Under the treaty announced by Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his Tuvalu counterpart Kausea Natano, Australia will also vet Tuvalu’s security arrangements with other nations.

Albanese said it was Australia’s most significant agreement with a Pacific Island nation, giving “a guarantee that upon a request from Tuvalu for any military assistance based upon security issues, Australia will be there.”

Tuvalu is one of just 13 nations to maintain an official diplomatic relationship with Taiwan, as Beijing has made increasing inroads into the Pacific.

Australia’s bid to host climate talks is welcome but must be matched with action

Under the treaty, “both countries commit to mutually agree any partnership, arrangement or engagement with any other state or entity on security and defence related matters in Tuvalu,” Albanese said in a press conference on the sidelines of a Pacific leaders meeting in the Cook Islands.

An Australian government official said this requirement covered any defence, police, port, telecommunications, energy or cyber security arrangements by Tuvalu.

Although Australia has defence agreements with other Pacific Islands nations, in a region where China recently struck a security pact with Solomon Islands and is seeking to expand its policing ties and infrastructure projects, the Tuvalu treaty goes much further in positioning Australia as its primary security partner.

Migration allowance

Australia would allow 280 people a year to migrate from Tuvalu, boosting remittances back to the island nation with a population of 11,000, which is threatened by rising sea levels caused by climate change.

Natano said Tuvalu had requested the treaty to “safeguard and support each other as we face the existence of threat of climate change and geostrategic challenges”.

The annual cap on visas would ensure migration to Australia “does not cause brain drain”, he added.

“The Australia-Tuvalu Falepili union will be regarded as a significant day in which Australia acknowledged that we are part of the Pacific family,” Albanese said.

Funds will also be provided for land reclamation in Tuvalu to expand land in capital Funafuti by around 6%.

World Bank to initially host loss and damage fund under draft deal

Tuvalu, a collection of nine low-lying islands mid-way between Australia and Hawaii, is one of the world’s most at-risk countries from climate change and has long drawn international attention to the issue.

Tuvalu told the Cop27 climate summit last year Tuvalu plans to build a digital version of itself, replicating islands and landmarks and preserving its history and culture.

A plan announced by Canberra and Washington last month to fund a new undersea cable in the Pacific would connect Tuvalu, which relies on satellite, to a cable for the first time.

Australia sees deeper economic and social integration with the Pacific Islands as a way to ensure the security of the region, a government official said.

The post Australia to accept migrants from climate-hit Tuvalu in security pact appeared first on Climate Home News.

Together, we are custodians of almost a fifth of the earth’s surface, and at the great crossroads of strategic interest for many nations. We are also some of the most vulnerable countries to the impacts of climate change and have contributed the least.

One issue looms large and demands our attention. Our neighbour Australia is bidding to preside over Cop31, a crucial meeting of the world’s climate negotiators in 2026 in partnership with the Pacific.

As part of the United Nations group known as Western Europe and Others, it will be primarily European countries that decide whether that bid goes ahead. I urge that these countries consider not just Australia’s words, but its actions as it plans some of the largest fossil gas expansion in the world in the run up to 2050.

The host of Cop31 will be decided by the Western Europe and Others group (yellow) (Photo credit: Lokal_Profil)

This year’s ‘global stock take’ of decades of climate action will tell us what none of us wants to hear. That we have not, collectively, brought emissions under control – indeed the world’s CO2 emissions are set to rise by about 1% to new record in 2023 – when they need to fall very rapidly. It is beyond time that we did the one thing that we’ve not yet tried – keeping fossil fuels in the ground.

Australia has claimed it is “back in the tent” in international climate circles. Indeed, Pacific nations welcomed Australia’s renewed commitment to climate action after the 2022 election, where the government won on a platform of greater environmental responsibility. Yet after a year, Australia’s commitment to reduce emissions still falls short of what they promised by signing the Paris Agreement.

Pacific Island nations, including my home country, Vanuatu, sit on the front lines of the climate crisis. We face rising sea levels that threaten to swallow our homes and increasingly frequent and increasingly destructive weather events.

Our ability to adapt will be made impossible by Australia’s hypocritical gas expansion plans. Vanuatu has been at the forefront of climate action – we led a coalition of countries to secure an advisory opinion on climate change from the United Nations International Court of Justice, and we are working towards a fossil fuel free Pacific.

At great cost, we are decarbonising our shipping register. We understand that climate action may require short term adjustments and we are willing to do that. I’m not confident that all countries share our resolve.

Indonesia delays coal closure plans after finance row with rich nations

The Pacific Island nations are in desperate need of genuine allies who will stand with us in our fight for survival. Australia, with its financial resources and international influence, should be such an ally. However, for Australia to be seen as a credible leader of climate talks, it must first resolve glaring inconsistencies in its climate policies.

The fact is that Australia remains the world’s third-largest fossil fuel exporter, with 116 new coal and gas projects in the pipeline, some of which are slated to operate until at least 2070. This persistence in fossil fuel expansion is fundamentally at odds with the spirit of the Paris Agreement and poses a direct threat to the climate goals set by the international community.

Australia’s bid to lead Cop31 is a momentous opportunity for the nation to prove its dedication to addressing the global climate crisis. The world is watching, and the Pacific Island nations are looking for unwavering support, not empty promises.

And part of that must be conditionality attached to approving its Cop bid. We cannot afford another climate summit brought to you by the fossil fuel industry. The time has come to demonstrate that commitment to climate action is more than just rhetoric. It’s time to do the right thing, securing a climate safe future for all our countries.

Ralph Regenvanu is Vanuatu’s minister for climate change adaptation, energy, environment, meteorology, geohzards and disaster management

The post Australia’s bid to host climate talks is welcome but must be matched with action appeared first on Climate Home News.

The GCF was set up in 2010 to distribute money from rich countries to poorer ones to help them cut emissions and adapt to climate change.

The fund is supposed to pay particular attention to the needs of small islands as well as the world’s poorest countries (LDCs) and African countries.

Small island officials told the authors of a new ODI report that getting money from the GCF was preferable to getting it from other sources like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund or the private sector.

Polish election result improves prospects for EU climate ambition

But, they said that GCF money was handed out too slowly, the process of applying is too difficult for nations with small civil services and a number of requirements discriminate against smaller nations.

Emily Wilkinson is the lead author of the report, which was shared exclusively with Climate Home. She said that “small island developing states really value the GCF, there’s nothing like it”.

But, she said, “the fact that a third of the proposals of all countries that we spoke to have been in the pipeline for over three years is quite staggering”.

Beneficiary metrics

With funding from rich nations stagnating, the GCF is looking to do as much as it can with its limited money. That’s made things harder for small islands.

Colin Young is a former government official from Belize and is now the head of the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre, which has worked with the GCF on projects in Barbados.

He told Climate Home that when they apply for projects, the GCF is increasingly telling them they need to get the cost per person helped down.

ODI report author Emily Wilkinson told Climate Home that one small island was told by the GCF that “the investment figures are very large compared to the beneficiary population and the climate impact”.

Africa and India push rich nations to phase out fossil fuels faster

The GCF’s investment criteria lists “impact potential” as one metric. As an example, it mentions “number of beneficiaries, number of people affected by climate impacts”.

As small island nations tend to have small populations, the number of beneficiaries is often in the low thousands.

"How do we say in a small country that is in the middle of a hurricane belt, droughts and floods - where people are impacted on the frontlines of climate change - and say that your project we have difficulty funding it because each person is going to get too much per capita from the resources?" Young asked.

Dominica was devastated by a hurricane in 2019. Its environment minister Cozier Frederick said that "adaptation and resilience funding needs are naturally higher for small island states compared to projects in other developing nations".

"Consequently," he said, "there is constant push back from the GCF on costs when applications are submitted".

A GCF spokesperson told Climate Home that number of beneficiaries was one of its "core indicators" but that there was no minimum threshold that has to be met.

Grants vs loans

The report found that one thing small islands like about the GCF is that it offers grants as well as loans.

But, with funding scarce, the report found the GCF is increasingly looking more to loans, so it gets its money back and can lend it out for another projects.

Renewable energy projects tend to be funded through loans, as the solar and wind panels generate electricity which can be sold, generating money to pay back the loan.

But, while that might work for a big solar farm in a large middle-income country like China, not every renewable energy project will make money.

World Bank approves green reforms, appeals for more money

Young said that for small islands, solar panels are often more about resilience to weather extremes than about reducing emissions.

For example, he said, solar panels can provide back-up energy to hospitals or water pumping stations when a storm knocks out the fossil fuel-powered electricity generator. But those solar panels won't make enough money to pay back the cost of installing them.

He said that the GCF's "increasing desire" to use loans not grants comes from the fact that the needs of developing countries "are clearly much greater than the resources the GCF has".

Nevertheless, he said small islands and the least developed countries "should not be lumped into the category with countries that clearly have less vulnerabilities in terms of size and geography and population".

Getting better

While problems remain, ODI's report found the GCF has taken measures to help small islands get funds.

In particular, small islands appreciated a GCF programme which gives each government $1 million to train staff and engage stakeholders to access GCF funds without relying on private consultants.

One anonymous Pacific interviewee described this as "super important" while a Caribbean official said it "has certainly helped us".

Most of the report's fieldwork was done before Mafalda Duarte took over as head of the GCF in August 2023.

A GCF spokesperson said the GCF gives half its funding to adaptation and half of that goes to LDCs, Sids and African states.

They added that the GCF is a "strong partner for Sids because of the eligiblity challenges small island developing states face with other sources of finance".

They said that there are "processes in place ensure that once a project is brought to the Board for approval GCF is confident of its impact potential. Processes are rigourous for that very reason."

They acknowledged that the GCF must speed up and simplify its process and said it had an "ambitious reform agenda".

The post Small islands struggle to get help from UN’s flagship climate fund appeared first on Climate Home News.

NGO Feedback has launched a formal legal challenge against the UK government, arguing that it risked flouting its international climate obligations by not properly assessing the environmental impacts of the deal.

The UK-Australia Free Trade Agreement, which enters into force at the end of the month, gives Australian producers better access to the UK market to sell beef, lamb and dairy.

Then UK prime minister Boris Johnson, trade secretary Liz Truss and Australian prime minister Scott Morrison celebrate the trade deal in London in 2021 (Photo credit: Number 10/Flickr)

Agreeing the deal in 2021, the UK government said Australia shared domestic “beliefs in high standards in areas such as animal welfare and the environment” and maintained that the deal would uphold these.

Brexit dash for deals

But critics believe it was passed in haste and risks undercutting UK producers with food that does more damage to the environment.

Carina Millstone, executive director of Feedback, said the UK government had recklessly sacrificed both British farmers and the climate in a rush for positive headlines after the UK left the European Union and faced accusations that it was now globally isolated.

Verra boss steps down after criticism of its carbon credits

“At a time of crisis in food and farming,” she said “the government must ensure all trade deals work towards our emissions reduction targets rather than towards further catastrophic heating.”

A government impact assessment of the free trade agreement suggested there would be an increase in transport-related greenhouse gas emissions as more goods are moved between Australia and the UK.

They estimated that increase would be 0.1-0.3 MtCo2 a year, about the annual emissions of Liechenstein.

Claims of uncertainty

But it said data uncertainties on the emissions impact of farming, particularly of beef, made drawing conclusions on these emissions difficult.

Campaigners instead point to a 2021 independent review of the UK’s national food strategy. It used a 2020 study in Global Environmental Change to conclude that carbon emissions from UK beef was 30kg Co2/kg compared to 45kg Co2e/kg from Australian beef.

The authors of that study found that these differences between different countries were “largely attributable to deforestation for grazing lands and higher methane emissions from…belching”.

Campaigners said the food strategy clearly shows that the free trade agreement will have a material impact on the UK’s legally binding climate targets.

Cheap meat

They also say the impact assessment fails to quantify the carbon impact of any changes to overall domestic UK meat and dairy consumption. 

Cheaper Australian goods were touted as one of the key benefits of the agreement for the UK. Australia’s biggest cattle farmer suggested that the trade deal could result in Australian beef exports to the UK rising tenfold. 

However, Feedback says the greater availability of cheap meat on UK supermarket shelves and in the food service industry will increase the amount that gets eaten.

This would go against recommendations from both national food strategy review and those of the UK’s advisory Climate Change Committee that substantial reductions in meat and dairy are essential to tackle climate change. 

G7 calls on all countries to reach net zero by 2050

Feedback sent a letter to environment secretary Thérèse Coffey last year, warning that it was prepared to take legal action, and said the response it received was unsatisfactory. 

Rowan Smith, a solicitor for law firm Leigh Day which is representing Feedback in the case, said they would be arguing that the legislation implementing the new tariff rules was based on an impact assessment that completely ignored the science.

“It is argued that this irrationality renders the statutory instrument unlawful, and our client is asking the court to quash it,” he said.

The government would not comment on ongoing legal proceedings.

The post UK sued over plan to import more polluting Australian beef appeared first on Climate Home News.

The “Safeguard Mechanism” reform legislation is key to the Labor government’s pledge to cut emissions by 43% by 2030 in a country that ranks as one of the world’s biggest carbon emitters per person.

Weeks of talks with the Greens Party, whose support is needed in the upper house Senate, yielded changes including a hard total emissions cap, ministerial review for projects that raise total emissions and compulsory disclosures for polluters that rely heavily on carbon offsets to meet their targets.

The updated legislation requires all new gas projects in the Beetaloo Basin to have net zero carbon emissions and new gas fields supplying existing liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants to have net zero reservoir emissions, imposing new costs. This does not include the emissions from customers burning the gas.

I’m a COP veteran. Here are 3 suggestions for the new Loss and Damage fund

Australian Greens leader Adam Bandt said “coal and gas have taken a huge hit” and “we’ve derailed the Beetaloo and Barossa gas fields”.

But the Greens gave up their demand that Australia stops approving new fossil fuel projects.

The International Energy Agency has said that new fossil fuel projects are not compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C.

Former Green leader Bob Brown said new fossil fuel projects were a “a colossal mistake”. But, he said the hard cap on emissions, will stop about half the planned future coal and gas projects.

Mexico launches global push for geoengineering restrictions

“Today, we are a step closer to achieving net zero by 2050,” Energy Minister Chris Bowen, from the governing Australian Labor Party, said.

Support from the Greens leaves the government short two votes in the Senate, where it is wooing independents.

The plan, due to take effect on July 1, aims to make about 215 oil, gas, mining and manufacturing facilities that annually emit more than 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO2-e) cut their emissions by 30% over the next seven years.

Under the revised legislation, projects such as the massive Browse field that Woodside Energy wants to develop would have to have carbon capture and storage to achieve net zero.

The government said it would tip in A$400 million (US$266 million) to help the cement, steel and aluminium industries decarbonise.

The post Greens stop blocking Australia’s new fossil fuel projects appeared first on Climate Home News.

Representatives of countries from an array of different regions, including Africa, Asia, Latin America and small island states, pushed to be singled out as particularly vulnerable.

Tanzania and Timor-Leste asked that the world’s poorest countries, known as least developed countries (LDCs), be added to a list of impacted communities, according to a report of the meeting by think-tank IISD.

Africa and small island developing states (Sids) were nearly cut out of one section on vulnerabilities, the IISD report says, and replaced by a reference to “developing and least developed countries”.

UN tells governments to ‘fast forward’ net zero targets

But there was a strong push from many delegates to retain them, particularly as most of those regions’ representatives had already left the talks to approve the report, as they had to catch flights home from Switzerland.

Mexico and Chile wanted to add Latin America to the list of regions that are particularly vulnerable while India wanted Asia included, according to IISD’s report.

The final document lists Africa, Sids, LDCs, Central and South America, Asia and the Arctic as particularly vulnerable.

The benefits of vulnerability

What makes some communities more vulnerable than others is not just physical factors like sea level rise but also social factors like poverty, governance, building standards and infrastructure.

This makes naming specific parts of the world as vulnerable a politically sensitive topic.

The inclusion of the Arctic as one of the most climate vulnerable places in the world, for example, was significant because it came just days after the US approved the hugely controversial Willow oil drilling project on Alaska’s north slope.

