The lucky-dip stall that is carbon pricing
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The carbon pricing to date in Australia has been like an intimidating and not very enticing lucky-dip stall at a carnival. There are plenty of voices trying to stop, slow or scare away those interested in taking the dip into action on pollution and climate change by focusing just on the costs. Of course there are costs involved. Hospitals cost. Schools cost. But while it is important to be clear on the costs and how they can be managed, it is also important to focus on the benefits and how they can be achieved. Today in Parliament the independent member for New England, Tony Windsor, launched the latest research and web resource from The Climate Institute. This research shows, region by region, how pollution pricing and clean energy support policies can unlock the door to tens of thousands of regional job and investment opportunities. The research also highlights the skills and industry development policies that are necessary to realise this potential.
The Climate Institute commissioned leading energy and industry specialists to model the opportunities and to talk to regional business and community leaders, to not only see what extra opportunities exist but to see what else is necessary to turn this opportunity into reality. This research from Sinclair Knight Merz-MMA and Ernst & Young, a series of policy briefs, state and regional snapshots, regional road maps and the methodology behind all of this can all be found on at Clean Energy Jobs: Regional Australia The research demonstrates the importance of a long, loud and legal price signal on pollution but also that while a price is necessary, it is not sufficient to achieving the twin goals of cutting Australian pollution and transforming our polluting and inefficient economy into one that is cleaner and more efficient in the energy that it uses. The 2020 Renewable Energy Target plays a critical role in bringing on a range of clean energy resources and backing up a significant price on pollution that drives switching from coal to gas in terms of existing base-load. Alongside clean energy policies like the RET, skills and industry development policies are crucial in turning modelling opportunities into action on the ground. The research shows we’ll need prices on pollution at $66 per tonne and rising by 2020 to help shift our economy to cleaner industries and lower pollution to levels that matter. The lower the price, the greater the need for other regulations and other incentives across the economy to drive the necessary change. For example the model shows a starting price in 2012 of $47 a tonne but, looking closer, the renewable energy legislation does the hard work driving the renewable investment requiring a lower initial pollution price that ensures existing base load is switching from coal to gas and cleaner alternatives. This is a debate about how we make businesses take responsibility for the pollution they create and the incentives needed for investment by them and others in cleaner industries and technology. The economic imperative in this for Australia, and for regional Australia, was recently highlighted by BHP’s chief executive Marius Kloppers who recently said that “To remain competitive in a future carbon-constrained world, Australia will need to turn into a lower carbon economy.” The economic risks behind Klopper’s call was reinforced by global reinsurers reconsidering risk after the recent bout of weather extremes in Australia and around the world. Munich Re, a global reinsurance company, earlier this year stated that the higher number of weather-related catastrophes and record temperatures, in different regions of the world, provide further indications of advancing climate change. They and others are reconsidering insurance premiums and availability. Two weeks ago, the world’s institutional investors, the managers of our retirement savings and superannuation funds, released a landmark report setting out clearly the multitrillion dollar risks involved. These include not just the estimated more than $4 trillion costs to the physical environment, health and food security. They also include $8 trillion costs if policy changes are badly handled. The move is on to a global clean energy economy and our reinsurers, our superannuation funds and smart investors are beginning to realise this is the case. Indeed in 2010 clean energy investments hit record levels globally at $243 billion. Australian investment by any measure is lagging behind the rest of the world. This research released today shows again the largely untapped energy resources that Australia has in geo-thermal, large scale solar, bio-energy, hydro, wind and natural gas. The modelling shows that by 2030, close to 43% of Australia’s electricity could be produced from clean energy, up from about 12% today. Regional analysis shows that greater proportions of renewable electricity are attainable with extra policies and focus. The research also sets out that taking decisive action will increase jobs in the electricity sector. The research shows that net employment in the power sector increases by around 34,000 extra jobs out to 2030. This is the case in each state considered. The implications for policy from this research are that credible pollution price increases over time can level the playing between clean and renewable energy and conventional polluting sources of energy. It also shows, however, the critical importance of supporting policies such as a renewable energy target and skills and industry development policies. With last week’s announcement of architecture for a carbon pricing mechanism, the pollution politics carnival of rent seeking, scare campaigns and serious public debate has well and truly begun. The Climate Institute offers this research as an alternative information source to make clear the opportunities for regional Australia and Australia that exist in taking action. It is important to debate the costs and how we can manage them, it is also important to debate the benefits and how we can achieve them. |
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14 Comments
Well, no, since it doesn’t even mention nuclear, it doesn’t.
