Should Peter Garrett stay or go?

The recent problems with the botched federal home insulation scheme is another example of politics leading to perverse outcomes.

The case for improving energy efficiency of our buildings - both commercial and residential - is quite clear. Improvements in energy efficiency of both the building envelope and appliances translate to less energy use and therefore less carbon emissions.

The Labor government announced a grand scheme to put insulation in the roofs of 2 million homes.  This sounded good.

However, haste makes waste. Rolling the scheme out in a hurry for political reasons - possibly due to the desire to get some wins on the board in the lead up to the next federal election has led to serious problems, including:

• insulation being replaced when it did not need to be
• substandard installation, which reduces the efficiency of the insulation
• unsafe work practices - one installed died due to heat exhaustion and others died from electrocution linked to foil insulation and staples contacting house wiring
• unsafe houses - thousands are now at risk of ceiling fires due to faulty installation
• with the scheme now canned, many installers are now out of work, or soon will be.

All this was done under the oversight of Environment Minister Peter Garrett, who has no background or experience in either building regulations, program management or insulation.

In addition, the States are responsible for building codes and enforcing safe building practices, not Peter Garrett.  This fact seems to have been completely overlooked by the mainstream media.

Garrett's department is obviously at fault too - he has apparently been given little or no information regarding the risks of the accelerated program. If this is the case then senior figures in his department should be disciplined.  If Garrett is not telling the truth about when he read the risk report, he should be sacked.

As it is, Garrett has been demoted, with the insulation rollout being shifted to Penny Wong's Department of Climate Change.  Of course, Penny Wong and Greg Combet no nothing about insulation either.  And Penny Wong has presided over the political debacle of the CPRS.

Our political system is demonstrably incapable of considered and/or efficient action on this type of initiative.  Politics simply perverts what should straight forward and simple.

On the balance of it, I think Peter Garrett should have been demoted, but I think that someone senior in his department should be too.  Kevin Rudd needs to accept responsibility for the failure of governance that allowed these problems to occur.

The insulation program should be under the jurisdiction of a non-political taskforce with the right skills and oversight, not politicians.

Link: Peter Garrett pushed aside by PM

Is "clean coal" just a dirty lie?

""Clean coal" is a term coined by industry and government to describe as yet proven methods of burning coal for producing energy with reduced carbon emissions. The term is actually misleading as burning coal for energy will never result in zero emissions.

The term "clean coal" is also used interchangeable with "carbon capture and sequestration (CCS)".

The are numerous concerns about the use of this term, including:

• CCS is not yet proven and there is a high risk that it will not actually be possible or viable
• Carbon dioxide escaping from underground storage could be lethal
• The United States government recently pulled its participation and funding from the clean coal/CCS pilot project called FutureGen.
• Burying (sequestering) huge amounts of liquefied CO2 is unlikely to be possible, and keeping it there will be problematic
• There will be high energy costs (and more emissions) to pump CO2 from sources such as power stations to locations where it may be stored.
• It will be very expensive to develop and deploy - probably more expensive than proven renewable zero emission solutions such as wind, solar and geothermal energy within 5 to 10 years.
• Much more coal will have to be burnt to power CCS (up to 30% more)
• Cannot capture all emissions from a power station so that even if widely used greenhouse emissions would not fall or stabilise but actually continue to increase
• It is highly unlikely CCS technology (if it works) will be able to be retrofitted to existing coal fired power stations - which should be decommissioned.
• CCS, if it can be made viable, is likely to be unable to handle the volume of carbon emissions from coal. While CCS proponents often point out that carbon sequestration projects are already in operation, the largest in existence (Sleipner, in Norway) currently buries just 1 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) of carbon dioxide. Victoria has 65 million tonnes of CO2 from stationery electricity alone and this figure is growing exponentially
• CCS, if it can be made to work, won't be available for deployment earlier than 2020 (possibly even 2030) so it would be to late to reduce emissions over the next two decades - which is arguably now the critical period. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology interdisciplinary expert study on The Future of Coal envisages that coal with CCS may begin to make a contribution to emissions reductions around 2025. A similar result was obtained in an earlier assessment by the Australia Institute.