There are various reasons for wanting to be named as vulnerable, including global recognition and better access to climate finance.

Last year’s Cop27 climate talks agreed that a new fund for climate victims should be targeted at countries who are “particularly vulnerable” to climate change.

Loss and damage committee ready to start talks following Asian nominations

Samoan ambassador Fatumanava-o-Upolu III Dr. Pa’olelei Luteru, who chairs the alliance of small island states (Aosis), said making specific note of the risks to these islands was “imperative in the context of climate justice”.

“The fact is that we are already facing devastating losses and damages of great magnitude, and funds we should be investing into sustainable development initiatives must be diverted to help us cope with climate change impacts,” he said.

IPCC highlights rich nations’ failure to help developing world adapt to climate change

But recognising growing impacts also gives states the responsibility of acting on them.

Jörn Birkmann researches climate vulnerability at the University of Stuttgart in Germany and was coordinating lead author of one of the underlying IPCC reports.

He told Climate Home: “It seems like governments fear that if their country is not mentioned, they could receive less support (e.g. global adaptation funds),”

He added: “Or vice versa; if they are mentioned it might lead to a stigmatisation or might raise questions about the role of governance.”

Measuring vulnerability

Birkmann said studies on human vulnerability all point to the same global hotspots, particularly Africa.

But even though many governments acknowledge this, there are significant tensions when measuring and mapping human vulnerability.

“It is still difficult in [a summary for policymakers report] to name specific global regions that are more vulnerable than others,” he said.

“The synthesis report is mentioning some regions, but it seems to be much easier for governments to agree on general sentences, rather than pointing to areas or countries where such deficits are evident.”

Green Climate Fund credibility hangs over response to violence in Nicaragua project

Although it misses a lot of nuance about who is vulnerable, Birkmann welcomes the fact that the report recognises global hotspots, “since the success of adaptation and resilience building also depends on the starting point communities and countries have”.

He believes adaptation strategies should not just focus on physical phenomena and climatic hazards such as storms, but also on structures and interventions that reduce human vulnerability, such as poverty reduction, education or fighting corruption – the latter being “a very controversial topic in the political arena”.

Furthermore, when new financial mechanisms for loss and damage agreed at Cop27 are being put into practice, he said it would be helpful to define adaptation goals, not just those on emission reduction.

“These goals should also take into account the very different starting points of regions/countries/communities to build resilience,” he said.” The level of human vulnerability might be such a benchmark of the different starting points.”

The post Nations fight to be called climate vulnerable in IPCC report appeared first on Climate Home News.

Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese travelled to Suva, Fiji, this week to attend the first in-person leaders’ meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum in three years.

The meeting was an opportunity for Australia to reset its relation with its Pacific neighbours after four difficult years under Scott Morrison, who tried to water down the climate elements of the last meeting, and to counter a growing Chinese influence in the region.

The Labor government’s improved plan to cut emissions 43% between 2005 and 2030 was seen as a necessary first step for Albanese to restore Australia’s climate credentials.

A communique endorsed by all leaders, which hasn’t yet been published, is expected to welcome Australia’s renewed commitments to the forum’s climate priorities and declare “a climate emergency” in the Pacific.

But island nations want Albanese to go further. Speaking after the meeting, Fiji’s prime minister Frank Bainimarama, said: “We simply cannot settle for anything less than the survival of every Pacific island country – and that requires that all high emitting economies implement science-based plans to decisively reduce emissions in line with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C temperature threshold.

“Most urgently, it requires that we end our fossil fuel addiction, including coal. That is our ask of Australia.”

Australia’s new climate pledge is a step-up that Fiji has long sought –– but out of the duty I owe every young person in the Pacific, I have urged @AlboMP to go further for our family’s shared future by aligning Australia’s commitment to the 1.5-degree target. pic.twitter.com/xXtPoc3Hnu

— Frank Bainimarama (@FijiPM) July 13, 2022

Pacific island leaders have recognised climate change as “the single biggest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific”.

Albanese told Australian media earlier this week that the government’s “position on climate change is something that’s really an entree to get through the door of credibility with our Pacific Island neighbours because for them, it’s a threat to their very existence.”

Australia backed Vanuatu’s request for an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on countries’ legal obligations to protect people from climate harm. Further wrangling over the wording of the resolution is expected before it is presented for a vote at the UN general assembly.

The communique is expected to have little to say about Australia’s proposal to host the Cop29 UN climate talks with Pacific island nations in 2024.

“I would love to see a Cop come to the Pacific,” Bainimarama said. “Though I will say: the Cop negotiations are defined far more by what they produce than where they are held.”

Albanese told reporters that “every nation expressed support [for the bid] and were very enthusiastic about the idea” and that he had asked them to think about how they could engage with hosting the summit. Albanese said other bidders, including Germany, were interested in hosting the talks and a decision would be taken at Cop27 in Egypt this November.

China’s ambitious rooftop solar pilot helps drive ‘blistering’ capacity growth

“If Australia wants to host the Cop, there is an expectation that they will offer more [emission-cuts],” Wesley Morgan, a researcher at the Australian Climate Council who specialises in relations with the Pacific, told Climate Home News. “It almost invites international pressure on Australia to do more.”

“Now there’s a lot of expectation on Australia to translate words into action,” Lavetanalagi Seru, regional policy coordinator of the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network told Climate Home. “We hope that the government will be able to come forward with a concrete plan to support the 1.5C lifeline.”

Palau’s president Surangel Whipps told The Sydney Morning Herald what that should look like: Australia should at least halve its emissions from 2005 levels by the end of the decade.

Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up for free to get our weekly newsletter and occasional extra bulletins

A report by the Australian Climate Council, published ahead of the meeting, goes further. It found that based on its economic strengths and vast untapped opportunities for renewable energy, Australia should aim to reduce its emissions 75% between 2005 and 2030.

It added that “Australia’s love affair with coal and gas must end”.

Australia’s ongoing fossil fuel expansion is a sore in its relations with islanders. On Monday, coal became the country’s most valuable export and the government, which is supportive of new gas fields, is due to decide on whether to approve 27 coal mine developments.

Civil society groups wrote to Albanese demanding he “work quickly to keep all fossil fuels in the ground”. If approved, the coal developments would produce the equivalent of 35 times Australia’s annual emissions over their lifetime, they warned. “If this goes ahead, it will be directly detrimental to the Pacific,” said Seru.

Campaigners also want Australia to restart its contributions to the Green Climate Fund, which it stopped in 2019, and provide additional funding to the region.

In 2020, Australia delivered less than a quarter of its “fair share” towards a collective goal to mobilise $100bn for developing countries. It remains one of the worst performing nations on climate finance provision.

The post Pacific islands welcome Australia’s renewed climate ambition – and ask for more appeared first on Climate Home News.

AGL, the country’s biggest coal generator and biggest polluter, has been forced to abandon its ill-considered plans to split in two and keep burning coal for another two decades and more. And it has been forced to do so by shareholder activism.

The fact that coal has been such a touch pad of political debate in the past decade makes this stunning victory by the activist billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes even more remarkable.

For one, it shows that resistance to the green energy transition and science-based climate targets is moving from dodgy back-room political deals and street-based protests, to the plain daylight of the boardroom and financial markets.

Australia now has two of the world’s most powerful and deep-pocketed green energy activists in Cannon-Brookes, the third richest person in the country, and Andrew Forrest, the iron ore billionaire who is the second richest person in the country, and who is making a huge push into green hydrogen and green ammonia.

It also has a super industry with trillions of dollars of investment to manage, and a keen awareness that fossil fuel assets are going to be stranded and worthless within a decade or two. The shift is on.

Comment: Europe should use its Putin-proofing energy plans to reinvigorate climate action

Cannon-Brookes and Forrest are already working together on what will be the world’s biggest solar plant and battery storage facility, the $30 billion Sun Cable project in the Northern Territory. And they are both damning in their assessment of those who propose new fossil fuel projects.

Yes, we still have conservative politicians, media and “think tanks”, cheered on by Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart from the sidelines, still prosecuting the case for coal, and smearing their faces in coal dust, feigning interest in the future of the coal industry workers.

But the federal election, barely a week old, amplifies the green energy shift. At least 55% of people voted for stronger climate action, and at least one quarter for a lot more than that – the supporters of the Teals and the Greens demand science-based targets, and to act on them.

It’s likely that AGL saw the writing on the wall from the election result, and realised it was kidding itself if it thought it could keep on burning brown coal up to 2045 and retain customers at the same time.

Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up for free to get our weekly newsletter and occasional extra bulletins

The existing board – many gas and oil veterans – doesn’t seem interested in managing an accelerated transition, so they are heading for the exit.

There are still many big questions to be answered about how this plays out, mostly relating to the speed and extent of the transition that AGL will be able to execute.

The Australian Energy Market Operator has outlined a 20 year blueprint that factors in 80% renewables by 2030, no brown coal generators by 2032, and very few black coal generators by that time. It is very likely to accelerate that scenario in coming years, possibly to a complete exit from coal by 2035, or earlier.

But it is one thing to model this path, and another to execute. So much depends on the rules and the regulations of the market – which everyone knows are not fit for purpose, but which are taking an age to re-write. And there are other important issues, including technology integration, social licence for new projects, and transmission in particular, and of course supply chains.

David Leitch, principal of ITK and co-host of RenewEconomy’s popular Energy Insiders podcast, says the change of management at AGL will be welcomed.

He believes that AGL may try and seek a negotiated bid from Grok Ventures, the Cannon-Brookes investment vehicle. It will be interesting to see whether funds management giant Brookfield rejoins Grok in such a venture and a joint bid.

Island states back Vanuatu’s quest for climate justice at the UN

Much about the future of AGL’s Loy Yang A brown coal generator, Leitch says, will depend on the attitude of the Victorian government, which has already privately negotiated a new closure date for the Yallourn brown coal generator in the Latrobe Valley, the details of which have been kept secret.

Yallourn was originally scheduled to close in 2032, and it will now close in 2028. It is possible it might have closed even earlier without a state government agreement to support it in troubled times, and when the sun did shine and the wind did blow, but we don’t know.

This is the big question for the green energy transition. We do know, from experience from the sudden exit of Hazelwood, and the drawn out saga over Liddell, that coal closures must be preceded by a sufficient amount of wind, solar and dispatchable storage built beforehand. That’s easier said than done.

NSW has implemented a plan to do just that, while assuming that all its remaining five coal generators could be gone within a decade. Victoria has a less well-defined plan, but its second big renewables option this year and its big new push into offshore wind shows that it knows it must build before it closes.

Comment: Australia excels at exporting the climate problem. Now it can finally export solutions

As it stands, only the Labor governments in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory do not have credible plans to move beyond 50% renewables in their respective grids, or even reach that target. It is possible that the massive push into green hydrogen could solve the problem for them, but they need a transition plan for their existing workers.

Cannon-Brookes, meanwhile, can help prepare AGL for the green energy transition, but he will need to work with and count on others – regulators, rule makers, developers, suppliers, financiers, state and federal governments – to ensure the infrastructure is in place to meet those climate targets.

But that is what is so exciting about the AGL situation. The transition has claimed nearly as many AGL CEOs (Andy Vesey, Brett Redman and now Graeme Hunt), as it has claimed Australian prime ministers (Rudd, Gillard, Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison).

Now, however, we have a federal government with a more ambitious policy (43% emissions reduction and 82% renewables by 2030), and a very big cross-bench in both houses that will be pushing them to do much more, especially on economy-wide emissions. And a public that wants change and is cheering it on.

This article was produced by RenewEconomy and republished under a content-sharing agreement.

The post Billionnaire activist forces Australia’s biggest polluter into climate-friendly U-turn appeared first on Climate Home News.

Successive Australian Governments have ignored global calls for increased ambition and interpreted their national interest as the fossil fuel industry’s interests. Author Naomi Klein remarked that in Australia you cannot tell where the coal industry ends and the federal government begins.

That is best personified in Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, who brandished a lump of coal in Parliament to show his enduring support for the industry. Sorry, I should say former prime minister Morrison. Because on Saturday 21 May, Australians finally and overwhelmingly voted for climate action.

Incoming prime minister Anthony Albanese, from the Australian Labor Party, promises to move the country out of the “naughty corner” on climate change. Unlike the majority of G20 countries, Australia did not strengthen its 2030 target ahead of the Cop26 summit in Glasgow, UK.

The new and improved target will be a 43% emissions cut on 2005 levels, up from the current 26% target, but still short of what the science requires. There is an opportunity to go even higher.

Alongside the Labor party win was an unprecedent number of independent candidates, running on stronger climate action agendas.

Analysis: What’s at stake for the climate in Australia’s election?

Six traditionally safe seats for the incumbent conservative government in the wealthiest parts of the country were lost to independent, educated women. Their agenda centred on climate action, integrity, and gender equality – all found wanting from the conservative Morrison government.

These independent candidates are not in the same party though they share similar concerns and together will help push the next Australian government in the right (or is it left) direction on climate action. Add to this the progressive Greens party which also impressively snapped up seats in the city of Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, the state synonymous with Australia’s coal industry.

Australia came dead last on climate policy in the 2022 Climate Change Performance Index. This will change.

To speed up the clean energy transition, the incoming Labor government has pledged to increase the renewable share in the electricity mix to 82% by 2030 (currently at around 30%). It will bring in tax reforms for electric vehicles (given low uptake) and build a national charging network with stations every 150 kilometres. It will also address Australians’ range anxiety fuelled by Morrison’s claims that EVs can’t tow anything or drive distances and therefore would literally “end the weekend”.

Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up for free to get our weekly newsletter and occasional extra bulletins

For many Australians working on climate change (author included), this change was a long time coming. It took the suffering and anger over the last three years from unprecedented fires, coral bleaching, and floods, supercharged by climate change and mismanaged by the federal government.

At Cop26, despite the clear push from the US and the UK, Australia refused to increase short term targets. But the former prime minister always found the time and money to support fossil fuels. Just take his economic response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which was to pursue a gas-fired recovery and open five new massive fossil gas basins.

The incoming government has a major task ahead of itself, including on the international front. Morrison pulled Australia out of the UN’s Green Climate Fund on a whim while chatting to a rightwing radio host. It is why one of the most impressive policies from the Labor Party is to bid to host the 2024 UN climate conference (Cop29).

In the 30-year history of the UN climate body, Australia has not hosted and it doesn’t want to do it alone. Recognising the existential threat of climate change to its Pacific neighbours, Labor has invited a Pacific island nation to partner on this bid. That is if they want to.

Analysis: Who will replace Patricia Espinosa as the UN climate chief?

As former Kiribati president, Anote Tong said hosting is irrelevant unless it is backed up by action. That could include simple actions like re-joining (and contributing to) the Green Climate Fund. Tong also points to harder actions like a genuine transition away from fossil fuels.

Australia is the third largest exporter of fossil fuels and there are 114 new gas and coal mining projects in the pipeline. They could add over 1.5 billion tonnes of emissions, most of which will not show up in Australia’s carbon accounts as the fuel will be burned overseas. Currently Australia excels at exporting the problem. Maybe it could export the solutions instead.

The incoming prime minister wants to turn Australia into a renewable energy superpower, given the country is rich in renewable resources and all the rare earth minerals necessary to make batteries. He wants to build things in Australia again. That includes building a new reputation for Australia that goes past fossil fuels.

Lets hope so. Lets hope Albanese can build an Australia that channels the wave of climate action that swept him and many others into government.

Richie Merzian is the climate & energy program director at the Australia Institute, a leading public policy think tank based in Canberra.

The post Australia excels at exporting the climate problem. Now it can finally export solutions appeared first on Climate Home News.

Despite frequent bushfires, floods and a bleaching barrier reef putting climate high on the list of voters’ concerns, the main parties have not majored on it in their campaigns. That has created an opening for the “Teal independents” to run on climate platforms in typically conservative areas, while Greens could gain seats in the senate. In the event of a hung parliament, they could be kingmakers.

The outcome matters for the climate. Australia emits more CO2 per person than any other large country, with emissions over twice as high as the European Union. As a wealthy country, it could afford to fund climate action in developing countries and its links to some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations, Pacific islands, mean it could be a huge force for good in the region.