So the study was conducted by the Climate Institute - ok, so how independent is this Climate Institute, probably as independent as the so called “climate scientists” - NOT!
This or Tony Abbott’s action plan. Gee, a hard choice.
Of course Lorry is a climate scientist!!Give me a break.
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
About time someone started talking sense and recognising both the potential perils and potential possibilities opened by the Climate Change Challenge. Thank you Climate Institute.
Nicolino - You need to learn how to comprehend, how you can conclude that I am the leader of a religious order (climate scientist) is strange to say the least? I am however sceptical about the independence of the “Climate Institute” and the timing of the release of this so called report.
Clearly I do not follow blindly your faith and for me the science (and economics of this debate) is NOT settled.
@ Mark and all his mates
The nuclear cheer squad would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.
Your horse is dead. Stop flogging it.
@John Inglis, try telling that to the Chinese, who are building at least 70 GW of new nuclear capacity by 2020. Or the Indians, the UAE, and most of the OECD. Or, closer to home, these chaps.
In their blinkered pursuit of the renewables dream, the likes of the Climate Institute are pushing Australia towards an energy future that is the worst of all worlds: Extremely expensive, resource intensive, unreliable, uncompetitive and/or ineffective in reducing CO2 emissions.
Touche John Inglis - dead but won’t lie down! And sure the Chinese and the Indians have fallen for the spin and are building nuke reactors. The poor things have bred themselves into a corner. However, bludging off the environment, gouging massive big holes in the earth’s crust to poison the biosphere is so passé.
Queenslanders were indeed fortunate not to have gone down the path of U mining, considering the recent flooding which no doubt would have seen the radioactive solutions from overflowing tailings’ dams spilling into the environment, adding to the carnage and adding to the cost to taxpayers for large scale remediation which fails significantly anyway, as history has proven.
And two studies performed by climate scientists at the Princeton University US and the U of Edinburgh Scotland, published in Nature this week, have demonstrated a direct link between rising greenhouse gas levels and severe rainfall events so we had all better stay alert and alarmed. Meanwhile in the city of Perth, the potentially dehydrated inhabitants are cooking – well and truly. Will there ever be any respite to this beastly heat with the south west of WA in virtual drought for some thirty years?
On the bright side, there was more solar power installed on rooftops between January and October last year than for the entire previous decade, according to the Clean Energy Australia 2010 report released around December.
And West Australians are signing up to sell excess power from home solar panels at such a rapid rate that there are fears they could overload the grid and cause power surges that destroy household appliances.
State-owned electricity transmitter Western Power said it might have to limit the amount of solar power it accepted as the take-up rate soared. Yeah right so that could be a real advantage for climate sceptic, industry shill and Premier, Colin Barnett who is running amok - a devotee of a nineteenth century dirty economy - dirty state - dirty nation - dirty planet.
Mark Duffett – thank you for the link. Err…could that be the same Bob Hawke implicated in Australia’s ignominious Uranium Cartel? Nah………not that Bob Hawke, surely?
“The leaked company files had evidence of:
”* shoddy environmental practices;
”* close surveillance of environmental organisations;
”* the close relationship between the most senior ranking Australian trade union official, ACTU President Bob Hawke, and the chairman of Conzinc Riotinto Australia (CRA), Sir Roderick Carnegie; and:
”* the complicity of Australian government officials in providing advice to mining companies on how to avoid important nuclear non-proliferation safeguards treaties to sell uranium to places like Taiwan (which was not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) via “Toll Processing” in the US.”
Oops!
http://www.foe.org.au/anti-nuclear/issues/oz/cartel
Dear Flower, buclear power is indeed clean. It is actually safe. It is cheaper tha n the alternatives touted by the lead article.
As for mining uranium - forget it. There is simply no need for mines.
There are adequate sources of fuel for nuclear power stations from at least two other sources. Uranium in huge quantities is a by-product of mining copper, etc, at Olympic Dam. Even better, spent uranium, weapons, stored once-used fuel rods still with 99.3% of their nuclear potential still intact are all potential and actual fuels for Type 4 reactors which use fast nutrons, instead of slowing them down first with water.
The amount of uranium available is sufficient for at least tens of thousands of years. Oil will decline soon if not already, coal within a century. Sunlight is for ever, but at what cost? Wind and solar are not fully available during windy or cold or rainy days or at night. They are a kind of expensive lottery: If you win (sun plus low wind) you get to pay for very high priced power. If you lose, you still pay, but for no power at all.
So, like it or not, nuclear is not to be laughed at. Many other countries rely on various forms of the nuclear cycle for energy. Australia will continue to shun nuclear options at its peril.
