of investing in solutions that reduce carbon emissions and power bills, they have decided to prop up coal,” she said.

Annika Reynolds, the Australian Conservation Foundation’s national climate policy adviser at ACF said the extension of Eraring “would ultimately cost the community through worsening climate impacts, higher energy costs and a multi-million dollar a year bill to taxpayers”.

“The Minns government has committed to cut NSW’s emissions by 50% by 2030 and 70% by 2035,” Reynolds said.

“To keep Eraring open beyond its closure date will make the national job of decarbonising our energy grid all that much harder.”

Australia’s coal mine methane emissions are being vastly underreported and are damaging the nation’s credibility on climate change, economist Professor Rod Sims has warned.

Australia may be emitting at least twice the level of methane emissions than reported under a national reporting framework, according to results released on Tuesday from a new monitoring tool.

“The aggregate is so large that you’d have to think that most coal mines are under-reporting their emissions,” Prof Sims, who is the chair of the Superpower Institute, told AAP.

“It’s time to fix the rules. It’s time for the government to get a good, proper measurement system in place so Australia is not continually accused of under-reporting.”

Australia is part of a global pledge to cut methane emissions by 30 per cent by 2030, with fossil fuel producers, livestock and landfill among the main culprits worldwide.

But rubbery progress based on self-reported data risks damaging Australia’s international credibility, according to the institute’s analysis of the first batch of data from the Open Methane tool.

“The results are simply astounding … If we’re not measuring our emissions properly, how can we deal with them?” Prof Sims said.

Australia should be measuring actual emissions from specific locations and not using averages based on decades-old industry data for mining each tonne of coal, he said.

He said a network of ground stations and satellites could also measure agriculture’s methane emissions and whether carbon offsets were effective or not.

“We’ve estimated it’s $100 million over 10 years – $6 million a year to monitor it and $40 million to set it up,” Prof Sims said.

Exports of green iron, fertilisers, transport fuels and silicon will depend on credible measurements of emissions to meet environmental standards that will be required, particularly in Europe, he said.

Atmospheric physicist and pioneer in the global measurement of methane, Emeritus Professor Peter Rayner, said methane emissions were not being credibly measured, even though technology was available.

“Cutting methane is our single best strategy to combat global heating this decade while we make the changes needed to reduce Australia’s emissions to zero,” he said.

Prof Rayner said the first results from the Open Methane tool “unequivocally show” the federal government must mandate measurement by industry operators.

He urged the government to fund a minimum of 12 new monitoring sites around Australia, with results calibrated using satellites.

“If we continue to bury our heads in the sand while methane is being under-reported, there will be no integrity in our systems,” he said.

AAP

Glacing out my window here in rural NE Tas, we're still warring with nature and nature is loosing.

I tell myself I have hardend my heart but I grabbed this book from the local library and the blade still gets through to stab me.

A Queensland council is under investigation by the state government after at least 350 million litres of raw sewage spilled into a Gold Coast river. 

Wildlife Queensland Gold Coast and Hinterland branch president Sally Spain labelled the spill one of the biggest "environmental disasters this city has ever faced".

I'd think surfin' turd rather then surfing bird ? What the fuck ?

Only because some local reported it ?

Emissions in the state increased by almost 9 million tonnes between 2021 and 2022.

The WA government has no target for lowering emissions by the end of this decade.

Vote Green

National leader David Littleproud has reportedly threatened to tear up contracts for wind and solar farm developments, in the latest broadside against large scale renewable energy from the federal Coalition.

The remarks – reported by the Newcastle Herald – were made in a press conference last week in Newcastle, when Littleproud was campaigning against offshore wind projects and outlining the Coalition’s hope that it could build a nuclear power plant in the upper Hunter Valley.

The Coalition has vowed to stop the roll out of large scale renewables, and keep coal fired power plants open in the hope that they can build nuclear power plants – recognised around the world as the most expensive power technology on the planet – some time in the late 2030s and 2040s.