That’s not the role it’s currently playing. Since he forced out his more climate-focussed Liberal predecessor Malcolm Turnbull, Morrison’s rhetoric and policies have been designed to anger environmentalists. Turnbull has accused his former colleague of a “fossil fuel fetish” and sending a “calculated ‘fuck you’ to the global consensus demanding climate action”.

As a result of his policies, Morrison was snubbed by the British hosts of Cop26 when he was not invited to a leaders’ climate ambition summit in March 2021. He only confirmed his attendance at Cop26 itself after Queen Elizabeth II, Australia’s monarch, was recorded criticising leaders who weren’t coming.

On the other hand, Albanese’s Labor Party wants to not just attend Cops but to host one. It promises to bid to co-host Cop29 in 2024 with a Pacific country. That plan faces several diplomatic hurdles but is a sign that they want to repair Australia’s climate image.

Setting climate targets

The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change works on the principle that countries volunteer to progressively increase their ambition. Most large countries – including the US, , China, EU and Japan – have done this through improved “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) to the UN deal.

Morrison has refused. Instead, he’s stuck with Australia’s target to reduce emissions by 26-28% between 2005 and 2030, far less than other wealthy countries.

Yeah Australia is last on all baselines, even at 28% pic.twitter.com/LoO3tcdHp2

— Simon Evans (@DrSimEvans) April 22, 2021

Labor wants to increase that target to 43%. That’s still lower than the UK, EU or US but similar to Canada, Japan and South Korea. As Labor’s candidate for climate minister Chris Bowen said, it would put Australia “back to the international pack”.

Bowen defends his target by saying that Morrison’s inaction means he can’t be as ambitious as he’d like to be. “We’re starting in 2022,” he said, “I wish we were starting in 2016 or 2019 and setting out what we could do by 2030”. He adds that 43% is not just a target but what energy modellers said would be the result of Labor’s policies.

Cleaning up Australia

In 2020, Australia was the world’s biggest exporter of the world’s dirtiest fuel – coal. Neither the Liberal-National coalition nor Labor plan to end that dubious record.

Morrison once infamously brought a lump of coal into parliament, telling the Labor Party “don’t be scared, it won’t hurt you”.

He has said he will support new coal mines. Labor’s Albanese has said he would support them too if they “stack up environmentally and commercially”. Both support new oil and gas production.

Richie Merzian told Climate Home the only real difference on fossil fuel production is that Labor “seem a lot more reticent to give additional or new subsidies for fossil fuels”. Data from the OECD shows the Australian government provides US$7.3bn of fossil fuel subsidies a year, $280 per Australian.

On consumption, as its target indicates, Labor wants to move faster away from fossil fuels. Its two flagship policies are to improve the electric grid so that it can handle more renewables and to fix the loopholes in the “safeguard mechanism” so that it does what it is supposed to – reduces pollution from major emitters.

Morrison’s climate policies have focussed on “technology not taxes”, investing in private sector green projects. Another focus is energy efficiency through more efficient appliances and solar power. Climate Action Tracker has rated these policies as “insufficient”.

Cleaning up the world

Australia’s international reputation on climate change is in tatters, particularly in the Pacific. After Morrison went to the Pacific Island Forum and watered down language on climate change in its communique, a former prime minister of Tuvalu said he was “stunned”.

Albanese and Bowen, whose western Sydney constituency includes a large Pasifika community, want to repair that reputation. Part of that is co-hosting Cop29 with a Pacific nation but Pacific islanders want more than a talking shop. They want seawalls and solar panels and the money to build them.

Huge turnout at the climate change election forum for the Pasifika Community organised by @UCA_NSWACT

Aus & our Pacific neighbours working respectfully on climate change is vital

Despite the Uniting Church inviting multiple Liberal MPs no-one from the Govt showed up. pic.twitter.com/RhLOqmBD3h

— Chris Bowen (@Bowenchris) April 28, 2022

Labor’s climate finance plan is thin. It promises to divert A$3.5 billion ($2.4billion) from an existing facility for financing infrastructure in the Pacific towards climate resilience.

The program will consist of both grants and loans in a ratio not yet determined. Labor says it will aim to help Australian businesses.

Australia’s fair share of rich countries’ collective $100bn a year goal is estimated to be $3bn a year and neither Labor, the Coalition or even the Greens have pledged that much.

Labor has dodged questions about whether it would contribute to the UN’s Green Climate Fund, which Morrison stopped funding in 2019.

Merzian said Labor had been “lukewarm” on the GCF, but “it will be very difficult for it not to rejoin”.

Pacific leaders have been focussed on calling for direct climate finance from Australia rather than for them to re-join the GCF, whose funds are distributed across the world’s developing countries.

The post What’s at stake for the climate in Australia’s election? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Grok Ventures, the private investment firm of Cannon-Brookes and his wife Annie, hired brokers to stand in the market late Monday to snap up an 11.28% voting stake, which may be enough to thwart the demerger at the upcoming shareholder meeting in June.

Of all the things that have and will be said about Cannon-Brookes and his landmark siege of AGL, the one that seems to get under his skin the most is the claim that he is the person responsible for the early closure of Australia’s coal generators.

It’s an attack line that is readily deployed by fossil fuel lobbyists and Coalition conservatives, if you’ll excuse the tautology, because there is nothing so easy as throwing darts at someone when you are trying to hide a complete stuff up.

Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up for free to get our weekly newsletter and occasional extra bulletins

It fits with the rhetoric that it is the inner city elites that are meddling with the futures of coal industry employees, not global economic, technology and environmental factors. And it annoys the heck out of Cannon-Brookes.

“The thing I push back on is people say like, ‘Oh, Mike wants to shut down the plants’,” Cannon-Brookes told RenewEconomy in an interview earlier this week.

“I’m like, let’s be clear here: These plants are shutting down.

“That makes me want to question how we do that, how we do it in a way that keeps prices down, how we do it in a way that values the workers that work there and doesn’t just throw them on the street, how we do it in a way that can be financed and managed to transition in a more stable sense.”

Cannon-Brookes says the last coal unit should be closed by 2035 at the latest, and big efforts made to ensure that the replacement capacity – renewables and storage – is delivered by then.

Analysis: Macron promises to abandon gas, oil and coal, but will he deliver?

“There’s a number of reasons we need to get it done,” Cannon-Brookes says.

“Certainly the climate science would say that it needs to be done far more rapidly than the company’s current closure date of 2045. And the financiers would say it needs to be happened far more rapidly than that.

“Find me a model outside of AGL that shows that these plants are in any way able to be run in 2045. There is also the case that… attracting capital requires you nowadays to have a plan that is somewhat aligned to various global climate agreements.

“That would necessitate, in my understanding, 2035 is probably the outside date and you need a really credible plan to say that that’s the last day, when the last unit of the last coal plant will be shut down.”

AGL paints this an extreme position. But it’s not got many supporters of that view.

Australian government welcomes high fossil fuel prices, ships coal to Ukraine

After all, the NSW Coalition government is working on the assumption that all of the state’s black coal generators (including AGL’s Bayswater) will be closed in a decade, which is why it is working on a renewable infrastructure plan that will likely turn out to be one of the most significant and rapid transitions in the western world.

And the Australian Energy Market Operator’s latest planning document, known as the Integrated System Plan, assumes that all brown coal generators (including AGL’s Loy Yang A) will also be gone within a decade.

It’s important to note that AEMO’s scenario planning is endorsed by the overwhelming majority of the energy industry, and a growing number believe the transition will – and must – be even quicker than that.

But not AGL. Its business plan assumes Loy Yang A will keep generating, and polluting, for another 13 years, until 2045. It wants to split the business into two to manage the transition at its own speed.

Cannon-Brookes says this position is completely untenable, given what is at stake for employees, the environment and the future of the company, and has vowed to stop the company split.

Crypto bubble: The hype machine behind a $70,000 carbon credit

It has now turned into a bitter fight. Cannon-Brookes told RenewEconomy earlier this week – a day after launching his market raid – that he was “sick of them [the AGL board] fucking it up.”

AGL retorted on Thursday by accusing the Cannon-Brookes team of making “false claims”, including the observation that AGL has made no direct investment in renewables over the last five years.

AGL says it has invested $4.8 billion over the last two decades in renewables. The irony is that while that may be true, it doesn’t mean that Cannon-Brookes’ claim is false.

The argument that AGL has made no direct investment in renewables in the last five years is supported in the very same document that the company used to attack Cannon-Brookes. As this map below reveals, all the latest projects have been funded by “third parties”.

Source: AGL. Click to expand.

Despite this description, AGL insists it is “direct”, because of has a 20% interest in PowAR and its $357.6 million investment to fund its share of PowAR’s acquisition of Tilt’s Renewables’ Australian business.

But this dispute over direct and indirect investment misses the point.

The central motivation of Cannon-Brookes’ tilts at AGL – first in the rejected joint offers made by his private company Grok Ventures and Brookfield, and now through the on market raid – is about the speed of AGL’s transition.

He says it’s way too slow.

AGL, let’s remember, is the biggest generator of coal in Australia and the biggest single greenhouse polluter in the country, and Cannon-Brookes says its strategy is in no way aligned with a 1.5C or even a 2C target.

A decade ago, AGL’s then CEO Michael Fraser justified his eye boggling investment in coal generators by saying it would provide the cash flow to invest in renewables. Let’s burn coal so we can build more renewables, he argued at the time.

It didn’t sound right then and it doesn’t now. (Bizarrely, Origin Energy’s Frank Calabria is using a similar argument to justify the company’s massive gas investments, even though it has chosen to fast track the closure of its remaining coal generator at Eraring).

Canada: Amid record profits, tar sands companies want more subsidies for carbon capture

And in AGL’s case, it hasn’t turned out the way Fraser suggested it would. He was succeeded by American Andy Vesey, who tried to change the colour of the business plan back to green but got hounded out of the job when he announced the closure of Liddell.

AGL claims to have invested in 2.3GW of renewables in the past 20 years, but given the time-frame, the size of the Australian market and its dominant position, that’s not really a heck of a lot. It has been more interested in rewarding shareholders with its profits from coal.

Now AGL, according to this week’s presentation, is saying it will invest 3GW in renewables and flexible capacity by 2030. Again, that doesn’t come close to what’s likely needed to allow an early closure of its remaining coal generators.

It’s an important point because AGL is suggesting that 2045 is the last possible date for closure of Loy Yang A, not the actual target date. And it is suggesting that this could be brought forward if enough renewable capacity can be built instead.

That sounds a lot like Cannon-Brookes’ plan. The big difference is over the speed of that investment and the transition, and Cannon-Brookes’ contention that this is best done by AGL as a single entity rather than split in two.

IMF’s resilience fund ‘out of reach’ for some nations in need

Cannon-Brookes also points to the contradictory messages sent out by AGL over Liddell, the ageing, clapped out generator that will close its last unit next year, and Bayswater, located right next door that AGL wants to run for at least another decade.

“It boggles the mind that in Liddell, we’re going to make this wonderful green hub with industrial facilities and batteries and all this stuff, we’re using the land and the assets and stuff, but at Bayswater they say we can’t do that, it’s way too hard,” Cannon-Brookes says.

“I’m like, hang on, are they fundamentally different? Explain to me the fundamental difference between Liddell and Bayswater. There isn’t one. It’s bullshit. It’s entirely possible to be done. So you’ve just got to go out and do it.”

The difference between Cannon-Brookes and the multiple others who think that way is the fact that he has the resources, and is willing, to lay $650 million on the table to bring the issue to a head.

That’s a big change from the Twitter exchange with Elon Musk that led to the construction of the Tesla big battery in South Australia, or his social media campaign against Scott Morrison’s “fair dinkum” power dismissal of renewable energy.

This is an all in confrontation with a bastion of corporate Australia and one of the most powerful and influential companies in the country. There is much at stake, not just for AGL, but for the rest of the fossil fuel industry, and the country for that matter.

“It’s not philanthropic. It’s not a charitable exercise,” Cannon-Brookes says. But it does mark one of the key moments in Australia’s green energy transition. And the world is watching.

The content of this article was produced by RenewEconomy and republished under a content sharing agreement.

The post How a tech billionaire is forcing Australia’s coal die-hards to face the future appeared first on Climate Home News.

The seemingly coordinated defence has come from three of Australia’s biggest carbon trading groups, the companies set to be the biggest beneficiaries of a surprise change to the Emissions Reduction Fund that will free them from government contracts and allow them to sell carbon credits into a more lucrative open market.

It follows the former chair of the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee, professor Andrew Macintosh, revealing that he thought most of the Australian Carbon Credit Units issued by the Clean Energy Regulator were not backed by actual emissions reductions, and represented a “fraud on the environment”.

It’s a period that has seen confidence in Australia’s carbon offsets regime rattled, and sent the market price of ACCUs tumbling.

Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up for free to get our weekly newsletter and occasional extra bulletins

CEO of the largest contractor under the Emissions Reduction Fund, GreenCollar’s James Schultz, said in a statement that the firm welcomed the scrutiny of Australia’s carbon credit scheme, while adding that he viewed Australia’s carbon market as “a market we can have confidence in.”

“GreenCollar has been and remains the loudest advocate and supporter of the need for integrity and transparency in the Australian carbon market,” Schultz said.

“This is an idea that is simply in the DNA of our business. It is part of who we are as an independent, science-led, data-driven organisation. We would not be able to operate without it.”

“We don’t simply welcome scrutiny of methods and governance. We demand it. We have been the first to draw attention to the need for change and advancement of methods.”

Australia’s carbon markets have been rocked by the claims that it operates on the basis of flawed carbon offset methodologies.

Concerns have extended to the AU$4.5 billion (US$3.4bn) Emissions Reduction Fund, administered by the Clean Energy Regulator, which sees a considerable amount of taxpayer funds being used to purchase the offset units.

Australian government welcomes high fossil fuel prices, ships coal to Ukraine

The Emissions Reduction Fund’s second-largest contractor, Corporate Carbon Solutions, said that recent criticisms of the Emissions Reduction Fund effectively amounted to attack on landholders and project hosts.

“Recent attacks on the ERF are a direct attack on the more than 1,000 project owners operating to deliver more than 100 million carbon credits over the past decade with approximately 10% of Australia managed under nature-based projects,” Corporate Carbon Solutions said in a statement.

“At a time when more action is required on climate solutions, when more recognition needs to be given to landholders committing to improved environmental outcomes, when all of us need to be increasing our ambition and action in delivering a safe climate, spurious claims designed to undermine and disrupt action need to be called out as being in the same category as climate denial.”

In its own statement, the managing director of Agriprove – a spin off from Corporate Carbon Solutions – Matthew Warnken likewise issued a defence of the Australian carbon market.

“We echo the observations of the Carbon Market Institute that integrity, independence and robust review are at the core of Australia’s carbon scheme and that there are multiple elements of protection built into carbon credits from application and approval through to activation including regular, independent audits,” Warnken said.

“We note that the framework continues to evolve, and we support that evolution, including through our ongoing investment in technology and innovation.”

Carney, Kyte oversee carbon offset rules to address greenwashing concerns

The market price of ACCUs has fallen by almost 50% since the start of the year, falling from an all-time high of around $57 per tonne to about $31 per tonne.

But this remains substantially higher than the $12 to $16 the federal government was set to pay for the offsets under the Emissions Reduction Fund.

Earlier in March, federal energy and emissions reduction minister Angus Taylor announced that the federal government would effectively free carbon traders from their contracts, allowing them to instead sell ACCUs at the higher open market price.

An analysis produced by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis suggests the Morrison government’s decision to walk away from around 112 million tonnes worth of Emissions Reduction Fund contracts put its ability to deliver on its emissions reduction targets in doubt.

“That 112 million tonnes of abatement was factored in to meet the Federal Government’s official 26-28% target, and the 35% emissions reduction forecast taken to Glasgow,” IEEFA’s lead research analyst for Australian electricity, Johanna Bowyer, said.

“So now, the government is up to 112 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent behind on its emissions reduction task by allowing these fixed delivery contract exits.”