Thank you for the information John Bennetts. There remains a small problem. Gen IV reactors are unproven anywhere in the world and don’t exist outside of drawings. The nuclear industry downplays the dangers of these non-existent Gen IV reactors, boasting that the waste will be substantially radioactive for ‘only’ 300 years.
Three hundred years? This irresponsible attitude is typical of the cowboys of the past (in all industries) who have left a dirty big mess for future generations to clean up. Currently, there remains around 100,000 contaminated sites in Australia – the legacy of yesterday’s hit and run polluters and ill-informed governments. At least that ignorance could have once been sustained but certainly not at anytime in the last forty years, considering that Environmental Protection Acts were legislated in this country in the early 70s.
And if Gen IVs are imminent and nuclear waste trash so readily available as a fuel, why is the nuclear industry digging up the planet to get at the uranium? What’s the rush? Four hundred and fifty uranium ‘projects’ in WA are currently reporting to the international financial markets, according to the uranium industry.
If Gen IV nuclear reactors are the way to go in the near future, why are the cowboys from the West selling Gen II+ and Gen III technologies to our hapless cousins in poor countries?
Aw…come on John. It’s all about the money and the generous subsidies. And what’s the name of that global insurance company that insures nuclear reactors? “Taxpayers Incorporated?”
PS: You wouldn’t have around 80 billion English pounds to help the poor Brits out with the decommissioning of their bombed out reactors and the piles of HL, IL and LL radioactive waste they’re agonising over, would you?
You say that like it’s a good thing, Flower. But it neatly illustrates one of the key problems with renewable energy. By tying energy supply to the weather, you’re getting all the extremes in the former that you described in the latter, and then some. We find droughts and flooding rains hard enough for our water supply to cope with; having the same problem with our energy supply would be orders of magnitude harder.
If you’re truly concerned about “digging up the planet”, how about you go and find some relevant information for a change. Try calculating how much stuff would have to be shifted to supply the concrete, steel, glass, plastics, aluminium, rare earths, nitrates etc. required to power (kind of, some of the time) Australia with renewable energy. Then do the same for nuclear. The environmentally friendlier option will be obvious.
Hop, skip, jump – that’s the style Mark Duffett and I bet you heaps that a smart grid to accommodate renewables, preventing electricity disruptions and detecting overloads, will be available long before your U beaut Gen. IV nuclear reactors (ETA 2030 - 2040!)
Germany is a pioneer of the “Feed in Tariff” system and now has more than 300,000 photovoltaic systems. The energy law had planned for 100,000. The same threats about the grid were posed for Germany as in WA. Hasn’t happened yet.
And of course it would be in the utility companies’ interests to shut off all power generation which reduces their obscene profits and sends CO2 soaring. Australia should be upgrading their grids instead of throwing big bucks at obscure junior miners, obsessed with dirtying things up.
The UK Energy Commission concluded that “Hooking up the amount of nuclear and other generation to the national grid poses an unprecedented challenge. Two nuclear plants a year between 2020 -2025 is a very high target to reach. The system lacks any real framework for coordinating the process of siting and linking up the new power stations.”
“The EC report also cast doubt on current plans to make sure there is a deep hole for disposing of radioactive waste within 110 years. It called on the Government to insist that there are sufficient interim ways of storing the material before allowing new plants to be built.” Touche!
I daresay that your lobbying for nuclear energy, your obfuscation of “relevant information” and your criticisms of solar power somehow makes you a “person of interest.”
Alas as Planet Earth continues to haemorrhage, Nuke’s pin-up man-child, Areva, France’s nationally owned corporate atomic façade, has plunged into a deep financial crisis led by a devastating shortage of cash. In 2009, Electricite de France, the French national utility, was raided by European Union officials charging that its price-fixing may be undermining competition throughout the continent.
Delays and cost overruns continue to escalate at Areva’s catastrophic Olkiluoto Gen III+ reactor project in Finland. Areva has admitted to billions of dollars cost increases amidst litigation. The Flamanville project — the only one being built in France, was already well over $1 billion more expensive than projected after a single year under construction. “
And so the Russians have infiltrated developing countries to flog their nuclear wares, despite Russia resembling a nuclear waste dump and where western nations are paying the cost to clean up the wholesale radioactive carnage - if in fact it is ‘cleanable.’
Helloooo Mark Duffett. The idea is to reduce emissions by 25% by 2020. That expels nuclear outright. The nuclear renaissance is stillborn - a teratogenic mutant. The atom will return to Momma Earth’s hazardous waste repository from whence it was pillaged. Vale the atom - RIP and amen to that.