Morals Aside, Practical Approach to Climate Change Required

The Prime Minister’s dramatic plunge in voter approval, which began when his Government suspended his ETS ambitions, reflects an electorate that doubts Rudd’s credibility as a leader. There is a need to reframe climate debates in more nationally focused terms. Any carbon pricing must be accompanied by co-ordinated policies in infrastructure, skills and training, and employment generation. This from author and philosopher Tim Soutphommasane.

Tim Soutphommasane in The Australian (14 June 2010):

Labor needs a practical, not a moral, approach to climate change

NOW may seem a strange time for progressives to talk about renewing the climate change debate.

With Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s abandonment of ETS legislation, climate change has ceased to be an urgent political concern.

Those who hoped a Rudd government would deliver decisive action may justifiably feel frustration, if not despair. Little wonder there has been a surge of support for the Greens. Rebuilding the case for progressive climate change politics will naturally take time, but it is important to draw the right lessons from the Rudd government’s first term.

The most obvious lesson is that political reform requires courage and conviction. Labor’s current spiral in the polls is vindication of Machiavelli’s maxim that Fortune favours those princes who are audacious rather than cautious. Rudd Labor’s dramatic plunge in voter approval, which began when the PM suspended his ETS ambitions, reflects an electorate that doubts Rudd’s credibility as a leader.

Isn’t climate change meant to be the greatest moral challenge of our time, after all?

At another level, the failure of progressives’ prosecution of the climate change debate demonstrates a philosophical malaise.

There is no doubt that climate change presents some profound ethical challenges and requires an international response.

Yet the temptation has been to conclude that a global problem requires not only a global solution but also a global morality.

Parochial national interests, the argument runs, must be subordinated to those of humanity at large. Global responsibility must trump patriotism. Where we fail to support significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, we are guilty of immorality.

If only it were so simple.

The failure of Copenhagen has underlined, if ever it needed emphasis, that there are grave problems with relying on cosmopolitan ethics. For we may talk about climate change as a moral problem, but how we deal with our inevitably imperfect and ignoble world is another matter.

Any compelling climate change argument must be integrated into a national story and reformist agenda. There is a need to reframe climate debates in more nationally focused terms. Many progressives on the social democratic Left may decry this as a form of nationalistic retreat. But it does little good to build castles in the air and continue appealing to global solidarity. Reform agendas must be based on broad public support and articulated in the prose of national interest, not in the meter of cosmopolitan poetry.

Building a distinctive Australian story on climate change isn’t necessarily straightforward.

Australians have a complex relationship with the environment.

True, we often express our patriotism in terms of a love of the physical aspects of our country; we all love our sunburnt country.

But the national imagination has always regarded the physical environment as something to conquer: the Australian nation was built by felling trees, cultivating land, damming rivers, and laying roads and railways through mountains and across deserts. We have historically made our living from the land. We treat the environment as an economic resource to be exploited rather than an endowment to be protected.

We need only look to the public’s response to the government’s proposed mining resources rent tax to appreciate how powerful such currents run in our psyche. The language of jobs and growth has long ruled our vernacular.

This doesn’t mean that nation-building and climate change action are incompatible. But it does mean that a more integrated approach is needed. Any carbon pricing must be accompanied by co-ordinated policies in infrastructure, skills and training, and employment generation.

This approach would reverse some of the present conventional wisdom, namely, the belief that moving to reduce carbon emissions will lead to “carbon leakage” as investment flows to those countries unencumbered by stringent emissions targets.

At the same time, this approach would involve a more powerful social-justice imperative. The costs of climate change adjustment will be borne disproportionately by low-income households and workers in emissions-intensive industries. Instead of retraining redundant workers down the track to make them fit a new low-carbon economy, the transitional should begin today.

There are compelling reasons for Australian progressives to embrace a more muscular vision of nation-building and social justice as opposed to the grandiosity of cosmopolitan ethics. The moral challenge of climate change – so apparently neat and unambiguous – has for too long been divorced from the political challenge, something so unavoidably messy.

If a moral language can’t motivate us to translate principles into practice, then it does little good for us to parade our virtue.

Emphasising patriotism and nation-building may seem strange to suggest as a response to what is a global problem. Yet, strangely enough, decisive action may require us to be patriotic savages, motivated by working for our national tribe, rather than cultivated cosmopolitan ghosts, moved by a love of humanity.

Tim Soutphommasane gave a keynote lecture on climate change as part of the Alfred Deakin Lectures 2010 on 11 June. He is a political theorist, commentator and author of Reclaiming Patriotism: Nation-Building for Australian Progressives.

A research fellow at Monash University’s National Centre for Australian Studies and a senior project leader at the Per Capita think tank, Tim writes the “Ask the Philosopher” column in The Weekend Australian, which offers a philosophical take on politics, society and public policy. He has written widely for the British and Australian press, among other things as a contributing leader-writer for The Financial Times and The Guardian. His work has also appeared in The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Monthly, The Australian Literary Review and The Spectator.

Of Chinese and Lao extraction, and a first-generation Australian, Tim was raised in the southwest suburbs of Sydney. He recently completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree in political theory at the University of Oxford, from where he also holds a Master of Philosophy degree (with distinction). Tim studied at Oxford as Commonwealth and Jowett Senior Scholar at Balliol College. He is a first-class honours graduate of the University of Sydney.

Source: www.theaustralian.com.au

Is The Answer to Increase Taxes on Fossil Fuels?

It is possible to achieve sustainable economic growth, reduced poverty and an improved climate. Environmental economist Thomas Sterner has found that one of the most effective ways to achieve this goal would be to increase the taxes on fossil fuels. Higher fuel taxes in Europe than in USA has indeed reduced both emissions from the transport sector and the level of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Eureka Public release (14 June 2010):

Green and fair economic growth with more expensive fossil fuels

Why are the international climate negotiations moving so slowly? Because countries have so far been unable to define what global fairness really is, says Thomas Sterner, Professor of Environmental Economics at the University of Gothenburg.

Sterner and several other prominent economists including several recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economics spoke at the World Bank conference on development economics in Stockholm recently.

Sterner’s research shows that it is indeed possible to achieve sustainable economic growth, reduced poverty and an improved climate – if we make fossil fuels more expensive.

The European countries and USA have emitted more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than anybody else. Yet, in recent years, fast growing economies such as China and India have been picking up the Western pollution habit. In fact, China has even surpassed the rest of the world and currently tops the not very flattering list of the world’s leading greenhouse gas emitters. However, if we look at emissions per capita, then China is still far behind USA. And India’s per-capita level is even much lower than China’s.

‘If there is such a thing as a right to emit greenhouse gases, then people and countries are valuing that right higher and higher. The question is whether some countries have more of a right than others’, says Sterner.