Crypto bubble: The hype machine behind a $70,000 carbon credit

“Carbon credit prices are now much higher than when the original fixed delivery contracts were signed between suppliers and the Federal Government,” Bowyer added. “It’s highly unlikely the Federal Government will be able to purchase new ACCUs at prices anywhere near the original average of $12.50. Prices closer to the current market rate of $30 or even the previous $47 seem more likely.”

“The change undermines the carbon market as a whole. The unexpected nature of the change and the price volatility it has created reduces certainty for investors in the nascent carbon market. Many will be worse off.”

This article was produced by Renew Economy and republished under a content sharing agreement.

The post Australian carbon traders defend troubled offset market against whistleblower claims appeared first on Climate Home News.

With much of Europe and North America looking to sever ties with Russia, countries have been scrambling for replacement supplies of oil, gas and coal, and it has sent prices surging.

Consumers are bearing the brunt of higher energy prices, with petrol prices surging to unprecedented highs while rocketing coal and gas has seen Australian wholesale electricity futures up almost 30 per cent since the start of the year, also returning to near all-time highs.

The disruption caused by the conflict in Ukraine has contributed to surging global coal prices, exceeding US$450 per tonne (A$608) in some markets.

The price for coal from the Australian port of Newcastle for March delivery is still trading above US$330 per tonne (A$445), a record high. European oil prices are still currently trading above US$110 per barrel, prices not seen since 2014.

Much of the Asian gas market is pegged to the oil price, and so the region’s gas prices have followed oil higher.

Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up for free to get our weekly newsletter and occasional extra bulletins

Some one has to pay for it, and that will be the consumer. But rather than being concerned about the consumer impacts of high price of fossil fuels, Australian prime minister Scott Morrison and his government have welcomed it.

“Total coal exports in the three months to January were $24.27 billion – a staggering 159% increase on the same period a year earlier and 18% above the earnings for the three months to October 2021,” federal resources minister Keith Pitt recently celebrated in a statement.

Australia has even promised to make a coal donation to Ukraine which prime minister Scott Morrison said will “power up their resistance”. But doubts remain around when and if the delivery could actually happen.

There had initially been speculation that Australia had simply arranged for additional coal to be sent from a neighbouring country, like Poland, in an arrangement that would mirror those similar to Australia’s provision of arms and humanitarian assistance.

Russia claims sanctions will stop it meeting climate targets

But, on Sunday, Morrison made clear that the coal would be sent from Australia to a destination port somewhere in Ukraine.

“It’s our coal. We dug it up. We’ve arranged the ship. We’ve put it on the ship and we’re sending it there to Ukraine to help power up their resistance and to give that encouragement,” Morrison said during a press conference on Sunday.

“We understand that it can power up to about a million homes and this is incredibly important.” The 70,000 tonnes of coal would be enough to fuel a medium-sized coal fired generator for around 3-5 days.

A spokesperson for Whitehaven coal confirmed that the cost of the coal, and its delivery, will be borne by the Australian government. At current prices that would be paying Whitehaven as much as $31 million for the donated coal, using taxpayers’ money.

The government will entrust the delivery of coal to commodities trading firm Trafigura.

“In a very tight global market where demand for our thermal coal remains very high, Whitehaven has managed to secure the extra supplies without impacting existing contracts to other international partners,” Pitt said in a statement.

It’s not clear if or when the delivery of the coal may be made, given Russian warships are patrolling the Black Sea, effectively blocking access to Ukraine’s ports.

Around one-third of Ukraine’s electricity generation was provided by coal-fired power stations before the conflict. Supplies have been tight, with much of the country’s coal mining industry located in the contested Donbas region.

The post Australian government welcomes high fossil fuel prices, ships coal to Ukraine appeared first on Climate Home News.

Wilson, a former climate advisor for the right wing think tank Institute of Public Affairs, who was appointed in a ministerial reshuffle in October, made the comments in response to a Chaser skit outside Parliament House in Canberra and then repeated them on Twitter.

“Puppet media stopped me at [Australian Parliament House] asking why I wouldn’t back a bill that allows a bureaucrat to overturn the policy of the Parliament and silence Australians having a say on climate action. Easy to answer: it’s subversion and treason,” Wilson tweeted on Monday.

Puppet media stopped me at APH asking why I wouldn’t back a Bill that allows a bureaucrat to overturn the policy of the Parliament and silence Australians having a say on climate action. Easy to answer: it’s subversion and treason.

— Tim Wilson MP (@TimWilsonMP) November 28, 2021

As the assistant minister, Wilson has responsibility for working with minister Angus Taylor to design and implement Australia’s climate change and energy policies.

Wilson’s attack was in reference to a proposed Climate Change Bill being pursued by independent MP Zali Steggall.

Steggall’s climate change legislation would enshrine Australia’s commitment to reaching zero net emissions by 2050 into law. It would also establish an independent climate change commission to provide advice to the government on the appropriate policy mechanisms and interim targets needed to achieve this target.

Similar bodies have already been established overseas, with independent commissions operating in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, under similar legislation on which Steggall’s bill has been modelled.

Analysis: Around the world, climate change committees are steering government action

Australia also already has a similar body, the Climate Change Authority, originally established by the Gillard government, but has gone under-utilised by successive Coalition governments after unsuccessful attempts to abolish the authority altogether.

Steggall rejected Wilson’s claims, describing them as “borderline defamatory”, saying the proposed legislation would still empower parliament to vote on climate policies.

“This is a complete mischaracterisation of what the Bill does – there are no sections of the legislation which remove the power of the Commonwealth or the Parliament to decide on climate change policy,” Steggall told RenewEconomy.

“It is a pretty hefty accusation from an MP to say that a Bill presented in good faith is treasonous. That is borderline defamatory.”

“This Bill has extremely broad support in the community and amongst stakeholders. Only the Coalition are blocking progress on this important Bill and this important issue,” Steggall added.

Before entering Parliament, Wilson was previously policy director at the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), leading much of the conservative think tank’s attacks on the climate policies of the previous Labor government. During Wilson’s tenure at the IPA, the group called for the abolition of the Climate Change Authority.

Nigeria commits to annual carbon budgets to reach net zero under climate law

Wilson’s comments come as it is revealed that the federal government has relied on new powers to effectively veto the participation of state and territory governments in international agreements to act on climate change.

As has been reported by the Guardian Australia, the participation of Australian state and territories in the international agreements is under threat of being cancelled out by recently introduced federal laws that allow the federal government to veto any such arrangements.

This includes the “Under 2 Coalition” – joined by the Victorian, Queensland, South Australian, ACT and Northern Territory governments, committing each of them to implement policies designed to keep global warming to below 2C.

The Foreign Relations (States and Territories) Act 2020 was introduced by the Morrison government largely in response to the potential for state governments to sign international agreements directly with other countries, such as the Victorian government’s controversial participation in China’s ‘belt-and-road’ initiative.

However, it appears this legislation may be relied upon to cancel out state government participation in climate change agreements and could impact on their involvement in commitments to cut emissions, increase electric vehicle adoption and phase out coal use – including many that were signed during the recent COP26 talks in Glasgow.

State and territory governments have been the primary drivers of Australian action on climate change under the federal coalition government, and concern has now been raised that the Morrison government will seek to interfere with these efforts.

This article was produced by Renew Economy and republished under a content sharing agreement.

The post ‘Subversion and treason’: Australian minister attacks independent climate body appeared first on Climate Home News.

Scott Morrison’s government will back the development of yet more gas basins and the construction of new gas pipelines, as part of a new infrastructure plan that sees Australia double down on its status as a leading global producer of fossil fuels.

The post Australia to expand gas industry under Morrison infrastructure plan appeared first on Climate Home News.

According to the modelling – which the government has yet to release – gross national income will be 1.6% higher, and 62,000 new regional mining and heavy industry jobs will be created under the plan.

Scott Morrison and energy minister Angus Taylor released the plan and a “projection” of up to 35% for emissions reduction by 2030. The prime minister will take the plan to the Glasgow climate conference next week.

Morrison reiterated Australia would not make this a “target”, but would stick with its present 2030 target of reducing emissions by 26-28% on 2005 levels by 2030.

The expected overshoot is being driven by three factors: the rapid uptake of renewables, especially solar; business and household energy efficiency using new and emerging technology, and changes in land use.

Saudi Arabia pledges net zero by 2060, but no oil exit plan

Morrison said the target had been an election commitment, while also saying Australia “may even achieve better” than the 35% reduction. He ruled out promising a bigger medium term figure before the election.

But, unexpectedly, the government has not accompanied the plan’s release with a list of what the Nationals won in their agreement to sign up to the 2050 target. The only measure announced was that the Productivity Commission would review progress every five years, starting in 2023, looking at the socioeconomic impacts.

The government says existing priority technologies enabled by the plan would get Australia 85% of the way to net zero by 2050. The gap would be closed by emerging technologies.

The breakdown of the sources of abatement in the plan is: reductions already made up to 2020, 20%; the technology investment roadmap, 40%; global technology trends, 15%; international and domestic offsets, 10-20%; and further technology breakthroughs, 15%.

The government’s plan for net zero at 2050.

Asked about the total cost of the plan, Morrison avoided the question. He said the government would release the modelling underpinning the policy “soon”.

He stressed the economic side of the plan, acknowledging but placing less emphasis on the environmental need to get to net zero by 2050.

The plan was “uniquely Australian”, Morrison said. “It is an energy, trade, an economic plan, not just an environmental plan. It’s about delivering results through technology, not taxes.”

It worked by “enabling” rather than legislating or mandating.

The plan would “not shut down our coal or gas production or exports.

“It will not impact households, businesses or the broader economy with new
costs or taxes imposed by the initiatives that we are undertaking.

“It will not cost jobs, not in farming, mining or gas, because what we are
doing in this plan is positive things, enabling things. It will not increase energy bills.

“It is not a revolution but a careful evolution.”

Morrison said the plan was removing any blockage to investment in technologies, saying: “We are going to do this. If you want to do this thing with us then we’re the place you want to do it.”

He said Australians “understand and they support the need to take action on climate change. So do I. So does our government.”

Morrison indicated he will spruik Australia’s record at Glasgow. “There will be lots of words in Glasgow but I’ll be able to point to the actions of Australia and the achievements of Australia.”

He argued other countries could learn from Australia. “The Australian way shows a way for other countries to follow. The challenges that we face here in Australia, particularly with the nature of our economy are not that dissimilar to those being faced in Indonesia or in Vietnam or in India or places like that or indeed China.

Opposition leader Anthony Albanese said Morrison had announced “a vibe rather than a target”.

Labor’s climate spokesman Chris Bowen said: “I’ve seen more detail on fortune cookies than on the documents released by the government.”

Michelle Grattan is a professorial fellow at the University of Canberra.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Australia is relying on offsets and future technology to meet 2050 net zero target appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a proposal to the UN’s shipping body, the Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands and Kiribati cited a major report published earlier this month summarising the latest climate science.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said to limit global heating to 1.5C, the more ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement, global carbon dioxide emissions must fall rapidly and reach net zero by 2050. On current trends, the temperature threshold is due to be breached by 2040.

In a letter to his fellow delegates, the Marshall Islands’ ambassador to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) Albon Ishoda wrote: “The findings of the recent [IPCC] report could not be clearer and fill us, the most vulnerable to this climate emergency, with alarm.”

He added: “Humanity is at a tipping point. Without immediate and decisive action to now peak and rapidly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of all sectors, states and cultures such as ours will be consigned to history.”

Rising sea levels make coastal flooding a common occurrence for the low-lying Marshall Islands (Photo: Genevieve French/Greenpeace)

In 2018, shipping produced more than a billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent globally, a 10% increase on 2012 and more than the annual emissions of Germany.

World governments’ current plan, agreed after fierce debate at the IMO in 2018, is to reduce international shipping’s emissions at least 50% by 2050 on 2008 levels while pursuing complete decarbonisation. Cargo ships have a life expectancy of 25-30 years, making the long term goal directly relevant to ships built this decade.

Tristan Smith, a low carbon shipping expert at University College London, said the proposal would remove the initial strategy’s “ambiguity”, making full decarbonisation a time-limited target not just an “upper bound” of ambition.

As well as absolute emissions reduction targets, the current strategy says carbon intensity – the emissions from each tonne of cargo shipped a given distance – should be reduced 40% by 2030 on 2008 levels. That translates to a 2% reduction each year. Ishoda dismissed this as “business as usual”.

The lesson from German floods: prepare for the unimaginable

The island states’ proposal will be considered at the IMO’s next environmental committee meeting 22-26 November, shortly after UN climate talks at Cop26 in Glasgow, UK.

In 2018, there was resistance to high ambition on climate from major emerging economies like Brazil and India, oil producers Iran and Saudi Arabia and seafaring nations like the Philippines. They raised concerns a stronger target would increase costs, holding back trade and development.

The US, which opposed the existing target under Donald Trump, is taking a more ambitious line on climate action under Joe Biden. How that applies at the IMO is unclear. In April, climate envoy John Kerry said that shipping should have zero emissions by 2050, but at the IMO in June the US representative declined to endorse a proposed carbon price on bunker fuel.

Ishoda told Climate Home News: “We are not naïve to the idea that it may be a very difficult discussion in the IMO – but we are also not naïve to the most recent IPCC report which has clearly justified that more needs to be done in terms of emissions reductions.”

The IMO’s current climate targets were agreed at this MEPC meeting in London in 2018 (Photo: IMO/Flickr)

Smith said “it is possible to be passed”. He added: “There is a lot of pressure on the IMO because [the last environmental committee meeting] MEPC76 was so underwhelming and that will likely lead to it being quite heavily criticised at Cop26.”

The Paris Agreement, signed by 196 countries, aims to hold global warming to “well below 2C” above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5C. According to Climate Action Tracker, the IMO’s current targets are consistent with more than 3C of warming.

Since the IMO’s strategy was agreed in 2018, many countries have committed to net zero within their borders by 2050. Smith said: “If you’re already signed up to net zero by 2050 in your economy, why would you not want zero emissions in the international shipping?”

Those signed up to net zero by 2050 include Argentina and Chile, coastal countries heavily reliant on shipping that have opposed climate action at the IMO.

The post Pacific islands call for zero carbon shipping by 2050, citing IPCC report appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Aotearoa Climate Change Commission’s advice was published on Wednesday and outlines how to reduce long-lived climate pollutants like carbon dioxide by 63% between 2019 and 2035.

Prime minister Jacinda Ardern called the advice “one of the most significant documents I’ll receive in my time as prime minister”. Climate change minister James Shaw, from the Green party, said “from now on nearly every minister will, in some ways, be a climate change minister”.

The Climate Commission’s final advice is out. More to come but a few key points to start:
Govt making good progress, but more action required
Economic cost of delay is higher than acting now
Meeting targets is achievable and affordable
Every Minister has a part to play

— James Shaw (@jamespeshaw) June 9, 2021

The commission advises government to pursue net zero by electrifying transport, greening buildings, cleaning up energy and reducing emissions from the country’s huge livestock industry.

But Greenpeace New Zealand said there was a “cow-shaped hole” in the plan. “The Climate Change Commission’s final plan seems more anxious about placating big dairy than doing what is scientifically necessary to avert the climate crisis,” said campaigner Amanda Larsson in a statement.

The plan envisions just a 17% reduction in biogenic methane between 2019 and 2035. Biogenic methane is a greenhouse gas produced by plants and animals. For a developed country, New Zealand is unusual in that nearly half its greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, with methane from livestock accounting for almost three quarters of the sector’s emissions.

“New Zealand has the world’s highest methane emissions per person, largely thanks to those six million dairy cows. The Commission’s goal of a 16% reduction in methane is not only insufficient, it’s unlikely to succeed because it relies on voluntary measures and future techno-fixes, like the fabled methane vaccine,” said Larsson.

Mexico: Elections dash President’s hopes for dirty energy reform

The commission was also criticised for its acceptance of international carbon offsets as a “last resort”. This is where other countries reduce their emissions and count the progress towards New Zealand’s targets.

“To achieve the NDC [climate plan], Aotearoa will need some offshore mitigation,” it says. “This is not about doing less domestically – but about increasing the contribution Aotearoa makes beyond what is possible at home”.

Cindy Baxter, from Climate Action Network Aotearoa, told Climate Home News she was “concerned” about offsets. “This should not be what net zero looks like,” she said.