Policy implications

• Government funding and effort expended on "clean coal" will detract from that for proven renewable energy technologies that are available now
• The coal industry should be funding CCS, not the taxpayer
• We need roadmap to exit from coal fired power, not go looking for reasons and excuses to keep burning it.
• Government funding for CCS is actually just another subsidy to the already highly subsidised, private and highly profitable fossil fuel energy sector.

Some groups claiming to be "for the environment" such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Climate Institute have recently endorsed "clean coal" and "CCS" as viable options for addressing climate change and receiving government funding [link].

It is a concern that such groups are participating in industry and government spin which will hijack and confuse real action to address climate change, the end result of which could be catastrophic.

It is inappropriate for governments to fund and promote CCS as a viable solution for climate change that is on par with genuine zero emission renewable energy options such as wind and solar.

Note that CCS technology is viable and in use for separating and burying CO2 from natural gas at the Gorgon and other gas fields on the North-West Shelf. This is much more efficient than attempting to capture and store CO2 from burning coal, and the CO2 is pumped back into the same well the natural gas is extracted from.

Government funding should be immediately withdrawn from CCS research and development and redirected towards zero emission energy solutions, re-training programs for workers to move from polluting industries into sustainable, renewable energy projects and into carbon sink projects such as bio char (terra preta de indio)."

For more information and references see: Clean coal - Greenlivingpedia

A new climate change working group for Australia

With Kevin Rudd and Labor now settling into government it is encouraging to see all the states, territories and the Federal government at the recent COAG meeting agree to form seven working groups on important issues including health, infrastructure, and climate change.

I was getting rather sick of the perennial blame game between that Labor states and the previous Federal government, which culminated in a "jihad against the States" during the election campaign just passed.

I await with interest which minister will chair the working group on climate change and who will be on it. Hopefully some real action on climate change will start soon, and some of the carbon catastrophes of the States - like Victoria's desalination plant and Tasmania's pulp mill - can be reigned in and stopped.

We need urgent action to ensure or greenhouse gas emissions peak by 2015 then decline. We therefore need a moratorium on building any new coal fired power stations, and we need considerable investment in zero emissions energy.

Link: States, territories welcome new working partnership

Australia should embrace the clean energy industry

Here is an excellent letter to the editor of The Age that points out that the Howard Government is guilty of extreme economic negligence by deliberately ignoring the fantastic opportunity for Australia to develop jobs and exports in the clean energy industry.

The European example points out on what Australia is missing out on:

• In 2006 in Europe $38b was invested in the renewable energy industry
• In 2007 it is projected that renewable energy industry investments will increase to $45b
• Nuclear provides about 6% of Europe’s energy and is being phased out
• On current trends renewable energy is predicted to be cost competitive with coal by 2015
• The renewable energy industry employs approximately 500,000 people while the coal industry employs about 30,000
• In 2006 wind energy output exceeded nuclear energy output on one day in Germany
• In 2006 in France, energy production from nuclear was halved due to a shortage of water to cool the power stations.
• Germany has now mandated that new houses must produce 20% of their power needs
• The EU is currently considering increasing their Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET) to 20%

It is interesting that emission trading in Europe has not assisted renewable energy, it has only improved efficiencies of fossil fuel use. So John Howard's future dated "response to climate change" is far to little, far too late.


What a waste
Vivienne Gray, Williamstown
Published in The Age on Saturday 10 June 2007. (Source)

Why does our Prime Minister always stress the economic costs of adjustments needed to address global warming, and not the economic opportunities?

Andrew Stephens' article (3/6) highlights how Australia has lost out over the past few years. The Federal Government has failed to foster technologies and industries that could have ensured our ongoing prosperity and at the same time helped reduce our greenhouse emissions. As a result, many thousands of "green-collar" jobs have been created offshore.

The last decade gave us a chance to make progressive adjustments to our fossil-fuelled energy industries. But in the face of government inaction, we now have to take more drastic steps and, if Howard is to be believed, we'll need a network of nuclear power plants.

So, we can forget about being the "clever country". The Federal Government's vision will ensure we remain the world's quarry - mining coal (until no one will buy it) and uranium. Our existing power plants will be replaced with equally ugly nuclear power plants.

Oh, and we'll take the world's nuclear waste, too. At least we'll lead in something.