Reducing emissions is very costly, and who is to pay? The answer to this question could be determined, says Sterner, by making all countries reduce their emissions by the same proportion, say by 50 percent. Another way would be to grant each individual in the world the exact same right to emit. If we were to implement the first alternative, so that all countries have to decrease their emission by the same percentage, then USA would get to emit 16 percent of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions, while India would have to make do with only 4 percent. If we instead were to implement the latter principle, that all individuals have an equal right to emit, then USA would be allotted 4 percent while India would be able to enjoy the luxury of emitting 16 percent.

‘It doesn’t take a genius to see that India prefers the latter alternative while USA likes the idea of the former. This example clearly illustrates the reason why the international climate negotiations don’t seem to be making much progress’, Sterner explains.

Carbon dioxide emissions need to be reduced

The Copenhagen conference can certainly be viewed as a failure since it did not result in any binding agreements. Yet, one can also think of the situation as ‘negotiations in progress’. The problem though is that the climate issue is urgent.

To successfully manage the climate challenge, the world needs to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions significantly. A climate model developed by Christian Azar and other researchers at the Chalmers University of Technology – the Chalmers Climate Calculator – shows that in order to reach the goal of increasing the global average temperature by no more than two degrees Celsius, the world’s total emissions must decrease by around two percent per year.

Sterner has found that one of the most effective ways to achieve this goal would be to increase the taxes on fossil fuels. Today, these taxes are considerably higher in Europe than in USA, and this has indeed reduced both emissions from the transport sector and the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The consumption of petrol goes hand in hand with the income trend, according to Sterner’s research, and this means that the level of a country’s petrol tax is very decisive for that country’s emission level. Italy and the UK, with their relatively expensive petrol, are in this sense more environmentally friendly than USA and Canada, whose low taxes do not do much to help reduce emissions.

Poverty calls for economic growth

At the same time, half of the world’s population suffer from poverty, which calls for significant economic growth. ‘To make the needed economic growth sustainable, we must have instruments in place that make the right sectors and technologies grow. If we again turn to the transport sector, we know that a five percent increase in income leads to the same size increase in emissions. If we want to reduce the emissions by two percent, we must increase the fuel taxes by around nine percent per year at least until the price of fossil fuels reaches the costs of sustainable alternatives’, says Sterner.

A common argument against petrol taxes is that they are said to affect the poor in particular (the tax is regressive). But Sterner’s research shows that petrol taxes instead affect the rich more, especially in poor countries (which makes the tax progressive). One reason behind this finding is that poor people usually do not drive much, and their indirect consumption of petrol (related to public transport) makes up a relatively small share of their household budget.

‘The concern that the petrol tax is regressive and strikes the poor may be due to the fact that the first studies on this issue were conducted in USA in the 1980s and 1990s. But countries differ. In USA, many poor citizens drive a car and public transport is generally not very well developed. If we instead look at the poorest countries, we see that cars and petrol are luxury products. This means that the issue must be studied in countries with different income levels and distributions’, says Sterner.

At the World Bank’s ABCDE Conference (Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics), Sterner spoke on Environmental Commons and the Green Economy.

The annual ABCDE Conference, which dates back to 1989, has become one of the most important yearly conferences for research within the field of developmental economics. This year’s conference was hosted jointly by the Swedish Government and the World Bank and gathered around 600 guests from around the world in Stockholm on May 31-June 2.

The list of speakers included several Noble Prize winners – Elinor Ostrom, Joseph Stiglitz, Eric Maskin, James Mirrlees and Robert Solow – as well as the World Bank’s Senior Vice President and Chief Economist Justin Yifu Lin.

The conference was concluded with three Nobel Prize winners discussing ‘Development Challenges in a Post-Crisis World’. Stephanie Flanders, economics editor at BBC, lead the discussion.

Source: www.economics.gu.se/sterner

Bonn Climate Talks Falter On Way To Replace Kyoto

Will there ever be a definitive way forward to reach international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Small steps were made at Bonn to find a successor to the Kyoto Protocol agreement, which expires in 2012, and New Zealand climate change ambassador Adrian Macey was elected vice-chairman of the Kyoto Protocol negotiations.

By Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent, Financial; Times (13 June 2010):

Christiana Figueres startled delegates when she addressed the United Nations climate conference in Bonn last week: “I do not believe we will ever have a final agreement on climate change, certainly not in my lifetime,” the Costa Rican diplomat told them.

Her words count, and not only because of her 15-year involvement in tackling global warming. Next month, Ms Figueres takes over from the Netherlands’ Yvo de Boer as executive secretary of the UN’s climate change secretariat, based in the former west German capital.

As Bonn’s low, heavy skies pelted delegates with rain, much of the rest of the talk during the long sessions was of technical matters such as the measurement of greenhouse gases. But in quiet conversations in the corridors, in cafes over hurried coffees or while scurrying between thunderstorms, the deeper question some officials were asking was whether there was indeed any point in continuing with this type of negotiation, which had failed for 20 years. Could the UN climate talks be reformed – or were they just too broken to fix?

For more than three years, the chief aim has been to set a deadline for when talks must result in a fully legally binding international treaty, which would replace the flawed Kyoto protocol when its main provisions expire in 2012. Last December’s Copenhagen summit, the most important gathering of world leaders ever to engage with global warming, ended without a firm outcome amid scenes of chaos and acrimonious disagreement. Six months on, the views articulated by Ms Figueres mark an important new stage in UN thinking on how the world’s response to the threat of warming will take shape.

Today’s political atmosphere is, many officials privately acknowledge, even more hostile to a climate deal than it was last December. Leaders around the world, already preoccupied by the aftermath of the financial crisis and recession, are in some cases having to impose painful public spending cuts.

In Europe, keeping the euro intact and shoring up Greece and other wobbling economies has left little time for green policies. When Connie Hedegaard, the European Union climate change commissioner who chaired most of the Copenhagen summit, suggested in May that the bloc’s emissions-cutting target could be toughened, she was greeted with derision by sections of business.

In the US, a bill on climate change that would have brought in a cap-and-trade system to put a market price on emissions was in effect shelved as it lacked support among Democrats. Proposals for a new energy bill are still in flux.

Outside the conference centre, protesters bearing banners and placards acted as a reminder that the real environmental story was happening elsewhere, as they railed against BP and its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which has already resulted in some restrictions on oil exploration. The spill could swing public opinion on the energy industry and the environment in unpredictable ways.

Given these factors, even some of the strongest advocates of a climate treaty have seemed to lose heart. Ms Hedegaard says the hopes of some at Copenhagen – that a treaty could be drawn up at the next meeting, this December in Mexico – are mistaken. Even according to Mr de Boer, architect of the Copenhagen talks, “If we are to get a treaty, a year later [the end of 2011] is much more realistic.”

At Copenhagen, the world’s biggest economies signed up for the first time to limits on their emissions. But partly because of the complex and gruelling nature of the UN negotiation process, by which every nation must agree to every detail of the document before it can be passed, a treaty remained out of reach. When a handful of small countries – chiefly Venezuela, Bolivia and Sudan – refused to co-operate, they scuppered the chances of the agreement being adopted.