G7 leaders told solidarity with poorer nations is critical to Cop26 success

The commission left the task of setting a 2030 emissions reduction target to government. It said: “Science alone cannot determine the share Aotearoa should contribute to those global reductions. Reaching a conclusion on this also depends on social and political judgements about international equity. These should be made by the government of the day.”

The government’s current target is to reduce total greenhouse gas emissions by 30% between 2005 and 2030. From a 1990 baseline, this is just 11%, compared to Australia’s 26%, EU’s 55% and UK’s 68%, according to analysis from newsroom.pro.

While not dictating a figure, the commission has said the new target should be “much more than 36%”. The government has said, now it has the commission’s advice, it can work on the detail of its updated national contribution to the Paris Agreement plan, including a more ambitious 2030 target.

The commission found that the costs of not acting on climate change would reduce GDP by 2.3% by 2050. Acting on climate change will reduce GDP by just 1.2%, it calculated, compared to a scenario where climate change doesn’t exist.

The post New Zealand climate plan criticised over ‘cow-shaped hole’ appeared first on Climate Home News.

The project was approved at a GCF board meeting in the Samoan capital Apia in December 2016, held at the Sheraton Samoa Aggie Greys hotel. That same hotel was forced to close after heavy rainfall caused the Vaisigano river to burst its banks on 18 December 2020, swamping conference rooms.

A technical expert with knowledge of the project, who asked not to be named, said the first set of flood defences had been badly built, with little or no analysis of the force of water they would need to withstand.

“It is disgraceful,” the expert told Climate Home News. “They have wasted a lot of money on building those walls – they are not structurally sound. When there is a flood and sea level rise, it is going to put a lot of people in danger.”

A conference room of the Sheraton Samoa Aggie Greys Hotel in December 2020, after the Vaisigano River breached flood defences and swamped the property

The flood management project was developed by the Samoan government in partnership with the UN Development Programme. It aims to protect people and infrastructure including schools, hospitals, government buildings, businesses and homes from recurrent flooding of the Vaisigano river catchment, particularly associated with severe tropical storms.

Before considering the funding proposal, board members visited communities hard hit by Cyclone Evan and associated flooding in 2012. They spoke in the board meeting about how moved they were by the experience and approved the project with little hesitation.

UN fund pays Indonesia for forest protection as deforestation rises

By the end of 2019, $12 million had been disbursed and three sections of flood defence built, including “segment one” of a river wall around Aggie Greys hotel, according to the annual performance report. These were trumpeted within the UN-backed fund as ‘built by the GCF’, according to the expert source.

However in response to questions from Climate Home News, GCF spokesperson Simon Wilson said the fund’s planned flood walls under the project, which would be designed to protect against a 1-in-50 year rainfall event, had not been built yet. The work carried out to date was to “augment existing flood wall construction” in response to damage caused by a cyclone in 2018.

Earlier flood defences had been financed by the Least Developed Countries Fund.

A flood defence wall built along the Vaisigano river through Samoan capital Apia

According to the UNDP “segment one” was designed to withstand a level of rainfall expected to strike once in 20 years and built according to national and international standards. The Samoan ministry of works oversaw construction. The wall remained intact after December’s rainfall, which was judged to be a 1-in-25 year event.

Water breached the river banks at segments two and three, where walls have yet to be built, flooding areas including the hotel, said a UNDP spokesperson. “While the flood walls adjacent to the hotel assisted with reducing the flooding and remained intact, it was not able to completely eliminate flooding in the hotel…

“Our expectation is that once the GCF funded protection works in segment two and three are completed the vulnerability of lower lying areas of the floodplain should lower.”

Climate news in your inbox? Sign up here

The technical expert highlighted flaws in the walls constructed to date, based on pictures shared by colleagues in 2019, including a lack of ballast behind the wall to stop it flipping under heavy river flow.

Independent civil engineers shown photos of the construction echoed those concerns. “It seems that no-one has taken the trouble to calculate the overturning moment generated by the flood water and provided a means of resisting that moment,” said consultant John Knapton.

Andres Diaz Loaiza, of the University of Columbia, noted a gap in the wall that could cause it to fail. “Indeed, once a part of the wall will start failing, then the rest of the wall will start failing as a domino effect,” he said.

Wilson said the GCF followed up on those concerns with UNDP following a trip to Samoa in 2019 and recruited an independent agent to carry out an assessment visit “as soon as the evolution of the Covid pandemic makes it possible”. That assessment will feed into a GCF review of the detailed designs for the next phase of work, he said.

The UNDP spokesperson said the gap in the wall was there to allow for a bridge to be built, which was completed in August 2020.

The wall built along the Vaisigano river in 2019. Experts warned the gap in the wall could cause the whole thing to fail

Liane Schalatek is a climate finance expert with the Heinrich Boell Foundation who has followed the GCF since its inception. She said that while she could not comment on the specifics of the Samoa case, civil society had long called for better independent monitoring of project implementation.

“Currently, GCF implementing partners mainly self-report in an annual performance report how well project implementation is going. Only in rare cases and with massive red flags might the secretariat follow up with a site visit,” said Schalatek.

This article was amended after publication to include further information provided by UNDP about the building codes followed and work carried out in 2020.

The post Concerns raised about Green Climate Fund flood defence project in Samoa appeared first on Climate Home News.

This week alone, Japan and South Korea committed to cut emissions to net zero by 2050 and the Philippines declared a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants. Last month, China promised to aim for carbon neutrality by 2060. A flurry of Asian investors have said they would no longer finance coal projects. It signals a shift away from coal in three of Australia’s four biggest export markets.

At home, every Australian state and territory has set a 2050 net zero target and public opinion is swinging in favour of a national target to match.

Polling by the Australian Institute released on Tuesday found 68% of Australians believe the federal government should set a net zero emissions target by 2050. Among Morrison’s base, 59% of respondents identifying as centre-right politically supported the goal.

On 9 November – the day the Cop26 climate talks were initially scheduled to start – independent lawmaker Zali Steggall is expected to table a Climate Change Bill, forcing a parliamentary discussion of carbon neutrality.

Analysis: Who will build the world’s last coal plant?

In 2018, Japan, China and South Korea together accounted for more than 55% of Australia’s total coal exports – worth a total of $31.4 billion, according to data from think tank Chatham House. Citing energy sovereignty, India, another top coal export destination, has also moved to reduce its reliance on imports.

Although falling in value year on year, coal remained Australia’s second largest export in 2018.

“Australia is hyper-exposed to facing a remarkably difficult future as the rest of the world moves away from fossil fuels. Its fossil fuel exports now effectively have a time limit,” Tim Baxter, senior researcher at the Climate Council, told Climate Home News.

“The reality is that Australia needs to adopt a credible climate policy or be left behind,” he added – a warning Morrison has so far ignored.

“No I am not concerned about our future exports,” Morrison told reporters during a press conference on Wednesday.

“I’m very aware of the many views that are held around the world but I tell you what, our policies will be set here in Australia,” he added, commenting  on a phone call with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who urged him to take “bold action to address climate change”.

The UK, set to host the next Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow next November, has made growing the number of countries committing to carbon neutrality by 2050 a key part of its diplomatic strategy.

“Looking ahead to the Climate Ambition Summit on 12 December and Cop26 in Glasgow next year, [Johnson] emphasised the importance of setting ambitious targets to cut emissions and reach Net Zero,” a UK government statement about the phone call said.

UK negotiator: Countries must resolve carbon market dispute to step up ambition

“For a while the Morrison government has been able to get a free pass on this because we have a climate denier in the White House and a number of big Australian partners were seen not to be in the most progressive camp on climate action,” said Thom Woodroofe, senior advisor to former Australian premier Kevin Rudd, who now leads the Asia Society Policy Institute.

But with three of Asian’s major economies committing to carbon neutrality and the prospect of Democrat Joe Biden winning the White House, Morrison has been left exposed.

“The risks of this isolation are not only economic,” Baxter said. “It also has consequences for our standing and influence in the international community. Australia has already seen its reputation in the Pacific take a battering.  Pacific Island countries are extremely vulnerable to climate change and are increasingly impatient with Australia for its lack of action.”

“The government is in a corner and doesn’t want to admit that it has put its bets on something that is fundamentally at odds with the direction of travel of the global economy,” Woodroofe added.

Climate news in your inbox? Sign up here

This week, ANZ Bank announced it will immediately stop funding new coal projects and cease lending to existing coal plants and mines by 2030 to focus on renewables, in direct response to China, Japan and South Korea’s net zero pledges. It is the last of Australia’s big four banks to move away from coal.

At the sub-national level, states have the power to “take extremely deep strides to reduce emissions, regardless of the federal government,” Baxter said.

In South Australia, the government retired all coal generation assets by May 2016 and moved from generating nearly all of its electricity from fossil fuels in the early 2000s to more than half from wind and solar in 2019.

The Australian Institute poll showed that 83% backed a coal phase-out and 59% supported investments in renewable energy as a pathway to economic recovery, with only 12% of respondents backing Morrison’s gas-led recovery.

Woodroofe said the Morrison administration could still present some form of long-term climate strategy before Cop26, outlining decarbonisation scenarios even if the prime minister is reluctant to commit to a target.

Doing so would “enhance Australian influence in the region, and especially among Pacific island states, where such an announcement would help secure Australia’s place as a partner of choice,” Wesley Morgan, adjunct research fellow at Griffith Asia Institute, in South East Queensland, told Climate Home.

With multi-billion-dollar projects slated for construction in Australia’s north to export solar energy and green hydrogen to major economies in Asia, “Australia is well-placed to reposition as a major exporter of renewable energy,” he added.

The post Asian net zero wave leaves Australia’s Scott Morrison isolated appeared first on Climate Home News.

Ardern’s Labour Party received nearly 50% of the vote and 53% of the seats in parliament, allowing her to govern for a second term without relying on other parties. However, she may still include the Greens in her next administration.

For the last three years, Labour has relied on the Greens and the populist New Zealand First to govern. While the Green Party increased its vote share from 6% to 8%, the climate-ambivalent New Zealand First lost all its seats.

The main opposition is the National Party. Its vote share dropped from 44% to 27%. It opposed the government’s ban on new offshore oil and gas exploration. Party leader Judith Collins has argued New Zealand’s emissions are too low to matter globally and described ‘meat-free Mondays’ as “communism”.

2020 New Zealand general election:

Result (100% counted):

Labour: 49.1% (+12.2)
National: 26.8% (-17.6)
ACT: 8.0% (+7.5)
Green: 7.6% (+1.3)

Seats:
Labour: 64 (+18)
National: 35 (-21)
ACT: 10 (+9)
Green: 10 (+2)
Māori: 1 (+1)

+/- vs. 2016 #nzpol #NZElection2020 #NZVotes pic.twitter.com/35yR0mvr08

— (AU) Australia Votes (@ForecastOceania) October 17, 2020

Ardern’s government has been widely praised for its handling of coronavirus, which has killed just 25 New Zealanders. As the pandemic hit, Labour gained a huge poll lead which it kept until election day.

When first elected in 2017, Ardern appointed the Green Party’s James Shaw as climate minister. Her government legislated a net zero carbon target for 2050 and set up an independent climate commission.

Some green policies were blocked by New Zealand First, like a proposed tax on imported fossil fuel cars and subsidy for electric vehicles.

In New Zealand’s deep south, Māori landowners make money by keeping their forests intact

With Ardern no longer reliant on populist support, Greenpeace New Zealand said there were “no more excuses” for inaction on climate change. Director Russell Norman said: “NZ First was often blamed for slow progress on environment policies, and sometimes this was true. With Winston Peters and his party gone, we expect to see immediate moves to tackle agricultural climate pollution, to invest in rail and cycleways, and to protect the oceans from overfishing.”

Labour’s manifesto commits to ensuring only zero-emission buses are bought for the public sector by 2025, to plant more trees, look into barriers to solar power projects and expand its ‘just transitions unit’ beyond the fossil fuel-reliant region of Taranaki.

Ardern’s first-term flagship climate policy was a ban on the issuing of new oil and gas exploration permits. However, onshore permits continue to be issued, offshore permits have been renewed and there are no plans to shut down New Zealand’s coal mines or the Huntly coal-fired power plant.

New Zealand’s biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions is its agricultural sector, as large sheep and cattle herds belch methane and coal is used in milk-drying plants.

A Biden victory could spur global climate action, but the US has much to prove

The government has attempted to reduce farming emissions by cancelling irrigation subsidies, putting a cap on synthetic nitrogen fertiliser use and targeting a 24-47% cut in methane between 2017 and 2050. While the National Party and farming lobby said this target was too ambitious, Greenpeace’s Norman said it “had the teeth ripped out of it”.

The government has not increased the previous National government’s contribution to the Paris Agreement of 30% emissions reductions between 2005 and 2030, which Climate Action Tracker rates as “insufficient” to hold global warming to 2C. It has promised to review this target early next year, after the climate commission advises on how to align with a 1.5C warming limit – the tougher goal of the Paris pact.

Ardern is set to hold talks with the Green Party in the coming days over whether to form a coalition. The next election is due in 2023 and there is no limit on how many terms a New Zealand prime minister can serve.

The post New Zealanders vote for climate ambition of Jacinda Ardern and Greens appeared first on Climate Home News.

Monica Evans

In 1915, Mike Gibbs’ Māori ancestors made their way from the flat, agricultural plains of Southland to the wild, steep, forested edge of Eastern Fiordland. They were excited – after losing their own ancestral lands to white settlers, the New Zealand Government was now offering them new plots to call their own, under the just-passed South Island Landless Natives Act (SILNA).

“So they’re on their way out there, and they meet people coming back the other way,” says Gibbs, recounting the familiar family legend that he’s heard so many times before. “And those people just said, “There’s nothing there. We can’t farm it; we can’t do anything with it.”

Today’s visitors to the Rarakau area would most likely disagree: the land is home to swathes of tall indigenous rainforest, perching on clifftops above vast, granite-bouldered Bluecliffs Beach in Te Waewae Bay, which is sloshed by the vast southern ocean and backed by the snow-dusted peaks of the Hump Ridge range. Scores of native birds live there, including tūī [Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae], kākā [Nestor meridionalis], kererū [Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae] and the endangered, endemic Kea [Nestor notabilis] parrot.

But farming was the perceived pathway to wealth at the time, and those early land claimants knew the area’s clay pan and boggy ground would never support highly productive agriculture. “And so it was named ‘the cruel joke’,” said Gibbs, “that this land was given to us.”

For decades, the land just sat there, with few visitors but the occasional timber poacher. Then, in the 1960s, the Government decided that if these families were to maintain ownership, they needed to amalgamate the land with neighbouring Māori blocks and form an incorporation – and then pay tax on it. Now needing to raise cash to keep the place in their hands, the incorporation cleared about a third of the 1330-hectare block and attempted to farm it. The effects were environmentally disastrous – and only marginally economically viable. “When I was a kid, I remember fire was a management tool,” said Gibbs. “So they’d log these beautiful forests and then they’d burn what was left. It was like the Wild West: there were wild cows and horses, and broken fences. It wasn’t really a functioning farm as such, but just no-one could see past that approach.”

To raise cash and keep the farm going, the landowners began selectively logging tall canopy trees from the remaining forest: silver beech [Nothofagus menziesii], miro [Prumnopitys ferruginea] and tōtara [Podocarpus totara], all of which produce high-value hardwood timber. Younger generations – Gibbs among them – were much less keen to log, but the problem of generating income remained. Then, in the early 2000s, Gibbs’ uncle Ken McAnergney met ecologist and carbon finance specialist Sean Weaver, and together they started exploring the possibility of selling carbon credits for protecting the Rarakau rainforest.

The group received some funding from Te Puni Kōkiri (the Ministry of Maori Affairs) to do a feasibility study, worked out that their 738 hectares of forest captures 2,458 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, and realised it was possible to make a sustainable income from carbon credits on the international voluntary carbon market. “So it was a real win-win situation,” said Gibbs. In 2008, the landowners began selling certified Plan Vivo Standard carbon credits through Weaver’s carbon offsetting consultancy Ekos, and they’ve proved popular: demand outstrips supply. Companies like QANTAS Airlines and the popular World of Music and Dance festival (WOMAD) buy credits from Rarakau in order to ‘offset’ their own carbon emissions.

