Smoke screen: how Australia's biggest polluters have been free to increase emissions
"Fires and floods: Australia already seesaws between climate extremes – and there's more to come "High troposphere superstorms bring welcome rain to Australia.""
The Coalition’s safeguards mechanism was meant to stop rises in industrial emissions cancelling out cuts paid for by taxpayers – but it’s a colossal failure
Supported by Limb Family Foundation
Adam Morton Environment editor @adamlmorton
Sun 23 Feb 2020 06.00 AEDT Last modified on Sun 23 Feb 2020 06.06 AEDT
The Port Kembla steelworks in New South Wales. The Coalition’s safeguards mechanism was intended to protect trade-exposed industries, such as steel and aluminium, while ensuring emissions did not increase, but its failure has raised serious questions. Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP
For nearly 40 years, black coal has been mined at Myuna, an underground operation a short drive south-west of Newcastle. Each year about 2 million tonnes is dug up, dropped on to an overland conveyor and sent to the Eraring power plant next door to be burned.
Although the New South Wales mine isn’t new, its operation under owner Centennial Coal .. https://www.centennialcoal.com.au/ .. [bought by Thailand's biggest coal producer, Banpu .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banpu .. in 2010] has changed over the past couple of years, leading to a dramatic increase in greenhouse gas escaping its coal seams.
Emissions at the mine in 2017-18 were 65% above the government-agreed limit for the site. New data published just before Christmas show Centennial was also in breach last financial year, with carbon pollution at Myuna 47% above its limit.
Specifically, it would set a limit – a baseline – for about 140 industrial facilities that emitted more than 100,000 tonnes each year. While the government chose not to emphasise the point, companies that breached their baseline at a particular site without federal approval would have to pay by buying carbon credits created through cuts elsewhere.
In practice, the scheme has run quite differently.
In the case of Centennial Coal, the Australian Conservation Foundation found it could reasonably have been expected to pay more than $6m to offset its extra emissions, based on the price the government pays .. http://www.cleanenergyregulator.gov.au/ERF/Auctions-results/july-2019 .. for carbon credits. Instead it followed rules set up by the government that allowed it to retrospectively apply for a change to its baseline arrangements.
Most people paying attention to the scheme have been left to wonder: why have a policy to limit emissions that routinely allows companies to ignore their limit?
Suzanne Harter, a climate campaigner with the ACF, is among those who says it makes no sense. “If the government keeps increasing the pollution baselines, there is no point to the safeguard mechanism,” she says.
Tennant Reed, who runs climate, energy and environment policy for the Australian Industry Group, which represents the interests of more than 60,000 businesses, agrees. “If it never has to do something to actually reduce emissions it will have been a waste of time for everyone involved,” he says.
Companies used only some of this additional headroom. Actual emissions under the scheme rose 12% over those two years.
Based on this, RepuTex found the safeguard was likely to lead to an extra 280m tonnes of pollution over the next decade, more than six months worth of Australia’s total carbon pollution. It would more than eclipse the 193m tonnes of cuts contracted under the emissions reduction fund.
RepuTex’s executive director, Hugh Grossman, said it meant taxpayers’ dollars spent on storing carbon dioxide in vegetation was “effectively money going down the drain”.
The surge has been driven by the creation of a $50bn liquefied natural gas export industry across northern Australia and increases in direct combustion at mining sites, venting of fugitive emissions in fossil fuel extraction and pollution from metals, chemicals and minerals processing.
That could start to change this year as more of the recent record investment in solar and wind power, spurred by the now-reached national renewable energy target, is comes online. But analysts say Australia cannot hope to meet its climate targets while major industry is left unchecked. The industrial sector is expected to pass power generation to become the country’s most polluting sector within two or three years.
A key question for the government is whether it intends to address this as it considers new climate policies this year. One option likely to be before it will be a recommendation in a review of its climate policies .. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/29/coalition-scrambles-for-carbon-cutting-solutions-as-paris-targets-move-further-out-of-reach .. led by the businessman Grant King, that quietly submitted its report earlier this month. In a discussion paper sent to some interest groups late last year, King’s panel floated changing the safeguard mechanism so companies that emit less than their baseline would be rewarded with carbon credits they could sell to the government or business.
The shift proposed by King in last year’s discussion paper would come with challenges – for example, working out how to guarantee that businesses were rewarded for changes in practice that cut pollution, and not for things over which they had no control, such as a downturn in the economy.
But the shift could have the support of the Australian Industry Group, which backs turning the safeguard mechanism into a meaningful emissions policy as long as it includes protection for export industries so they are not disadvantaged against overseas competitors.
Reed says if there is an intention to reduce industrial emissions, ratcheting down baselines under the safeguard mechanism is an obvious option. “That would be a substantial step, and a substantial change,” he says. “The safeguard mechanism could be part of how we get there, but right now it’s not doing much other than creating paperwork for industry and the government.”
The government has already begun to make changes to the safeguard that would allow that sort of shift. When the scheme began, emissions baselines were initially based on either a facility’s historic emissions or an independent forecast of future pollution.