But Ms Figueres seemed to be acknowledging that any agreement reached will by its nature be partial and constantly subject to revision, for instance in the light of changing economic circumstances and evolving scientific knowledge. In that case, some in Bonn last week were mooting, countries could still work towards a legally binding treaty but it could be in a less rigid format. For instance, the definition of “legally binding” could be redrawn and a new agreement could include mechanisms for countries to take on a range of emissions targets depending on their circumstances. There could even be opt-outs for some countries on certain minor points.

Officials are also conscious that some flexibility needs to be shown to the US, where President Barack Obama’s ambitions for a legally binding treaty are constrained by domestic politics. At Copenhagen, Mr Obama offered a 17 per cent cut in US emissions, based on 2005 levels – provisional on domestic legislation setting limits on emissions. There is now scant chance of such legislation passing, owing to opposition within his own party and the increased power that the looming midterm congressional elections may give his opponents from November.

Without an emissions cap agreed at home, US officials would find it hard to negotiate a treaty capping global emissions. They also will not repeat the mistake of the Kyoto protocol, whereby the White House signed up to the protocol but Congress never ratified it.

Without the US, any new treaty would fail just as Kyoto did. Accordingly, some developed country officials told the Financial Times they were seeking ways to help the US finesse this point.

For some long-time participants in climate talks – which have been running in various forms for two decades without producing a global treaty that limits emissions – pursuing the holy grail of a comprehensive treaty is anyway a mistake. “I don’t think the most important thing right now is a treaty. It is a distraction,” says Paul Bledsoe of the US National Commission on Energy Policy, a group of experts that advises policymakers. “I’m not saying it isn’t the end goal – it is – but concentrating too hard on a treaty allows bad actors to throw up roadblocks and consumes the time of good actors who could be doing other things.”

A series of partial agreements on key aspects of climate change may be a more realistic way forward, he suggests. One of the more successful parts of the Copenhagen summit was a widespread acceptance of a format called Redd – reduced emissions from forest degradation and deforestation – that seeks to encourage flows of financial assistance from the rich world to poor countries that agree to preserve their existing forests.

Norway demonstrated its enthusiastic support for Redd in May when it signed the first deal under the concept, pledging to pay Indonesia $1bn to preserve large tracts of its forests. Pledges due from other nations, including the UK and Germany, could eventually increase this to $4bn.

Redd has its critics, however – some green campaigners point out that Indonesia still plans to cut down large areas of forest – and in its current form is more of a collection of guidelines on issues such as counting emissions rather than a fully worked-out mechanism for financing, on the model of carbon trading.

But financial assistance from rich to poor countries, to help them cut emissions and cope with the effects of warming, is a bone of contention in the talks. Rich countries have agreed in theory that flows of $100bn a year to poor countries, from public and private sources, will be needed by 2020, without any agreement on how this might be managed. Redd has shown that financing agreements are possible, says Mr Bledsoe.

Copenhagen was not as bad as many liked to present it, says Todd Stern, US envoy for climate change. By the end of the conference, the world’s biggest economies had signed up to an accord that marked the first time both developed and developing countries agreed to place limits on their greenhouse gas emissions.

“From my perspective, there was actually significant progress made at Copenhagen … I think we ought to devote a lot of attention and focus on building on that progress,” he says. Although the US still wants a full and comprehensive treaty, Mr Stern hints that this is not the only possible outcome. “Exactly what form [progress] will take, we don’t know yet.”

For some businesses, however, a move away from seeking a comprehensive climate treaty as soon as possible is a worrying prospect. Mark Kenber of the Climate Group, which represents companies that have made pledges on emissions, says the risk is that business could be left in limbo. For years, some companies have used the lack of a treaty as an argument for holding off on emissions cuts.

“Businesses want a level playing field, and that is what an international treaty provides,” he says. “It is theoretically possible to [have a series of] bilateral agreements and do this from the bottom up, but it is far harder than if you do it through a treaty.”

Source: www.ft.com

Report from New Zealand:

New Zealand is one of the few countries to take a positive out of international climate change negotiations in Germany.

Two weeks of talks concluded in Bonn on Friday. They were the first major United Nations event on climate change since last year’s disappointing Copenhagen conference.

Small steps were made to find a successor to the Kyoto Protocol agreement, which expires in 2012.

New Zealand climate change ambassador Adrian Macey was elected vice-chairman of the Kyoto Protocol negotiations, which “delighted” International Climate Change Negotiations Minister Tim Groser.

“New Zealand is highly respected internationally – a lot of people over many years, from different governments, have been contributing to building that brand of integrity and trust.

“People trust New Zealand to be fair, professional and hard-working.”

Greenpeace New Zealand praised Macey’s appointment.

But the organisation’s political adviser Geoff Keey, who attended the Bonn conference, warned that the Kyoto Protocol “track” contained the biggest tensions in the negotiations and Macey would have to call on all his skills to find an agreement.

Macey’s appointment by the 185 countries at the conference was not without controversy.

The Group of 77 and China, a coalition of 120 developing countries, held crisis talks behind closed doors to discuss whether to support Macey’s bid, which was initially for the chair.

A source who attended the meeting, speaking to The Press on condition of anonymity, said there was real concern in the room – especially from Saudi Arabia and Egypt – about New Zealand’s stance that it did not want extra meetings to be held on the Kyoto Protocol negotiating track.

“That move was interpreted that New Zealand wanted to kill Kyoto,” the source said.

“There’s so much mistrust and a lot of suspicion about the Kiwis.”

Other countries, particularly Pacific island nations, sympathised with New Zealand and opposition faded when Macey was put up for the vice-chairmanship instead.

Groser said New Zealand was unlike other developed nations in that it was relaxed about whether there was a single global deal or separate agreements for developed countries already committed to the Kyoto Protocol, and developing countries and the United States.

“We’re not hardline like some developed countries on this … we’re more interested in the substance of the commitments.”

Veteran trade negotiator Joanne Tyndall has been appointed to replace Macey.

The Bonn meeting seems to have done little to bridge the gap between rich and poor countries.

It produced a streamlined blueprint towards a deal, which has been roundly criticised.

The Group of 77 and China said the text was “unbalanced”, while the United States said elements were “unacceptable”.

Source: www.stuff.co.nz

Cheers! Irish Ideas and Scottish Schemes Gain Global Attention

The Environment Council in Luxembourg has been told how setting tough emissions reduction targets in Scotland is providing the stability for additional investment in low carbon industries. While the Irish Times points out that phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies, of which at least 82 billion Euros goes to oil companies and other producers, could be the very source of funds needed to compensate developing countries for taking action on climate change.

If this could be switched to where it’s needed most, the world would take a quantum leap in the right direction.

UK Public Service Report (14 June 2010):

Scotland’s action to transform to a low carbon economy has been highlighted to Europe as a leading example of climate change.

The Environment Council in Luxembourg has been told how setting tough emissions reduction targets in Scotland is providing the stability for additional investment in low carbon industries.