The money the landowners receive largely goes into development projects such as fencing, regeneration, pest control and building infrastructure for tourism: the site is the jumping-off point for New Zealand’s newest Great Walk, the Hump Ridge Track, so there’s potential to develop accommodation and educational services there, too. “It’s an exciting project with potential for heaps of growth, and a real feel-good factor,” said Gibbs.

That ‘feel-good factor’ is often critiqued by opponents of the carbon market concept, who argue that humanity should be focussing on reducing, rather than offsetting, its carbon footprint. In the Aotearoa New Zealand context, there are also important questions to be raised around equity and scalability. The Rarakau project is currently the only one of its kind, and in a country where around 73% of indigenous forest has already been felled – and two thirds of that which still stands is set aside in protected areas – relatively few other Māori landowners have the opportunity to follow its example.

In Tairāwhiti on the North Island’s East Coast, some Māori landowners are trying a different route: earning carbon credits via the country’s national Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), through native reforestation on land which has already been deforested. One group of landowners in particular, who own the ‘Nuhiti Q’ block between Tokomaru Bay and Anaura Bay, has found some success with the venture: they’re reforesting unprofitable, difficult-to-farm parts of the block, and selling carbon credits to buyers like Gull, a petrol company. The money they earn from those credits has allowed them to fund large-scale fencing projects and intensify production on the remaining farmland. Replanting with native mānuka [Leptospermum scoparium] also provides them with an opportunity for a new income stream – high-value mānuka honey.

However, other landowners interested in following that path have found it much less straightforward, as evidenced in a 2019 research project carried out by economic and public policy research institute Motu and local charitable company Hikurangi Enterprises. The researchers tracked 13 groups of landowners with aspirations to reforest and enter the ETS – and over the three years in which they worked with them, “none of them managed to get registered,” said Sophie Hale, a research analyst at Motu who collaborated on the project. “And that in itself is an interesting finding, and suggests that there really is room for policymakers and other institutions to provide support to landowners – not only financially, but also with communication and information; it’s a big, scary process.”

“[The ETS is] a very complicated, complex system,” said Pia Pohatu, a local researcher who was contracted to Hikurangi Enterprises to work on the project. “And Māori land ownership and governance and development, in itself, is complex. And so I think a lot of people don’t get into it because they can’t see if they’re eligible, early.” That eligibility depends on a number of factors, such as how long ago the land was deforested, the size of the replanting area and what else is being done on the land.

Many landowners are also reluctant to shoulder the risk associated with committing to the scheme, which is relatively new to the country and risks being ditched or becoming unprofitable in the future. For Māori, who own land collectively and intergenerationally, signing up to something now that will lock their descendants into the same land use – or face high de-registration fees – is particularly problematic. “I think that would be a huge risk for Māori,” said Pohatu, “if it means our future generation can’t have their own flexibility with the decisions.”

That intergenerational ownership has been important to navigate in the agreements negotiated at Rarakau, too. “We need intergenerational ability to make change,” said Gibbs. “So my grandkids need to be able to decide what’s best for that whenua [land] – especially because from an Indigenous worldview, it’s not ours! We’re only looking after it for the next generation. And if we train our kids right, then they’re making good decisions and looking after it for the next generation, too.”

For his part, Gibbs is keen to ensure that those younger generations feel connected to Rarakau – and that’s why having a healthy, well-preserved forest, a thriving farm and a sustainable business model is particularly important. “I think at some point, there’ll be people that have no other affiliations or ties to anyone else but that whenua [land], and they may not be lucky enough to have a whakapapa [genealogy] that goes past the person that was given that land in 1915,” he said. “So we need to make that space their space; I believe that those kids have a right to that. Because once they feel that connection, that gives them their own mana [prestige, status, honour] that they carry out into the world. And that’s what everybody needs – especially Māori youth.”

The post In New Zealand’s deep south, Māori landowners make money by keeping their forests intact appeared first on Climate Home News.

If we don’t, these challenges risk becoming the crises of the future – crises that our children will inherit and have to deal with and pay for themselves. Every dollar we borrow to rebuild our economy now, is a dollar future generations will not have available to spend getting through their own crises.

I recently put this to the Nobel Prize winning economist Professor Joseph Stiglitz, who said categorically that now is the time to prioritise investments in climate-friendly infrastructure. Because these investments create more jobs, deliver higher returns per dollar spend, and lead to increased long-term cost savings.

New Zealand sticks to 2030 climate target while waiting for 1.5C advice

I was talking with Professor Stiglitz as part of a new podcast series I launched recently called What Comes After What Comes Next. It’s a project I have been working on over the last few weeks to help inform the debate about the type of economy we want to create following the disruption caused by the coronavirus.

For those not familiar with his work, Professor Stiglitz has spent decades arguing in favour of a more progressive approach to economics. In the preface to his most recent book, which was written before the pandemic, he wrote: “this is a time for major changes. Incrementalism — minor tweaks to our political and economic system — are inadequate to the tasks at hand.” This was a particularly prescient observation given the challenges we face right now.

Twelve years ago, we also pumped billions of dollars into the economy to get it going again after the global financial crisis. At the time, experts, like Professor Stiglitz, and myriad organisations called on governments to put the money towards a green recovery. But, that stimulus, like every other economic recovery programme in history, helped further lock us into the same highly polluting pathway we were on before the financial crisis hit.

This time around it must be different.

Japan to launch ‘green recovery’ platform and ministerial meeting

We have the foundations in place. Countries have committed to cut emissions under the Paris agreement, and here in New Zealand we have one of the world’s most ambitious climate laws. Both now need to be the compass that guides all of our investments in a post-COVID world.

Even before the pandemic, we knew this was going to be most consequential decade in human history. Global CO2 emissions must at least halve in the next 10 years if we are to have any chance of avoiding climate breakdown. We also know we need more homes that are safe and warm, better transport options, and more reliable water supplies.

So, why not address these related challenges at once?

We can make our homes warmer; build electric vehicle charging networks; install clean, renewable energy solutions in local communities; and redesign roads to support more cycling and public transport. These projects all need large-scale deployment and will create jobs and, so, will have benefits not only for the climate but boost the economy too.

Climate news in your inbox? Sign up here

Our Government’s recent Budget included immediate measures to keep people in work and, where that’s not possible, to create new jobs and get people the training and education they need to secure new work. But there is still work to be done to decide the type of economy we want in the future.

Closing my Budget speech in the New Zealand Parliament, I said that the pandemic has opened a window onto something new, something better. It is a once-in-a-century chance to create thousands of new jobs and build a clean-tech, high-value economy that works for everyone.

We have some extremely impressive podcast guests coming up – not least Naomi Klein, Dr Vandana Shiva, Bill McKibben, and Christiana Figueres. I hope hearing from these world-renowned thinkers will inspire more of us to work together to create a fairer, more climate-friendly future.

James Shaw is New Zealand’s minister for climate change

The post We have a moral responsibility to build a better post-Covid future for our children appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a letter to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, nine international and climate law professors said Australia’s method would set “a dangerous precedent” for other countries to “exploit loopholes or reserve their right not to comply with the Paris Agreement”.

“Our considered view is that the proposed use of these ‘Kyoto credits’ to meet targets under the Paris Agreement is legally baseless at international law,” the letter read.

Australia is one of the only countries in the world to have explicitly said it would carry over Kyoto-era carbon credits as a means to meet its 2030 climate target.

The credits were initially issued for Australia’s overachievement in meeting its 1997 Kyoto pledge to curb emissions by 2012.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, Australia has pledged to cut emissions by at least 26% from 2005 levels by 2030.

Morrison told the UN in September 2019 that “Australia will meet our Paris commitments”, and called the goals “a credible, fair, responsible and achievable contribution to global climate change action.”

But a 2019 UN Environment report listed Australia among a group of 20 nations requiring “further action” to meet its Paris target, along with Brazil, Canada, Japan, South Korea, South Africa and the United States.

Using the credits to meet its commitments under the Paris deal would effectively lower the emissions reductions needed for Australia to achieve its 2030 goal.

EU plans for 2030 climate target can shape Cop26 momentum, ministers warn

The professors, all from Australian universities, argued the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement are “entirely separate treaties”. As such, they said Kyoto credits could only be used to meet Paris accord goals if that was decided and agreed by every party to the agreement.

“It is clear that no such consensus exists,” the letter added.

The experts also noted that the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol expired in 2012.

The Doha Amendment which created the second commitment phase due to run from 2013 to 2020 has not been ratified by enough countries to come into force and this may not happen before the end of the year. Australia is among nations that have ratified the Doha amendment.

But the legal scholars said the lack of formal entry into force means that credits that would have been issued for complying with 2020 targets under the Kyoto Protocol may never materialise, potentially only giving Australia two thirds of the 411 megatonnes of CO2 equivalent the government estimated being due.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, countries also agreed to “cancel” any units that remain unused after countries met their targets under the second commitment phase.

The use of old Kyoto credits “conveys a message to the world that Australia wishes to reserve the right to avoid a significant proportion of the mitigation effort needed to meet its 2030 target under the Paris Agreement,” the letter said.

UK’s Nigel Topping seeks broad movement to drive global economy to net zero by 2050

If other countries were to follow Australia’s carbon accounting method, the professors said this would further increase the gap between current levels of ambition and what is needed to achieve the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement.

They urged Australia to clarify its position on using the Kyoto carry-over credits.

Australia has come under repeated pressure by the international community to abandon its plans to use the Kyoto credits.

At the last UN climate talks in Madrid in December, an alliance of more than 30 progressive countries denounced Australia’s carbon credits plans as not aligned with efforts to limit global warming to 1.5C – the tougher goal of the Paris Agreement.

Countries including France, Germany, the UK, Spain and New Zealand signed up to the ‘San Jose principles’, which aimed to set the bar for successful carbon market rules. This included the prohibition of Kyoto credits and pre-2020 units to meet the Paris goals.

Letter to Scott Morrison on using Kyoto credits to meet Paris goals (Text)

The post Australia’s carbon accounting plan for Paris goals criticised as ‘legally baseless’ appeared first on Climate Home News.

As one of the world’s wealthiest nations struggles to tackle the blazes that have killed at least 28 people, the need to adapt to prolonged and more intense fire seasons has risen to a national priority.

Solutions to mitigate bushfire impacts will require more land management, community engagement and bipartisan political support at a time when climate change continues to be one of the most polarising issues in Australia, bushfire experts have told Climate Home News.

At stake is Australians’ connection with their landscape and ancient fire management practices by Aboriginal people.

“We need to re-invent and re-think the management of our landscape,” Peter Kanowski, professor of forestry at the Australian National University told CHN.

“We need to partner with indigenous communities and respect our landscape and ecological systems. In the face of climate change, land management will require more intervention not less,” he said.

Australia’s bushfires to cost billions as climate risks rise

Much hope rides on the expectation the crisis of the last few months will spark a nation-wide conversation about the country’s climate policies, resilience building and land management.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison mooted a proposal for a federal royal commission to look at a “full gambit of issues” including the preparation and response to the fires, and adaptation and resilience measures that need to be taken as a result of the changing climate.

“We are going to be living in a very different climate and we need to improve our resilience in our response to that on the ground,” Morrison told ABC Insiders.

In December, the Australian House of Representatives’ environment committee launched an inquiry into the efficacy of past and current vegetation and land management policy on bushfire intensity and frequencies.

Putting the spotlight on resilience measures to protect Australian communities and the economy could be a quick win for the Morrison government, which has so far refused to take more ambitious carbon-cutting measures or change its pro-coal stance.

Australia has planned to meet its 2030 goal to reduce emissions by 26-28% from 2005 levels using old Kyoto-era carbon credits – a carbon accounting fudge that would cut in half what it needs to do to meet its target.

Climate change tops risks for world in 2020 – Davos report

For Rodney Keenan, head of forest and ecosystem science at the University of Melbourne, any national conversation on Australia’s resilience to bushfires will need to bridge the country’s stark polarisation of climate change.

Disinformation spread on social media and some Murdoch-owned press has continued to expose the lack of consensus for climate action. Such events could “further polarise debate over climate change and land management,” Keenan warned.

But debates about land management practices have already been caught in political cross-fire.

Australia’s former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce accused the Green Party of having precipitated the bushfire crisis by blocking fuel hazard reduction – something which they deny and for which there is no evidence.

Last year, wildfires ravaging California exposed deep splits on climate policy between the state and President Donald Trump, who is pulling the US out of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Such splits distract from working out long-term fixes to the blazes.

In November, Trump blamed Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, for doing a “terrible job of forest management”. Newsom retorted: “You don’t believe in climate change. You are excused from this conversation.”

Germany agrees pay-out to states and companies in coal phase-out deal

Land management is crucial to mitigate the intensity of Australia’s bushfires but over recent years, funding has overwhelmingly been allocated to recovery efforts over prevention and land preparation, Kanowski said.

Practices such as hazard reduction enable to reduce the fuel load that a fire could consume to diminish its intensity. This can include prescribed burning, grazing or removing vegetation and trees.

In Australia, drier weather and longer fire seasons have made fuel reduction burning “really challenging,” Shane Fitzsimmons, commissioner for New South Wales Rural Fire Service, told Australian media, citing a narrower window of time for safe burning to take place and a lack of resources.

“Don’t forget as settled Australians, we are now living, working and occupying areas that used to freely burn. We can’t lit a burn and let it freely run,” he said.

Burning land to better manage fires has been used by indigenous communities across Australia for thousands of years.

In northern Australia, indigenous fire management practices have been re-introduced by indigenous ranger groups with the support of federal and state authorities.

While the landscape and conditions are different from the south east of the country where the fires have been raging, the scheme has helped shift fire patterns from late to early season and reduced their intensity.

We need your help… Climate Home News is an independent news outlet dedicated to the most important global stories. If you can spare even a few dollars each month, it would make a huge difference to us. Our Patreon account is a safe and easy way to support our work.

“Aboriginal people in Australia have always maintained a positive relationship with fire,” a spokesperson from the Kimberley Land Council in northern Australia, the body representing aboriginal people in the region, told CHN. “Rather than treating it as something which should be avoided, they understood fire as an essential part of the Australian landscape and used it effectively to maintain balanced and fire resilient ecosystems.”

“This is one example of best practices in fire management,” Kanowski said.

In southern Australia, where indigenous people were largely displaced by settlers “a lot of their knowledge of fire practices has been lost,” he added. Efforts to rebuild that knowledge are underway but the programmes are far less advanced than in the north of the country.

While discussions on how to improve land and fire management are slowly taking place, Australia’s scientific community has been warning the government to develop a plan to adapt to climate change for more than a decade.

Between 1939 and 2011, 16 major inquiries into bushfires have also called for greater integrated approaches between land planning and managing fire risks.

During that time, scientists have continued to warn of prolonged and more intense fire seasons driven by worsening global warming.

A 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated that “in south-east Australia, the frequency of very high and extreme fire danger days is likely to rise 4-25% by 2020 and 15-70% by 2050”.

China-backed coal plants on EU’s doorstep hide huge carbon costs

And yet, cities and developments have continued to expand further into bushlands and urban fringes, increasing communities’ exposure to high risk fires.

Richard Thornton, CEO of the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre told CHN that besides climate change, Australians would have to re-think where and how they live.

While natural hazards are “an inevitable part of living in Australia”, Thornton said “our exposure is mostly human caused because of where we choose to live and work”.

He added evidence showed some areas bore an “unacceptably high” risk for building homes and infrastructure, such as one road access sites or ridges tops surrounded by bush. “Not coincidently, these are also the areas we often choose to build in because we value the location,” he said.

Many Australians “do not fully understand the risks in their landscape,” Keenan agreed, warning that communities needed access and control of long-term funding for education and building resilience.

For Sarah Boulter, senior research fellow at the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility at Griffith University, Australia has “outstanding knowledge and capabilities” to adapt to the reality of a warming world.

“But change takes time and requires commitment and support from a political and community level. There are some very hard decisions to be made,” she said.