No one in the energy industry, nor large energy consumers for that matter, are the slightest bit interested in nuclear because of its huge costs and time it takes to build, and because it would set back Australia’s short term emissions reductions.

But the comments about contracts are the most sinister to date, and reflect the determination of a party leader who just a few years ago described renewables and storage as a “good thing”, including the huge wind and solar projects that are being built in his own electorate, to destroy the renewables industry.

The Newcastle Herald quoted Littleproud as saying that an incoming Coalition would undertake a review of all existing government energy infrastructure contracts.

“We will look at where the existing government took contracts and at what stage they are at,” Littleproud said.

“There are some projects on land that we will have to accept, but we are not going to just let these things happen. If that means we have to pay out contracts we will definitely look at that.”

The federal government this week announced the biggest ever auction of wind and solar in Australia, seeking six gigawatts of new capacity that will be underwritten by contracts written by the commonwealth.

This will see at least 2.2 GW of new wind and solar sourced in NSW, at least 300 MW in South Australia, already the country’s leader with a 75 per cent share of wind and solar in its grid, and multiple gigawatts spread over other states.

However, the Coalition’s nuclear plans are already facing delays, having pulled back from a previous commitment to deliver the nuclear policy before the May 14 federal budget. It now only promises to release the policy before the next election, with Littleproud telling Sky News on Monday that the party “would not be bullied” into an early release.

One of the many problems with its nuclear strategy will be finding sites for the proposed power plants. The Coalition has targeted the upper Hunter as one site, but AGL, the owner of the site that houses the now closed Liddell and the still operating Bayswater coal generators, has said it is not interested because it is focused on renewables and storage.

Littlepround, however, said there are other sites in the area that could be used, although the Newcastle Herald said he declined to nominate those sites. Inevitably, they would require new infrastructure.

The campaign against renewables and for nuclear has been based around misinformation, both on the cost and plans of renewables and transmission, and on the cost of nuclear power plants, which have stalled around the world because of soaring costs, huge delays, and because no small modular reactor has yet been licensed in the western world.

That campaign has been amplified by right wing “think tanks” and ginger groups, and the Murdoch media, and largely reported uncritically in other mainstream media. It appears to be having some traction.

According to an Essential Media poll published in The Guardian on Tuesday, 40 per cent of respondents ranked renewables as the most expensive form of electricity, 36 per cent said nuclear, and 24 per cent said fossil fuels.

The poll also found a majority (52%) of voters supported developing nuclear power for the generation of electricity, up two points since October 2023, and 31% opposed it, down two points.

The most recent GenCost report prepared by the CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator, like other international studies, says that nuclear power costs nearly three times more than renewables, even counting the cost of storage and transmissions.

However, the Coalition – with the support of right wind media and agitators – have led relentless campaigns against the CSIRO and AEMO, even though their nuclear costs were based on the only SMR technology that has gotten close to construction, before being pulled because it was too expensive.

The push to stop renewables comes despite reports from both AEMO and the Australian Energy Regulator that highlight how the growth in renewables has lowered wholesale power prices, despite extreme weather events and the impact of the unexpected outage of Victoria’s biggest coal generator.

The only state where wholesale electricity prices actually rose were in Queensland, which has the heaviest dependency on coal, although the state has just passed laws that lock in its 75 per cent emissions reduction target and its 80 per cent renewables target by 2030.

South Australia has already reached a 75 per cent wind and solar generation share in its grid, and aims to reach “net” 100 per cent by the end of 2027. It enjoyed the biggest fall in wholesale spot prices in the last quarter, which state minister Tom Koutsantonis said should be passed on to consumers.

“SA’s prices fell the most of any state, and the black coal dependent states of Queensland and NSW had the highest prices,” Koutsantonis said.

“These proven falls in wholesale prices are encouraging signs that we are on the right track. South Australia’s high proportion of renewables – which exceeded 75 per cent of generation in 2023 – is key to South Australian prices being far lower than the black-coal states of NSW and Queensland.

“Retail prices must fall because wholesale costs to retailers are going down.”