Climate Change Minister Stewart Stevenson met Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Chris Huhne to agree on the economic case for setting a Europe wide 30 per cent greenhouse gas reduction target. They also discussed carbon capture and storage and the forthcoming UK Energy Bill.

In a meeting with Ms Lykke Friis, Danish Minister for the Climate, Energy and Equal Rights, Mr Stevenson discussed co-operation opportunities with Denmark in offshore renewables, environmental planning and wind energy. The Scottish European Green Energy Centre in Aberdeen will follow up these discussions up with Danish counterparts.

Stewart Stevenson said: “Scotland’s ambition is already setting an example internationally to cut emissions and it is important to take every opportunity to reinforce the message that a low-carbon Europe is feasible, affordable – and ultimately unavoidable. The Environment Council has today heard our case that moving beyond the current 20 per cent emissions reduction target for 2020 is fundamental for European leadership in this area.

“We are working closely with the UK government and others in Europe to put the case that investment in low carbon technologies and industries can bring new opportunities for economic growth.”

UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne said: “This is a new start, with the UK Government and Scottish Government working together in making the economic case for going low carbon, including cutting EU emissions by 30 per cent.”

Source: www.publicservice.co.uk

The Irish Times (14 June 2010):

IT WAS never going to be easy for the representatives of 184 countries meeting in Bonn last week to deal with the debris left scattered after the inconclusive result of last December’s UN climate change summit in Copenhagen.

The drafting of its rather non-committal “accord” by the chosen few and its presentation at the eleventh hour on a take-it-or-leave-it basis generated enormous mistrust, especially among developing countries, and even threatened to undermine the United Nations itself as the appropriate forum for negotiating measures aimed at mitigating the impacts of global warming.

Against that unpromising backdrop, the Bonn talks were surprisingly constructive. As outgoing UN climate chief Yvo de Boer noted, countries were “talking to each other rather than at each other” with a view to laying the groundwork for this year’s climate summit in Cancún, Mexico.

Although nothing concrete was agreed, delegates will meet in Bonn again in August and there will be a further week-long round of talks, probably in October – six weeks before they are due to reconvene for the 16th annual Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or Cop 16.

One of the lessons learned from the Copenhagen fiasco is that a more inclusive approach must be adopted – something that “did not happen” at Cop 15, certainly not during the last few chaotic days of high-level negotiations in the Danish capital.

The truth is that the UN is the only international organisation where every country sits at the table as an equal. The UNFCCC has its drawbacks, in that all decisions must be adopted by consensus, but it is the only valid way to proceed. That said, it is quite deplorable that Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries, including leftist Venezuela, used this consensus rule last week to block a perfectly reasonable request by vulnerable small island states for an update on the latest scientific evidence for global warming.

Given that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is not due to complete its fifth assessment until 2014 and that doubts have been cast on some elements of its fourth assessment, published in 2007, any solid peer-reviewed scientific work should be put in the public domain to guide the negotiations.

One of the most pressing matters is to “operationalise” (in UNFCCC jargon) the US$30 billion (€24.7 billion) pledged in “fast-start” aid to help developing countries cope with climate change, from now to 2012. This is a mere token of what is to come; by 2020, according to promises made in Copenhagen, it should rise to $100 billion (€82.5 billion) a year.

In these difficult times, one might well ask where such sums will be found. But there is one very obvious source. Coincidentally, the OECD last week called for the phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies worth €459 billion a year, of which at least €82.5 billion goes to oil companies and other producers.

If this could be switched to where it’s needed most, the world would take a quantum leap in the right direction.

Source: www.irishtimes.com

Large Scale Arab & Australia Solar Projects Steam Ahead

French and Spanish companies are key investors in the first utility-scale Consolidated Solar Plant in the United Arab Emirates, the first to be registered under the United Nations’ Clean Development Mechanism which is eligible for carbon credits. In Australia, Wizard Power is seeking additional investment after receiving A$60 million from the Government to develop a concentrated solar power plant in South Australia, utilising locally developed technology.

By Ben Sharples and Susan Li for Bloomberg

Wizard Power, an Australian solar technology company, said it will seek debt and equity financing in addition to government funding to develop a power plant at the town of Whyalla in South Australia state.

“The total project value is A$230 million ($201 million), and besides the government’s contribution there will be both debt and equity finance for this project,” Tony Robey, chief executive officer, said in a Bloomberg Television report last month. He didn’t specify if Canberra-based Wizard Power would sell bonds or take loans and whether equity financing will come from a stake sale or public share offering.

The Australian government will provide A$60 million to help build the 400-megawatt solar power project, Energy Minister Martin Ferguson said May 11. The plant is being developed by the Whyalla SolarOasis Consortium, which includes Wizard, N.P. Power and Sustainable Power Partners. One megawatt can power about 1,000 Australian homes.

“The project is built around the technology, which we have developed with the Australian National University, which is the world’s largest solar concentrating technology,” Robey said. “These are dishes about 500 square meters in area, which concentrate the sun’s rays to over 2,000 times, allowing us to generate very high temperatures for power production.”

Source: www.preview.bloomberg.com and www.wizardpower.com.au

By Nour Malas in Wall Street Journal

Abu Dhabi government-owned Masdar, the renewable energy initiative, appointed Total SA of France and Abengoa Solar of Spain as partners on a $600 million solar-power project in the Gulf emirate—the world’s largest concentrated solar power, or CSP, plant.

Shams 1 solar-power station will have an approximate capacity of 100 megawatts and will be developed on a build-own-operate basis in a joint venture. Masdar owns 60% of the project, and Total and Abengoa each hold a 20% share, the companies said in a joint news release.

“We expect construction to start in a few weeks,” Mohamed Al Zaabi , the project’s manager, said in a presentation in Abu Dhabi. Commercial operations are due to start in the third quarter of 2012, Mr. Al Zaabi said.

The CSP plant will extend over a one-square-mile area, situated at Madinat Zayed about 75 miles southwestof Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. It will have enough capacity to supply 20,000 households.

The project is the first of three CSP plants that will feed green power into the Abu Dhabi grid, Mr. Al Zaabi said. The plant will help meet rising power demand in Abu Dhabiemirate, which is expected to reach up to 20 gigawatts in 2020, from a current eight gigawatts, he added.

Abu Dhabi launched Masdar in April 2006 to establish the sheikdom as a hub for renewable energy and green technologies at a time of rising concerns over global warming, fueled by increased consumption of hydrocarbons. The emirate, the largest of seven that make up the U.A.E. and producer of almost all of the country’s crude oil, has a plan to generate 7% of its power capacity from renewables by 2020.

“We believe it’s the first step in the region, but it will be a cornerstone going forward,” said Abengoa Chief Executive Santiago Seage. “We think that the Mena [Middle East-North Africa] region in general can be a very important part of our generation portfolio, a high percentage.”

Nick Carter, director general of Abu Dhabi’s regulation and supervision bureau, said the project was “a massive leap forward for the sector.”