The post Australia’s climate change polarisation hampers long-term bushfire fixes appeared first on Climate Home News.

Record-breaking temperatures and severe droughts have fuelled the fires which have burnt millions of hectares across the country. At least 24 people and hundreds of thousands of animals have been killed.

Data from the Australian government Bureau of Meteorology shows December’s mean temperature was 3.21C warmer than the average for the month. Ed Hawkins, a professor of climate science at the University of Reading, said the country’s mean December temperature had warmed about 1.4 times faster than the global annual average temperature over the past century.

But pro-coal Prime Minister Scott Morrison has denied the link between climate change and the unprecedented intensity of bushfires across the country, describing it as “misconstrued”.

On Monday, Morrison announced the creation of a National Bushfire Recovery Agency, initially funded to the tune of $2billion AUS ($1.4bn) over a two-year period to help families, farmers and businesses recover from the fire-front.

2019 in review: Polarised world entering era of climate impacts

However, the money could fall short of the recovery effort needed.

“If further funds are required, further funds will be provided. We will do whatever it takes,” Morrison said. “What we are focusing on here is the human costs and the rebuilding cost for people’s lives.”

The money will be used rebuild roads and telecommunications infrastructure, replenish producers’ livestock, provide mental health support and help restore the impacted environment and wildlife. The funds are due to come on top of disaster recovery payments and allowances, of which $100m AUS ($69m) has already reached communities, according to the government.

The agency will be modelled on a recovery fund set-up following cyclone Yasi and the Brisbane floods in 2011. At the time, that fund paid out $5.6bn AUS ($3.9bn) over six years.

Ten years ago, a series of bushfires across the state of Victoria known as the Black Saturday bushfires cost at least $4bn AUS ($2.8) in damage, according to an estimate by the royal commission charged with the investigation.

“It would be a mistake to treat Black Saturday as a ‘one-off’ event,” the 2010 report noted. “With populations at the rural–urban interface growing and the impact of climate change, the risks associated with bushfire are likely to increase.”

We need your help… Climate Home News is an independent news outlet dedicated to the most important global stories. If you can spare even a few dollars each month, it would make a huge difference to us. Our Patreon account is a safe and easy way to support our work.

On Monday, the Insurance Council of Australia said it has handled more than 6,000 insurance claims from the states worst-affected by the bushfire crisis, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria. Insurance losses have so far been estimated at $431 million AUS ($297m).

The bushfire smoke that descended on Sydney cost the city between $12m AUS ($8.3m) and $50m AUS ($34.5m) a day, according to Terry Rawnsley, a regional economics expert at the consultancy SGS Economics and Planning.

For Richie Merzian, climate and energy programme director at the Australia Institute think-tank, the recovery fund announced by Morrison will fall short if it isn’t accompanied by further climate policies.

“The $2bn AUS fund is another ad hoc measure without a clear long term strategy to address climate change. Nor is it anywhere close to enough,” he told Climate Home News.

The Australia Institute has called on the creation of a National Climate Disaster Fund, which would be financed by a $1 AUS levy for every tonne of CO2 resulting from the production of coal, gas and oil in the country.

Climate news in your inbox? Sign up here

The levy could raise around $1.5bn AUS ($1bn) a year, according to the think-tank.

A 2017 analysis by Deloitte Access Economics found natural disasters cost Australia $9bn per year on average. The report found the cost could reach $27bn per year by 2050.

“A modest levy on fossil fuel producers would help to shift the economic burden of these disasters from regular Australians to the coal and gas companies that are fuelling the climate crisis,” said Australia Institute’s deputy director Ebony Bennett.

The costs of wildfires is difficult to estimate due to the indirect costs such as the destruction of wildlife and the environment, damage to public health and harm to tourism.

Swiss Re, one of the world’s largest insurance companies, found direct economic losses only represent a fraction of the true economic impact, which can span years.

Across the world, the economic cost of wildfire has increased in recent decades. In 2017, direct economic losses from wildfires amounted to $21bn worldwide – up from $6bn in 2016, according to Swiss Re.

The post Australia’s bushfires to cost billions as climate risks rise appeared first on Climate Home News.

At Cop25, Australia will try and keep a low profile, focus on blue carbon and avoid discussing its accounting tricks to meet its Paris promises.  

When it comes to climate change, Australia really struggles. With high emissions, even higher fossil fuel exports, harsh climate impacts (like the current unprecedented bush fires) and weak climate action. Australia’s response is to just keep on digging (literally – which is why it remains the world’s largest coal exporter). To understand this disconnect you have go deeper into the land down under.  

Emissions 

Australia is the 14^th largest emitter of greenhouse gases out of the 196 parties to the Paris Agreement. But apparently being in the top 10% doesn’t mean much to Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison, who claims Australia is ‘just’ 1.3% of global emissions. Its astounding that the 182 other parties (including smaller emitters like Cop President Chile, or host Spain, or incoming Cop president the United Kingdom) even try. Australia emits more than 40 countries with larger populations, so naturally at a per capita level it is right at the top.

Cop25 Bulletin: The political feedback loop

While Australia’s emissions are high, they are less than half the size of the emissions embedded in the fossil fuels it exports. The country is the third largest global exporter of fossil fuels, in terms of emissions, after Russia and Saudi Arabia. Of the three fossil fuel energy sources, Australia is the world’s largest exporter of two of them; coal and natural gas. Australia exports a greater portion of the world’s coal market than Saudi Arabia does to oil.

According to the latest Global Carbon Budget report, coal is responsible for 40% of fossil fuel and industry emissions. But wait there is more, according to the Production Gap Report Australia is on track to double emissions from fossil fuels production by 2030 (compared to 2005 levels).   

Bulletins from Cop25, every morning, straight to your inbox? Sign up here

Understandably, the fossil fuel industry is a powerful lobby in Australia and at one stage, this self-described ‘greenhouse mafia’ bragged about actually drafting Australia’s climate policies. Just last month, realising that fossil fuels are becoming less attractive energy options for its trade partners, the minister for energy and emissions reductions Angus Taylor (who is attending his first Cop), approved a new facelift strategy: turn coal and gas into hydrogen and voila, a ‘cleaner’ fuel (for customers at least – as it comes with zero emissions on consumption). Forget renewable hydrogen, the process receiving the largest share of government funding is turning brown coal (lignite) – the most high polluting form of coal – into hydrogen.  

Impacts 

Australia is no stranger to climate impacts. In fact my flights to Cop25 were delayed and close to derailed because Sydney was shrouded in smoke from surrounding bushfires. Sydney is the capital of New South Wales, the most populous state, where more forest has been burnt this year before summer even begins (in December) than the three previous years combined. World heritage forests are on fire and its a ‘global tragedy’ according to local conservationists.  

https://twitter.com/KarlMathiesen/status/1202810860881596416

Instead of diagnosing the cause, the Australian deputy prime minister Michael McCormack claimed that the only people linking climate to the current bushfires were ‘raving inner-city lunatics’. 

According to the Australia Institute’s Climate of the Nation Report 2019, 76% of Australians agree that climate change is causing more bushfires. Yet David Littleproud (real name), the minister appointed to head up the disaster response, claimed it was ‘irrelevant’ whether climate change contributed. To admit climate change supercharges bushfires, as many fire chiefs stated, would require responding accordingly. Instead other potential causes were brought in like not enough land clearing. Easier to blame others than to come to terms with your own poor efforts to solve a global problem.   

 Its for this reason Australia earned a Fossil of the Day from NGOs as soon as Cop25 kicked off. 

Action 

Australia’s poor efforts on climate action are record-breaking. This current Australian government remains the only one in the world to dismantle a working emissions trading scheme (ETS).

For a few brief years, Australia had a national carbon price that reduced national emissions by 2% and grew the economy by 5%. Since it was dismantled, national emissions have been trending upwards. This makes it hard for the Australian government to meet its modest 26% emission reduction target (on 2005 levels by 2030) so over half of the necessary abatement will come from its leftover allocation of Kyoto Protocol (KP) credits.

The Australian government claims it has 367 Mt of KP credits and it is ‘entitled’ to use them toward its Paris Agreement target. The negotiating bloc that represent small islands states and least developed countries have called it out and there are many legal and moral reasons why it can’t and shouldn’t be allowed. Australia is the only party in the KP intending to do this and it is hoping that other countries don’t care. Certainly not enough to kick up a fuss at Cop25.

We need your help… Climate Home News is an independent news outlet dedicated to the most important global stories. If you can spare even a few dollars each month, it would make a huge difference to us. Our Patreon account is a safe and easy way to support our work.

Australia only got those credits by holding up the Kyoto Protocol negotiations, in a last minute objection, to ensure it could use a very generous baseline. And then under the first period it increased its emissions to 108% of that generous baseline, and in the second commitment period cut emissions by (drumroll) 0.5% from that same baseline.  

The prime minister of Australia is best known for bringing a lump of coal into Australia’s parliament house and telling everyone there not to be afraid. Coal itself is not what is scary. It’s the policies that sit behind it and encourage production, export and provide it protection. It is policies that don’t link climate impacts to fossil fuels. And it’s the policy of avoiding climate action required under the Paris Agreement by employing loopholes.   

At Cop25, Australia will be trying to keep a low profile. Will you let it?  

The post One of the world’s biggest emitters is trying to fly under the radar at Cop25 appeared first on Climate Home News.

Australia’s current climate plan under the Paris Agreement is far too weak and Australia is way off track from meeting it. On top of this, the Australian government is planning to use an accounting trick to do even less, even though it knows no other country is brazen enough to try.

Having secured excess carbon credit units under the old Kyoto Protocol, the emission reduction mechanism anterior to the Paris deal, Australia plans to use these credits to make up over half the abatement required to meet its 2030 climate target.

In a parliamentary hearing this week the Australian government department of environment and energy confirmed it was not aware of any other country that was trying to use surplus Kyoto units to meet Paris Agreement commitments.

As a former Australian government negotiator, I could only cringe as I watched a former colleague defend the policy. I do not envy the task of Australian negotiators at the next UN climate talks, Cop25, who must convince every other country that they alone are “entitled” to their surplus Kyoto units.

Green opposition wins Budapest mayoral election in blow to Orbán

The rules over whether governments are allowed to use old credits to cut their emissions under the Paris accord are still in contention. But Australia knows it is isolated on Kyoto carryover. This could become painfully obvious in the negotiations.

It reminds me of my Maltese grandma trying to use a two-for-one coffee voucher that expired the year before. She knew it was unlikely to work, as did the waiter and everyone else in the café. I guess she thought it worth the gamble.

Australia’s gamble is 367 megatonnes of carbon units accrued under the Kyoto Protocol. If Australia gets to use these credits to meet its 2030 climate target, it will cut the country’s emissions reduction efforts in half, ultimately leaving Australia’s emissions at about the same as today’s levels.

If countries close this loophole at Cop25, Australia will have to make good with new policy or purchased units. The Australia Institute’s research finds even with modest assumptions it could cost the Australian government over AU$18 billion ($12.4bn) to cover the gap. If Australian emissions continue to rise, as they have been for the last five years, the gap will be even greater.

Australia’s claim to “over achievement” is shameless. Australia’s per capita emissions are highest in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group of rich and developed countries. Australia has higher emissions than forty other countries with larger populations. Australia is also the third largest exporter of fossil fuel emissions in the world, after Russia and Saudi Arabia.

And let’s recall how Australia came to possess these credits. In the final hours of the Kyoto talks in 1997, Australia stood in the plenary, alone in defiance against consensus, until it got what it wanted. Australia was given a generous baseline, like starting a race halfway, and a generous target that allowed it to increase its emissions to 108% on 1990 levels by 2012.

At the time, the European Union’s environmental policy spokesman Peter Jorgensen described Australia’s behaviour as “wrong and immoral”.

When the time came to negotiate a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, Australia’s target was a reduction of half a point.

With such weak targets, no wonder Australia “overachieved”. Now, the government wants to use the credits to, again, weaken its efforts under the new Paris Agreement. It’s like receiving extra credits for your finger-painting work in kindergarten and then trying to use the credits in high school to get away with doing half as much course work.

This is a reminder that CHN is a small independent news site, dedicated to bringing you news from all over the world. That’s expensive and we need our readers to help. Here’s how you can, even for a few dollars a month.

Australia’s extra credits are equivalent to eight times the annual fossil fuel emissions of every Pacific island country put together, including New Zealand. Understandably, many Pacific island countries called on all countries to refrain from using Kyoto credits to meet their Paris commitments. At Cop24, New Zealand ruled out using its own Kyoto surplus with climate change minister James Shaw stating it would not be in the “spirit of the Paris Agreement”.

Australia, like all other countries at Cop21 in Paris, agreed to “promote the voluntary cancellation” of “units issues under the Kyoto Protocol”.

And many countries responded. The UK, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands declared they would cancel their first commitment period Kyoto units and seek to avoid using second period units.

Countries concerned about the integrity of the Paris Agreement will be rightly focused on how upcoming negotiations on carbon markets deal with the issue of double counting. However, they shouldn’t take their eyes off Australia’s side-hustle.

Australia has made clear it is willing to go with it alone, just like at Kyoto. Will it work, again?

Richie Merzian is the climate and energy programme director at The Australia Institute. 

The post Australia admits it is on its own using cringe carbon loophole appeared first on Climate Home News.

In an era of climate emergency, enhancing ambition and net-zero ambitions, a highly-developed, rich nation steadily polluting more with each passing year seems very 20th century.

Australia has staved off the economic uncertainty of recent decades by cashing in on its vast natural resources. Aussie iron ore, coal and gas have fuelled the industrialisation of Asia and delivered Australians 28 years of recession-free growth, a record in the developed world. It’s median wealth per adult is the highest on earth, according to Credit Suisse.

Extreme wealth has not made Australia more willing to invest in a shift away from fossil fuels. In reality, it has refused to raise its emissions targets, alienated its Pacific neighbours and said it will not give any more money to help poor countries battle the impacts of warming, even as France, the UK and others step up (story by Chloé Farand this week). Domestic policy has gone backwards, the emissions rise since 2014 coincides with the eradication of a national carbon price that was cutting pollution.

Now there are fears China’s trade disputes and stuttering growth – which it said this week were diluting efforts to bring down its own emissions – might drag Australia’s economy backwards. Scott Morrison doesn’t want to be the prime minister who breaks the growth streak, but the margins are getting finer.

Hence the turn to the riches off the Australian coastline. On the back of huge new projects opening up, the country recently emerged as the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, overtaking Qatar last year after being ranked tenth in 2015. Fugitive emissions from oil and gas production now account for 6% of the country’s greenhouse pollution and are the major reason Australian emissions are still rising.

The sops the government has thrown to climate concerns stretch credulity. Paris Agreement emissions targets will be met by using credits carried over from the Kyoto Protocol. Australia appears to be the only country that has not cancelled those credits, which New Zealand has said breach the “spirit” of the Paris deal.

Minister for energy and emissions reduction Angus Taylor meanwhile has said gas exports may cut as much as 150 million tonnes of carbon a year from global emissions by replacing coal. Even if that were true (and it is disputed), the same logic requires us to look at the impact of Australia’s coal exports, the world’s largest. A recent Australia Institute analysis found that the potential CO2 released from burning Australian fossil fuel exports, 1.1 billion tonnes mostly from coal, were more than double all domestic emissions.

Despite its wealth, Australia’s electorate has not become bolder. The climate crisis has reached new prominence – on Friday a government agency said the outlook for the Great Barrier Reef was “very poor”, potentially provoking a national embarrassment if the treasure is placed on the World Heritage in Danger list. But wage growth is slow and cost of living remains a greater concern for voters than the environment. This presents a political problem for all Australian politicians. Something major needs to shift in the minds of voters before the ‘lucky country’ will leave its defensive crouch.

Also this week…

On the Amazon:

• Seven stories that will help you understand the destruction of the Amazon
• Brazil says South American countries will meet over Amazon wildfires
• Comment – Europeans must face their own role in the destruction of the Amazon

On activism:

• Rocks in the gearbox: German anti-car protesters target industry for disruption
• Climate activists announce plan to ground Heathrow flights with drones

With big ideas:

• Ban flying to UN climate talks? That’s a dangerous idea
• Pacific leaders set new bar by collectively declaring climate crisis

The post Climate Weekly: What went wrong in Australia? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Greenhouse gas emissions rose 0.6% to 538.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) from the previous year, mainly due to a 19% rise in LNG exports and growth in steel and aluminium production, the government said in a quarterly greenhouse gas update.