Under changes being introduced this year, all facilities will be moved to limits based not on their total emissions, but on emissions intensity – how much they emit each unit of production. In one sense this just locks in what is already happening in cases such as the Myuna colliery – if companies lift production they will be able to put out more carbon pollution without risking a penalty.
But emissions intensity baselines could also be more obviously reduced over time to drive a shift to cleaner practice without putting pressure on production levels. This is part of what Labor proposed to do .. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/30/labor-tighten-emissions-regime-climate-election – without releasing much detail – when it said before last year’s election it would cut emissions under the safeguard by 45% by 2030.
Erwin Jackson, policy director with the Investor Group on Climate Change, believes the government can delay action on industrial emissions for only so long. The longer it waits, the greater the risk of a more “dramatic and draconian” shift as the pressure to act – from investors, from other countries, from the planet – escalates.
He says the Australian climate debate remains stuck on the idea that pumping emissions into the atmosphere does not have a cost that will be borne eventually, one way or the other. “To address climate change you have to reduce emissions, and someone has to pay for that. Investors are already pricing this risk,” he says. “The longer we delay action the higher the cost will be.”
A major scorecard gives the health of Australia’s environment less than 1 out of 10
"Fires and floods: Australia already seesaws between climate extremes – and there's more to come"
March 30, 2020 6.09am AEDT
Albert Van Dijk Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University
Luigi Renzullo Senior Research Fellow, Australian National University
Marta Yebra Senior lecturer, Australian National University
Shoshana Rapley Research assistant, Australian National University
Disclosure statement inside.
2019 was the year Australians confronted the fact that a healthy environment is more than just a pretty waterfall in a national park; a nice extra we can do without. We do not survive without air to breathe, water to drink, soil to grow food and weather we can cope with.
Every year, we collate a vast number of measurements on the state of our environment: weather, oceans, fire, water, soils, vegetation, population pressure, and biodiversity. The data is collected in many different ways: by satellites, field stations, surveys and so on.
We process this data into several indicators of environmental health at both national and regional levels.
Immediate action is needed to put Australia’s environment on a course to recovery.
Environment scores in the red
From the long list of environmental indicators we report on, we use seven to calculate an Environmental Condition Score (ECS) for each region, as well as nationally.
These seven indicators – high temperatures, river flows, wetlands, soil health, vegetation condition, growth conditions and tree cover – are chosen because they allow a comparison against previous years. In Australia’s dry environment, they tend to move up and down together, which gives the score more robustness. See the interactive graphic below to find the score for your region.
November heat records could be broken during sweltering weekend in NSW
Posted 2h ago, updated 23m ago
People are flocking to Lake Parramatta to escape the heat.(ABC News: Lydia Feng)
November heat records could be broken today as the mercury climbs across New South Wales — and there is no southerly change due until Sunday afternoon.
Helen Kirkup from the Bureau of Meteorology said Western Sydney would swelter, with Richmond, Penrith, Blacktown and Liverpool forecast to hit 41 degrees Celsius.
"For the city, we've currently got the maximum forecast at 39C, but I wouldn't rule out that it could go slightly higher as the westerly winds keep pushing the sea breeze out," she said.
"Tomorrow the westerly will come right through to the coast, so temperatures between the high 30s and well past 40C are expected until the change comes through."
VIDEO - 1m 36s, The weather bureau says the November temperature records are set to be broken.
Ms Kirkup said weather records were expected to be broken as the hot weather set in overnight and stuck around for much of Sunday.
"We are borderline [breaking] records for November across the Sydney Metropolitan area, places up in the Hunter," she said.
"We think the strong westerly wind that's coming through will actually stop temperatures dropping overnight."
Inland NSW is experiencing temperatures between 40C and 45C today, with Broken Hill expected to reach 44C and Wilcannia 45C.
"The potential of grass fires starting is probably the biggest concern," Ms Kirkup said.
Much of NSW is experiencing sweltering heat today and a reprieve is not expected until tomorrow.(Supplied: NSW Bureau of Meteorology)
A total fire ban has been declared for parts of New South Wales today due to the hot and windy conditions.
No fires can be lit in the Lower Central West Plains, Eastern Riverina, Southern Riverina, and Northern Riverina regions.
Total fire bans are also in place across parts of Victoria, South Australia and Queensland.
Rural Fire Service Commissioner Rob Rogers warned the rapid spread of grass fires could catch people unawares.
"If those fires do start, particularly in those grassland areas, they'll move really, really quickly," he said.
"People don't want to get caught in front of a grassfire.
"They're different to a bushfire. They burn really hot really quick."
Sept., 2020 - California’s ‘brutal’ heat wave is underway, expected to topple all-time records, escalate fire risks "Spreading Wildfires in California Have Killed 4 At least 62,000 people have been evacuated amid a grueling heat wave, the coronavirus pandemic and air thick with smoke. Published Aug. 20, 2020 Updated Aug. 21, 2020" https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=158132964
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