“This is the first time in the emirate we can supply a significant amount of capacity without relying on fossil fuels,” Mr. Carter said.

Shams 1 will be the first utility-scale, commercial solar-power project in the U.A.E., and the first CSP plant to be registered under the United Nations’ Clean Development Mechanism and is eligible for carbon credits, according to Wednesday’s statement. It will displace about 175,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year, the equivalent of taking 15,000 cars off Abu Dhabi’s roads.

The plant has been held back as the global financial crisis hit projects in Abu Dhabi, with contracts for the project originally due to be awarded about a year ago.

Total and Abengoa will invest in the project alongside Masdar according to their respective equity shares, with the plan to borrow via project financing, Masdar Chief Executive Officer Sultan Al Jaber said.

“We always try to leverage on project financing to raise funding,” he said, adding that specific borrowing plans haven’t been outlined yet.

“We are going to start construction in July with our own financing resources, and we will be leveraging in the future,” Mr. Seage said, adding that he believes Shams 1 “will be highly attractive” to banks.

The solar plant is being built under the independent water and power producer model Abu Dhabi already uses for power generation and water desalination.

Under the model, the project company will sell power to state utility Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Co., or Adwec, under a power purchase agreement.

Abu Dhabi’s government will pay a “green tariff” to compensate Adwec for the difference between average domestic power generation cost and generation cost for the CSP project, the Mr. Carter said.

Although the cost of generating electricity from solar plants has come down in recent years, it remains still more expensive than conventionally generated electricity.

“It’s a way for the government to compensate the cost of renewable energy,” Mr. Carter said, adding that the cost gap is expected to narrow over the next 10 to 15 years.

Masdar, which is also building a $22 billion carbon-neutral city on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, has had to review its project plans as the global financial crisis hit the oil-rich emirate.

Mr. Al Jaber said Wednesday that the company wasn’t scaling back its plans—though it has become “more capable” and “smarter about doing business”—and plans for Masdar City remained intact.

Source: www.online.wsj.com

Sustainable Darwin Comes Out Ahead in Top 20

The Sustainable Cities Index, developed by the Australian Conservation Foundation  tracks the progress of Australia’s 20 largest cities across 15 indicators including air quality, ecological footprint, green buildings, water, biodiversity, health, density, wellbeing, transport, employment, climate change readiness, education, food production, public participation and household debt.

By Environment reporter Sarah Clarke for ABC News (15 June 2010)

Darwin and Brisbane have been ranked as the country’s most sustainable capitals while Perth is the least sustainable in an assessment of the carbon footprint of Australia’s 20 largest cities.

The Australian Conservation Foundation tracked the progress of the nation’s 20 largest cities.

The study looked at key indicators including air quality, climate change readiness, public transport, and water use.

Darwin performed well in all categories, and is the nation’s most sustainable city, followed by Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.

Brisbane was third, Canberra fifth, followed by Hobart and Melbourne.

Sydney ranked 12th, Adelaide 14th and Perth came in last.

But the Foundation’s Don Henry says the results show even the most sustainable cities need to do more to reduce their ecological footprint.

“We found Darwin, the Sunshine Coast and Brisbane are up there near the top. We found Perth, Geelong, Newcastle are near the bottom,” he said.

“I think the important point is we’re all in a pretty average space and our cities can do a lot better to be more sustainable.”

Mr Henry says Australians use more water and energy and own more cars per person than the citizens of almost any other developed country in the world.

Source: www.abc.net.au

AAP report (15 June 2010):

Darwin has been ranked the country’s most sustainable city in a new index created by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF).

The Sustainable Cities Index tracks the progress of Australia’s 20 largest cities across 15 indicators including air quality, ecological footprint, green buildings, water, biodiversity, health, density, wellbeing, transport, employment, climate change readiness, education, food production, public participation and household debt.

Darwin topped the list, scoring well with clean air and strong biodiversity but lost marks on health and preparedness for climate change.

It had the lowest unemployment rate at 1.89 per cent and household repayments were the lowest, with less than 23 per cent of household income spent on loan repayments.

Perth was the least sustainable city.

It was dragged down by recording the highest level of water use, ecological footprint per person and car ownership, with 641 private vehicles for every one thousand people.

ACF executive director Don Henry said the index was sure to ignite inter-city rivalries and stimulate debate.

“Australia’s major cities consistently rate among the most liveable, but liveability is not the same as sustainability,” Dr Henry said in a statement.

“In this federal election year it’s up to our political leaders to prove they have the plans to deliver world class public transport systems, clean up Australia’s vehicle fleet and make our cities truly sustainable.”

Queensland had the most cities in the top 20.

The Sunshine Coast came in second, Brisbane third, Townsville fourth, the Gold Coast eighth and Toowoomba 11th.

The Sunshine Coast shares the top of the environmental performance category with Brisbane and it was listed as having the best air quality.

Full report: http://www.acfonline.org.au/uploads/res/2010_ACF_SCI_INDEX_REPORT.pdf

Source: www.news.smh.com.au

As Shoppers Get Real Oil, Fliers May Need To Pay for Emissions

Why are the Germans upsetting the status quo? German supermarket chain ALDI is the first in Australia to introduce a consumer label that shows the greenhouse gases generated by a product – in this case olive oil – and the German Government plans to levy an emissions tax on airlines flying into its air space has really upset Qantas, in spite of flying its green tinged A380 (pictured).

Aldi first to show impact of products on greenhouse gas emissions

Kerrie Sinclair in the Courier Mail (9 June 2010):

A NEW sticker on a bottle of olive oil may kickstart action to give Australian shoppers clear information about the impact on the environment of the products they buy.

The label  shows the greenhouse gases generated by a product – including its raw materials and manufacturing process – to allow shoppers to compare emissions as part of buying decisions.

The local arm of German grocery chain ALDI has become the first company in Australia to join the labelling program, which operates in 19 countries and is run here by Planet Ark.

ALDI will start the program here later this year when it applies a label to its olive oil range, a move the company says won’t bring any price rise.

ALDI’s managing director for buying, Tom Daunt, said it made good business sense to “protect and promote the environment”.

Planet Ark program manager Diane Mann said the label appeared on hundreds of product categories in UK stores and companies in the US, China, South Korea and Taiwan were getting involved in the program.

“This is the first time full emissions data will be disclosed on a product here and that transparency is going to be a big incentive for business to reduce emissions and for consumers to understand these impacts,” Ms Mann said.

“Australians are looking for this information and we’re aiming to get up to speed with where they are in the UK as soon as we can.”

But it may be some time until shoppers see carbon data on a range of products here.

The Australian Food and Grocery Council queried if emissions data should be disclosed or if there should be a single rating representing global warming, water use and recycling impacts.

AFGC chief executive Kate Carnell said the industry “isn’t negative” to the concept of emissions data on products

but Coles said it had no immediate plans to use the label and Woolworths said any label would add to costs and potentially confuse customers.

Source: www.couriermail.com.au

Steve Creedy, Aviation writer in The Australian (11 June 2010):

QANTAS has slammed a new German “environmental” departure tax that will mean Australians will pay more to fly to Europe.

The airline also believes the tax will add to what it already sees as an unfair burden from the European Union’s proposed emissions trading scheme.

Angry airlines claim the E1 billion ($1.45bn) that the E14 per person departure tax would pour into government coffers would exceed the combined annual profit of Germany’s carriers.

They are particularly incensed that — as happens in Britain — the new departure tax is in addition to the proposed European emissions trading scheme costs, and they argue that it is really a revenue-raising move designed to help the German government with economic restructuring.

“It is crazy,” said Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce, who confirmed that the tax would hit Australian travellers on the airline’s Frankfurt route. “We’ve been saying we want a global approach to this because you’re going to have ETSs that are going to overlap, and these types of country-driven taxes that are double dipping.

“And you’ve got an industry that’s made a half a per cent margin, just coming out of the worse period in its history — it can’t afford this.”

Qantas is already unhappy that the European ETS, which is based on sector distance, will create distortions for traffic from Australia. The ETS applies from the last take-off point prior to entering Europe and means that flights from the Middle East will pay less than those originating in Singapore and Bangkok.

“On top of this, you are going to have certain ports that have extra costs associated with them, and all of this is going to impact on which way the traffic flows and what it means to the economics of various routes,” Mr Joyce said. “And the airlines obviously have to continue to look at that, figuring out do they need to adjust schedules, aircraft types and services in order to be able to cope with it.”

News of the tax cast a shadow over the final day of the International Air Transport Association’s annual conference in Berlin.

“This is the worst kind of short-sighted policy irresponsibility,” IATA director-general Giovanni Bisignani said. “It’s a cash grab by a cash-strapped government. Painting it green adds insult to injury. There will be no environmental benefit from the economic damage caused.”

Industry officials pointed to an attempt by the Dutch government to introduce a similar tax that cost The Netherlands E1.2 billion in lost business, and they warned it could damage Europe’s already weak economy. The Dutch tax was eventually repealed.

The officials also questioned the timing of the German tax, as Europe remained the only region where the industry was still in the red, and this had been exacerbated by the volcanic ash crisis, which saw 100,000 flights cancelled. Airlines are pushing for a global approach to green taxes and emission trading schemes and are backing a push spearheaded by the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

But the new tax has sparked fears that other cash-strapped governments might follow the German and British example.

Mr Joyce said decisions by individual jurisdictions to introduce their own taxes was a setback to those attempts.

“I think having multiple taxes from different governments that are going to be in this environmental space means it’s going to be a lot harder to get a global sectoral approach,” he said.

Source: www.theaustralian.com.au

A Disaster is a Terrible Thing to Waste!

Environmentalists are hoping that the country will pay more attention to green issues after seeing the devastation in the Gulf of Mexico. Already, the United States has a reputation internationally as a laggard on many environmental issues (e.g. Kyoto Protocol), but will the preoccupation with the oil spill response help or hinder plans to move ahead with action to tackle climate change at home and abroad?

By Kate Galbraith in New York Times (13 June 2010):

“As Rahm Emanuel says, a disaster is a terrible thing to waste,” said Zygmunt J.B. Plater, a law professor at Boston College, paraphrasing a 2008 comment by the White House chief of staff about the then-burgeoning economic crisis.

Environmentalists, for their part, are hoping that the country will pay more attention to green issues after seeing the devastation in the gulf.

Already, groups are using the spill as a rallying cry. Luke Metzger, the director of Environment Texas, said that his group’s canvassers had switched their fund-raising and petitions pitch from aiding a remote mountain range to urging an end to new offshore drilling. (President Barack Obama has declared a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling, though his administration is reopening shallower waters to new rigs.)

“Given that it’s the biggest environmental disaster in American history, it wasn’t that difficult a decision to really prioritize it,” Mr. Metzger said.

Another environmental group, American Rivers, is anticipating more attention to wetlands issues in general, even though oil was spilled into the sea, not rivers. “People are simply more tuned into environmental issues right now, especially when it comes to clean water,” said Amy Souers Kober, a spokeswoman for the group.

There is a flip side, however: other environmental causes could get starved of money and attention. For the past 50-plus days, the oil spill has dominated the headlines, the news programs and even the comedy shows across the United States (the comedian Stephen Colbert recently suggested that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed the Black Sea). Other issues could get overlooked.

The green section on the Huffington Post Web site recently asked its readers on Twitter: “Do u miss the other stuff?” About 80 percent of the section’s coverage these days is devoted to the spill, it said.

Already, the United States has a reputation internationally as a laggard on many environmental issues. Treaties it has signed but never ratified include the Convention on Biological Diversity; the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants; the Rotterdam Convention, which relates to the use of pesticides and hazardous chemicals in international trade; and, of course, the Kyoto Protocol, signed by President Bill Clinton but spurned by President George W. Bush and the Senate.

The Obama administration has tried to tackle climate change, but as for the other treaties, even if it were interested in moving forward, it would be tough because so much of the administration’s time is now consumed by the oil spill. From the public’s perspective, even pressing issues — like the International Whaling Commission’s coming vote on whether to allow some commercial whaling — have largely been lost in the noise.

Noah Sachs, an associate professor at the University of Richmond School of Law in Virginia and an expert in regulation of hazardous waste, said he had been hoping for movement on a bill in Congress that would overhaul and strengthen the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act and allow the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to control the use of some chemicals more tightly. So far, however, not much has happened. “I think the oil spill in the spring has deflected attention from that bill,” Mr. Sachs said.

In Texas, Mr. Metzger said that while the spill was important to focus on, “definitely the trade-off is putting less resources into some of the other issues we’re working on.”

In some ways, the relentless focus on the spill over the past two months has paralleled the constant attention to climate change over the past several years. In 2005, the Sierra Club, a leading American environmental group, decided to switch its attention more fully to climate, and most other groups have also increased their attention to the issue.

As with the oil spill, concerns have arisen that climate change has crowded out other causes. “As a conservation biologist I am continually frustrated by all the attention given to climate change by the media and politicians,” wrote Reed Noss, a professor at the University of Central Florida, in the Conservation Northwest Quarterly in 2007. He urged a stronger focus on the fragmentation of wildlife habitats — in other words, humans’ habit of building houses or roads almost everywhere.

But climate change has the potential to affect just about everything — and it has conversely afforded a range of groups the opportunity to hitch their causes to the climate bandwagon. This has resulted in some odd pairings: for example, the magazine of the Audubon Society, an American bird conservation group, has advocated “feed-in” tariffs, said John Farrell, a researcher with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a U.S. group. Feed-in tariffs are a mainly European method of requiring utilities to pay above-market rates for electricity from solar panels and other green sources. They have nothing to do with birds, except insofar as clean energy can moderate climate change in a small way, thus helping to preserve habitats.

As for the spill in the gulf, Mr. Plater of Boston College suggests that it may become a “wake-up call” for environmental causes across the board. Mr. Plater should know: he spent two years heading the legal task force of the Alaska oil spill commission after the Exxon Valdez oil tanker disaster in 1989.

The gulf spill, he said, affects 100 times as many people as were affected in Alaska and has also devastated a far larger and more diverse economy. So whereas Alaska’s problems have been tough to keep in the forefront, Americans will not quickly forget what transpired in the gulf.

“Nobody’s talking right now about whales and rain forests,” Mr. Plater said, “but what we are discovering is there is a huge economic backlash when environmental things go wrong.”

Source: www.nytimes.com

Climate Chaos Lurks, Science Communicators Consider Change of Tactics

Nearly 60 million people living around the Himalayas will suffer food shortages in the coming decades as glaciers shrink and the water sources for crops dry up, a Dutch study shows, while in Australia representatives of scientific organisations including the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology meet to discuss better communication of the science behind man-made climate change, in the wake of crumbling political and public consensus on global warming.

By Michael Casey, AP Environmental Writer in the Courier Mail (10 June 2010):

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Nearly 60 million people living around the Himalayas will suffer food shortages in the coming decades as glaciers shrink and the water sources for crops dry up, a study said Thursday.

But Dutch scientists writing in the journal Science concluded the impact would be much less than previously estimated a few years ago by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The U.N. report in 2007 warned that hundred of millions of people were at risk from disappearing glaciers.

The reason for the discrepancy, scientists said, is that some basins surrounding the Himalayas depend more on rainfall than melting glaciers for their water sources.

Those that do count heavily on glaciers like the Indus, Ganges and Brahamaputra basins in South Asia could see their water supplies decline by as much as 19.6 percent by 2050. China’s Yellow River basin, in contrast, would see a 9.5 percent increase precipitation as monsoon patterns change due to the changing climate.

“We show that it’s only certain areas that will be affected,” said Marc Bierkens, an Utrecht University hydrology professor , who along with Walter Immerzee and Ludovicus van Beek conducted the study. “The amount of people affected is still large. Every person is one too many but it’s much less than was first anticipated.”

The study is one of the first to examine the impact of shrinking glaciers on the Himalayan river basins. It will likely further fuel the debate on the degree that climate change will devastate the river basins that are mostly located in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan and China.

Scientists for the most part agree glaciers are melting at an accelerated rate as temperatures increase. Most scientists tie that warming directly to higher atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.

Some glaciers, such as in the Himalayas, could hold out for centuries in a warmer world. But more than 90 percent of glaciers worldwide are in retreat, with major losses already seen across much of Alaska, the Alps, the Andes and numerous other ranges, according to researchers in the United States and Europe.

Some scientists have come under fire for the 2007 U.N. report, which includes several errors that suggested the Himalayas could disappear by 2035, hundreds of years earlier than data actual indicates. The mistake — the 2350 apparently was transposed as 2035 — opened the door for attacks by climate change skeptics.

The findings by the Dutch team in Science were greeted with caution with glacial experts who did not take part in the research. They said the uncertainties and lack of data for the region makes it difficult to say what will happen in the next few decades to the water supply.

Others like Zhongqin Li, director of the Tianshan Glaciological Station in China, said the study omitted several other key basins in central Asia and northwest China which will be hit hard by the loss of water from melting glaciers.

Still, several of these outside researchers said the findings should reaffirm concerns that the region will suffer food shortages due to climate change, exasperating already existing concerns such as overpopulation, poverty, pollution and weakening monsoon rains in parts of South Asia.

“The paper teaches us there’s lot of uncertainty in the future water supply of Asia and within the realm of plausibility are scenarios that may give us concern,” said Casey Brown, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Massachusetts.

“At present, we know that water concerns are already a certainty – the large and growing populations and high dependence on irrigated agriculture which makes the region vulnerable to present climate variability,” he said.

“This paper is additional motivation to address these present concerns through wise investments in better management of water resources in the region, which for me means forecasts, incentives, efficiency.”

Birkens and his fellow researchers said governments in the region should adapt to the projected water shortages by shifting to crops that use less water, engaging in better irrigation practices and building more and larger facilities to store water for extended periods of time.

“We estimate that the food security of 4.5 percent of the total population will be threatened as a result of reduce water availability,” the researchers wrote. “The strong need for prioritizing adaptation options and further increasing water productivity is therefore eminent.”

Source: www.news.yahoo.com

Tom Arup in The Age (15 June 2010):

Representatives of scientific organisations including the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology will meet today to discuss better communication of the science behind man-made climate change, in the wake of crumbling political and public consensus on global warming.

The conference in Sydney, organised by the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies (FASTS), is part of a long-term bid to develop a ”national communication charter” for major scientific organisations and universities to better spruik the evidence of climate change.

The conference will hear an address from Australia’s chief scientist, Penny Sackett. Representatives of the CSIRO, Bureau of Meteorology, Australian Academy of Science and Department of Climate Change, among others, will attend.

Public scepticism and apathy towards climate change has reportedly risen in Australia in recent years. A recent Lowy Institute Poll showed the number of Australians who wanted action now on climate change had dropped from 68 per cent in 2006 to 46 per cent in 2010.

FASTS president Cathy Foley said although public scepticism was on the rise, scientific evidence of man-made climate change had not changed, and it was sad the community was less and less trusting of scientists.

Dr Foley said a well-organised and funded climate sceptics’ movement had increasingly captured attention.

”We are concerned the debate around climate change has become a left-wing versus right-wing debate – or a kind of religious argument – when it should really be about the strength of the scientific evidence,” Dr Foley said.

The conference was not about politics or ”brainwashing” the public, she added.

Many in the scientific community have expressed frustration about the shift in public mood on climate change after the failed Copenhagen climate change summit last year.

The summit failures came as damaging emails between scientists at the University of East Anglia, in Britain, were leaked, and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admitted it had wrongly stated most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 because of global warming.

In response, the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology in March released a snapshot report on climate change, showing Australia has warmed significantly over the past 50 years and stating categorically ”climate change is real”.

In February, scientist Tim Flannery urged scientists to again explain the evidence of man-made climate change to a ”confused” Australian public.

Source: www.theage.com.au

Lucky Last – Australia Need to Wake Up to It Renewable Resources

It’s official.  Australians per person are the worst polluters in the world. For a country so well endowed with renewable energy, that’s quite an achievement. But then there’s a big difference between having renewable resources and utilising them. So says Dr Peter Seligman, an associate of the Melbourne Energy Institute at the University of Melbourne and author of the new book “Australian Sustainable Energy – by the numbers”, which is downloadable and free. Read More.

Here’s why Peter said he decided to embark on the book:

I’m an Australian Electrical Engineer. As an engineer I find it annoying that wherever you look, information on renewable energy is unreliable or presented in ways which are not meaningful without calculation and comparison to some relevant standard. The potential of any particular technology is often overstated or understated, depending on the particular bent of the writer. Then there is the simply wrong information, the megawatts per hour, (usually meaning megawatts) the failure to state whether power is average or peak (a factor of 3 to 8 between them).

The next irritation is scale and proportion. You would be led to believe by some, that just by switching off our mobile phone chargers, recycling bottles and cans and putting some solar panels on our roof, we can make a significant difference.

How big a difference? What is it as a proportion of our total energy use? Telling us in tonnes of CO2 or number of homes doesn’t usually help. The Prime Minister announces that we are going to build the world’s largest solar power station2 – 1000MW, equivalent to that of one coal fired power station. What he doesn’t tell you, or maybe even realise himself, is that 1000 MW of peak power from solar is about 250 MW average power. He also doesn’t mention that Australia is using 25,000MWon average so this world’s largest will supply about 1% of our present use of electricity. He doesn’t mention that electricity accounts for about half of our total energy use so that power station will provide 0.5% of our total energy.

Instead he may tell you how many homes it will provide power for, or how many tonnes of CO2 it will save. Big numbers that mean nothing to most people.

Finally, even reputable and very well known authors are capable of making any or all of the mistakes I have mentioned.

When I first encountered Sustainable Energy – without the hot air3 (SEWTHA) by David MacKay, it was like a breath of fresh air, not hot air. Here at last was someone who spoke my language.

On a visit to Cambridge in August 2009 I had the privilege of lunching with David MacKay at Darwin College. At our enjoyable meeting I mentioned that there were many people in Australia who would have been interested in an Australian version of Sustainable Energy – without the hot air (SEWTHA). I also mentioned some material that I have been writing on sustainable energy in Australia. David and I agreed that it would be good to write an OzSEWTHA and we informally agreed that I would attempt it. Rather than being a translation it would be a supplement, with information relating specifically to Australia. Further, I mentioned that I had included financial aspects of sustainable energy in my writing and David said that he welcomed that addition. This is the result. In the event, it has become more than a supplement; it is a book in its own right.

This book differs in one important way from David MacKay’s. David’s book uses a yardstick of kilowatt hours per day per person – kWh/day/person. He then calculates all renewable sources in terms of these units and calculates how much of the UK’s needs could be provided by utilising all the available sources using the same units. The answer is that the UK cannot supply all its needs from renewable energy, it would have to go offshore, or treat nuclear as renewable.

In Australia, the situation is quite different. We could supply all of our needs many times over. In fact, in theory we could supply the whole world with renewable energy, if we were prepared to do it and could transport it. No, in the case of Australia the question is more, what proportion of the country (and it is usually in the order of a few percent), would we require to supply all our needs?

Summary of the book:

It’s official, Australians per person are the worst polluters in the world. For a country so well endowed with renewable energy, that’s quite an achievement. But then there’s a big difference between having renewable resources and utilising them.

In this document I try to identify and quantify the most promising renewable resources. I then examine how they could be used in combination to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions to practically zero. Following on I consider where we are at and the policy of the government.

As an exercise, I try to design a renewable power system for Australia, which could meet our needs for a comfortable lifestyle. I try to dispel the statement that renewables can’t supply baseload power, not through dogma, but by calculating how it could be done. Contrary to popular belief, the numbers show it is not too expensive to store electricity on a large scale. In fact the cost of pumped water storage, including the powerlines, dams, pumps and pipes is only a fraction of the cost of the wind and solar power sources themselves.

Further I discuss some specific systems that are of particular interest in the Australian context (Wind Farm co-ops, Refrigeration & Cooling). I describe some personal strategies that people can use to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. These are the ones you usually don’t read about in the newspaper, and they are based on a bang-for-buck philosophy.

The thorny issues of Carbon offsetting, Renewable Energy Certificates and Rebates are discussed. Finally – and in implementation, this should come first – I discuss efficiency and waste using some examples drawn from personal experience.

In writing this document I found that costs varied, mostly due to changes in the exchange rate of the Australian dollar. Rather than continually update the document, I have stuck with what I had. The Australian dollar at the time of writing was about 90 cents US, 56 UK pence and 62 Euro cents. In some cases I used US dollars but since at the time of writing they were close to $1, I didn’t differentiate. I don’t think that the rate of exchange will significantly change any of my conclusions.

Conclusions of the book:

1. In theory, Australia could comfortably supply all of its power requirements renewably.

2. In practice, for some interim period, the use of some non-renewable sources may be necessary but the overall carbon footprint can be reduced to zero in time.

3. The major contributors would be geothermal, wind and solar power.

4. To match the varying load and supply, electricity could be stored using pumped hydro, as it is at present on a much smaller scale. In this case, seawater could be used, in large cliff-top ponds.

5. Energy efficiency would be a key aspect of the solution.

6. A comprehensive modelling approach could be used to minimise the cost rather than the current piecemeal, politically based, ad hoc system.

7. Private transport and other fuel based transport could be largely electrified and batteries could be used to assist with storage.

8. In a transition period, liquid fuel based transport could be accommodated by using biofuels produced using CO2 from any remaining fossil fuelled power sources and CO2 generating industries.

Biography

Peter Seligman, was born in the UK of Czech parents in 1944 and emigrated to Australia via Czechoslovakia in 1948. He studied engineering at RMIT and then Monash University. In 1966 he worked on a private project to develop a land navigation device which was built, demonstrated and was the subject of a patent application. His final year project in Electrical Engineering was the design and construction of a braille digital multimeter for a blind engineer. This was followed by an “oscilloscope” for the blind. Peter received his B. Eng (elec) at Monash 1968 and PhD in 1973. His thesis topic was “Auditory Pattern Transmission”.

From 1973 – 1979 he worked for the Westinghouse Brake and Signal Company on fail safe electronics and the computer control of railway systems. He was also involved in the design of photovoltaic solar energy systems for railway signalling in remote locations. A private project was the development of a trenching machine to insulate earth for heat storage for solar heating systems. A working machine was demonstrated. This was the subject of a provisional patent.

Dr Seligman was a key member of the team that developed the Melbourne/ Cochlear multiple-channel cochlear implant. He worked in the field for 30 years and was particularly responsible for the development and improvement of speech processors.

He designed the first portable Speech Processor for the University of Melbourne device. He joined Cochlear Ltd (Nucleus) in 1983 and was instrumental in speech processor miniaturisation and signal processing. He holds over 20 patents in the Cochlear Implant field.

In 2009 Dr Seligman was awarded a Doctor of Engineering (honoris causa) by the University of Melbourne for his contribution to the field of cochlear implant signal processing. Since his retirement from Cochlear Ltd in 2009, he has been able to devote more of his time to the area of sustainable energy and conservation, a field in which he has been active for 35 years.

Dr Seligman is an associate of the Melbourne Energy Institute at the University of Melbourne.

For a free download on his book “Australia’s Sustainable Energy – by the numbers”, go to the website.

Source: www.energy.unimelb.edu.au