LNG output added 4.7 million tonnes CO2-e, more than offsetting a 2.1% drop in emissions from the electricity sector, the biggest source of carbon emissions, as the growth of wind and solar power has reduced the use of dirty coal.

Emissions were 11.7% below their 2005 level, with about 11 years to go to meet Australia’s commitment under the Paris climate accord to slash emissions by at least 26% from 2005 levels by 2030 to help combat global warming.

UN asked Australia to cover up Great Barrier Reef lobbying

Australia’s emergence as the world’s top LNG exporter has created a quandary for the conservative government, as methane and carbon emissions from gas and LNG production make it harder for the country to meet its greenhouse gas emission targets.

At the same time, Canberra has praised the benefits of the LNG export industry and its role in helping cut emissions in the countries that buy the LNG. The government claims the gas replaces dirtier coal-based energy in those countries.

“Australia’s LNG exports for the year to March 2019 are estimated to be worth A$47.8 bln ($32 billion) and have the potential to reduce global emissions by up to 152 Mt CO2-e, or up to 28% of Austrlaia’s annual emissions,” Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor said in a statement.

The emissions footprint from the LNG industry should improve over the next year. The recent start-up of carbon capture and storage at Chevron Corp’s Gorgon LNG project off Western Australia will bury up to 4 million tonnes of emissions a year.

Climate Home News needs your help… We’re an independent news outlet dedicated to the most important global stories. If you can spare even a few dollars each month, it would make a huge difference to us. Our Patreon account is a safe and easy way to support our work.

The process involves removing CO2 from the gas that Chevron produces from the Gorgon project at Barrow Island, and injecting it through wells into reservoirs under the ocean floor, 2 km (1.2 miles) below the island.

Also on Friday, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) downgraded the reef’s status to the lowest level, which could jeopardise its World Heritage listing.

The agency said the health of the world’s largest coral reef system, off the northeast coast of the state of Queensland, had deteriorated since its last review in 2014, but the problems the reef faced were not insurmountable.

“This report draws attention to the fact that the outlook for the Great Barrier Reef, the long term outlook, is very poor- that’s largely driven by climate change,” GBRMPA’s chief scientists David Wachenfeld told reporters in Sydney.

“Despite that, with the right mix of local actions to improve the resilience of the system and global actions to tackle climate change in the strongest and fastest way possible, we can turn that around.”

Climate news straight to your inbox? Sign up here

The report, which is compiled every five years, painted a deteriorating picture of widespread coral bleaching, habitat loss and degradation caused by human-induced climate change, overfishing, poor water quality, and coastal land clearing for grazing.

Some parts of the reefs remained in good condition but many species including dolphins, dugongs, sharks, rays and turtles were being threatened.

Unesco’s World Heritage Committee last year called for global action on climate change to protect five large coral reefs, including the Great Barrier Reef.

The committee is due to consider the reef’s heritage listing, considering its health and a possible “in danger” status.

“The Great Barrier Reef is one of the globe’s most famous World Heritage Areas yet the report finds that its integrity is challenged and deteriorating,” environmentalist group Australian Marine Conservation Society said in a statement.

“This is now the third outlook report. We’ve had ten years of warnings, ten years of rising greenhouse emissions and ten years watching the reef heading for a catastrophe,” said the group’s director of strategy Imogen Zethoven.

“This report will be a major input into Unesco’s committee and here is a very strong case for the reef to be considered for the in danger list.”

The inclusion of the reef on the in danger list would be an embarrassment for the government and could damage the tourist industry.

Unesco’s chief of the Asia and Pacific region, Feng Jing, said the organisation was following closely the state of the reef and progress made in protecting it and would consider its status in July next year.

“We would hope that the collective efforts undertaking by the State Party of Australia will bring the change that is needed to ensure the sustainable conservation of the Great Barrier Reef,” Jing said in an emailed statement.

The post Australian emissions rise as LNG production soars appeared first on Climate Home News.

Tuvalu’s message could not be clearer or more important – climate change is real and the future of their children and all the children of our blue Pacific is uncertain – unless urgent, ambitious action is taken to limit global warming to below 1.5C.

Last year, Pacific Islands Forum leaders reaffirmed, through the Boe Declaration on Regional Security, that climate change is the single greatest threat facing the region. At their 50th meeting in Tuvalu, leaders discussed this threat and resolved, by consensus, to take urgent action.

Following their meeting, leaders issued the Kainaki II Declaration for Urgent Climate Change Action Now.

Australia seeks to water down climate declaration at Pacific summit

Over the past week, I have seen significant interest in the Kainaki II Declaration from people all around our region and internationally. The level of interest, debate and discussion is very positive and speaks to the nature of the climate change crisis that we now face, and the catastrophic consequences of inaction for many of the forum’s members.

As secretary general, I want to use this opportunity to make one very important point about the declaration.

The Kainaki II Declaration for Urgent Climate Change Action Now is the strongest statement the Pacific Islands Forum has ever issued collectively on climate change, and will stand as a key advocacy instrument to support the Pacific’s collective voice at the UN secretary-general’s climate action summit to be held in New York next month, the 25th Conference of the Parties (Cop25) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Chile in December and other global meetings.

Pacific islands criticise Australia’s carbon accounting dodge

The Kainaki II Declaration is a significant milestone. Especially so, when you consider that Australia and New Zealand are developed country parties within the context of international climate change negotiations and are part of a negotiating group which consists of larger countries such as the US, Japan and Canada. The fact that Australia and New Zealand, as members of the Pacific Islands Forum, support and endorse the Kainaki II Declaration will elevate and add considerable weight to the Pacific’s negotiating priorities at the international level, including at the upcoming Cop25.

The Kainaki II Declaration is the first time the Pacific Islands Forum has agreed and declared that there is a ‘climate change crisis’ facing the Pacific island nations. It appears twice in the declaration in paragraphs 1 and 9. By agreeing to use the term ‘climate change crisis’, Pacific leaders have set a new bar for the international community, as “crisis” is currently not agreed language in the Paris Agreement or in the UNFCCC process.

Climate news straight to your inbox? Sign up here

We all know that limiting the global average temperature rise to below 1.5C above pre-industrial levels is a red line for Pacific island nations. In response, the Kainaki II Declaration references the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2018 Special Report on 1.5C at least three times and also declares the need to limit global average temperature increase to 1.5C five times. This is a strong signal from Pacific leaders to ensure the international community meets all obligations under the Paris Agreement and increases the pressure for all countries to take urgent action to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and prevent catastrophic global warming.

To ensure we are on track for the 1.5C pathway greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2020 and decline thereafter reaching net zero by 2050. Reflecting this, the Kainaki II Declaration mentions ‘achieving net zero carbon by 2050’ twice, alongside the need to formulate long-term low emissions strategies by 2020.

On nationally determined contributions (NDCs), the language in the Kainaki II Declaration recognises the need for all parties to the Paris Agreement to update and communicate their revised NDCs in 2020, including meeting or exceeding their current commitments to pursue efforts to limit the global average temperature increase to 1.5C, whilst recognising the opportunity presented during the first global stocktake, to take place in 2023.

Climate Home News needs your help… We’re an independent news outlet dedicated to the most important global stories. If you can spare even a few dollars each month, it would make a huge difference to us. Our Patreon account is a safe and easy way to support our work.

Several leaders in our region have consistently called on industralised nations and large emitters to phase out fossil fuel subsidies and ban the construction of new coal plants. The Kainaki II Declaration references the term ‘just transition from fossil fuels’, which refers to a transition away from coal, oil and gas and calls on members of G7 and G20 to ‘rapidly implement’ their existing commitment to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies is a positive step.

It is widely acknowledged that simplified access to scaled-up international climate finance is a key priority to forum island countries. In this regard, the Kainaki II Declaration not only seeks support for replenishment of the Green Climate Fund, but also calls on the international community to meet their climate finance commitments to jointly mobilise $100 billion per year by 2020 and to conclude work on the Adaptation Fund serving the Paris Agreement. I note today’s news that the United Kingdom will double its contribution to the Green Climate Fund as a positive response to the Kainaki II Declaration. We hope other development partners will follow this lead.

The last issue I want to note is the importance of the climate-ocean nexus to our blue pacific continent. In welcoming the Cop25 presidency’s focus on oceans, the Kainaki II Declaration calls on all parties attending Cop25 to consider a work programme on oceans within the UNFCCC process. This is a significant step, noting the work on the climate-ocean nexus has been running parallel, rather than as an integrated component within international climate change negotiations.

In closing, while the Kainaki II Declaration is a milestone for the Pacific Islands Forum, we realise that more still needs to be done if we are to increase the ambition levels of industrialised nations and large emitters globally. For many of the countries of the forum, climate change is not a political issue but an existential one and we do not have the time to delay commitments for transformative change. Urgent political will and ambition, both internationally and domestically, is immediately required to respond to the climate change crisis facing our region.

I have personally witnessed the robustness and richness of the discussions by our leaders on climate change issues evolve and grow from year-to-year. The strength of the consensus formed around Kainaki II speaks to the strength of our collective and to our solidarity as a family.

The Kainaki II Declaration is statement of urgent action that all Pacific people should be proud of, and I am certain it will further enhance the Pacific Islands Forum’s strong record for global leadership on climate issues.

Meg Taylor is the secretary-general of the Pacific Islands Forum.

The post Pacific leaders set new bar by collectively declaring climate crisis appeared first on Climate Home News.

An annotated draft of the Pacific Islands Forum declaration, seen by Climate Home News, showed Australia trying to suppress references to the climate “crisis”, 1.5C, carbon neutrality, a ban on new coal plants and phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies.

Climate change is high on the agenda at the forum this week, putting small island nations vulnerable to sea level rise on a collision course with Australian prime minister Scott Morrison’s pro-coal government. Morrison is due to arrive in the Tuvalu capital Funafuti on Wednesday.

Ahead of the leaders’ summit, governments were invited to comment on a draft declaration, to form the basis for a political statement to be negotiated over the next couple of days.

Pacific islands criticise Australia’s carbon accounting dodge

Fiji’s prime minister Frank Bainimarama, who presided over the 2017 UN climate talks, directly appealed to Australia to transition away from coal “to energy sources that do not contribute to climate change” during an informal meeting in Tuvalu on Monday.

Bainimarama said that while it was not for Fiji “to be prescriptive” over national affairs, he urged Canberra to appreciate “the existential threat” facing Pacific nations.

But in comments on the draft dated 7 August, Australia sought to wriggle out of its climate commitments and weaken language on limiting global temperatures to 1.5C of warming – the tougher target of the Paris Agreement that small island states say is essential to their survival.

Among suggested edits, Australia deleted references to the 1.5C goal being an “irrefutable red-line” for forum members, instead referring to limiting temperature rise “in line with the Paris Agreement”.

It also pushed back against efforts to bring national policies in line with the latest science on 1.5C from the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report on 1.5C.

Analysis: Which countries have a net zero carbon goal?

Australia agreed to “recognis[e] the information” in the report without endorsing its conclusion that global emissions must fall 45% by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2050 for a reasonable chance of limiting warming to 1.5C. Indeed, Australia’s version excises any mention of achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

This is something only a handful of largely developed countries have committed to, with New Zealand indicating in notes that it would support achieving net zero carbon “around 2050”.

UN secretary general António Guterres has thrown his weight behind the issue, demanding every country start planning for carbon neutrality by 2050 ahead of his climate action summit on 23 September in New York.

Instead, Australia’s edits call on countries to “formulate and communicate long term [greenhouse gas] emissions development strategies by 2020” – a looser framework that allows for varying levels of ambition.

The draft statement echoes others of Guterre’s demands and calls for “an immediate global ban on the construction of new coal plants and coal mines” and the “urgent phase out of all fossil fuel subsidies”.

Guterres asks all countries to plan for carbon neutrality by 2050

On both instances, Australia suggested deleting the paragraph, asserting that the issue is “not a shared forum priority”.

The draft statement concludes on a call to all countries, “with no caveats”, to take decisive and transformative action – a likely dig at Australia for planning to use Kyoto-era carbon credits to meet its Paris Agreement pledges. Again, Australia pushed to cut the “no caveats” clause.

Morrison appeared to curry favour with small island nations on Tuesday, proposing to redirect AU$500 million (US$340m) from existing aid funds to boost investments in renewable energy and climate and disaster resilient infrastructure.

In a statement, Morrison said the measure highlighted Australia’s “commitment to not just meeting our emissions reduction obligations at home but supporting our neighbours and friends,” adding the country was “doing [its] part to cut global emissions”.

Australia has pledged to cut emissions by 26% from 2005 levels by 2030 – a target it is yet not on track to meet.

Climate news straight to your inbox? Sign up here

Pacific nations leaders were left unimpressed by the proposal.

Tuvalu’s prime minister Enele Sopoaga told reporters: “No matter how much money you put on the table, it doesn’t give you the excuse to not to do the right thing that is cutting down your emissions, including not opening your coal mines.”

Sopoaga said the Pacific Island Forum declaration “must push forward and seek urgent actions, concrete actions by the global community” and expressed the hope “our Australian colleagues and others will take heat of this imperative”.

In a statement following Monday’s informal discussions, seen by CHN, the Pacific small island developing states said climate change represented “the single greatest [threat] to the security of Pacific island countries”.

The statement urged world leaders to “acknowledge that we are already facing a climate crisis”, “dramatically accelerate a global response to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement” and take action in line with Guterres’ demands for ramping up ambition.

We’ve changed our rules on republication. Please read them here

The post Australia seeks to water down climate declaration at Pacific summit appeared first on Climate Home News.

Leaders attending the Pacific Islands Development Forum in Fiji this week issued a statement demanding countries “refrain from using ‘carry-over credits’ as an abatement for the additional Paris Agreement emissions reduction targets”.

The Nadi Bay Declaration signed on Tuesday effectively singles out Australia, the only country explicitly planning to use old credits as a shortcut to meet its 2030 climate targets.

Australia has pledged to cut emissions by 26% from 2005 levels by 2030 – a target it is not on track to meet, despite assertions to the contrary by prime minister Scott Morrison.

Russia and Ukraine have also left the door open to using carryover credits towards their Paris targets.

Australia’s emissions rise again, putting Paris climate promise in doubt

The credits were initially issued for Australia’s overachievement in meeting its 1997 Kyoto pledge. Using the credits to meet its commitments under the Paris deal would effectively lower the emissions reductions needed for Australia to achieve its 2030 goal and hinder ambitious action – on which the survival of low-lying Pacific islands depends.

The statement by Pacific leaders declared “a climate crisis in the Pacific” and called for “a paradigm shift” to articulate emissions cutting measures and adaption policies in a coherent manner.

It expressed “deep concern about the lack of comprehension, ambition, or commitment shown by developed nations”, calling on them to stop subsidising fossil fuel production and support climate finance for vulnerable countries.

Addressing the meeting, Fiji’s Prime Minister and chair of the forum Frank Bainimarama asked the world’s developed economies to increase their climate plans “including and most especially our larger neighbours in the Pacific”.

Climate news straight to your inbox? Sign up here

The statement and Bainimarama’s comments will be seen as a rebuke to Australia’s lack of carbon-cutting policies. It sets the scene for a tense meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum in a fortnight in Tuvalu, where Morrison is due to meet with other regional leaders.

Indeed, Australia’s emissions are on the rise with an increase of 0.7% between last December and March. Experts foresee that trend continuing, in the absence of new measures.

The islands’ declaration also calls on coal producers “to immediately cease any new mining of coal” and develop a strategy to phase-out coal production within a decade. Again, that challenges the pro-coal Australian administration.

In June, Morrison’s re-elected government gave the green light for Indian company Adani to begin construction on a coal mine in Queensland.

Climate Home News needs your help… We’re an independent news outlet dedicated to the most important global stories. If you can spare even a few dollars each month, it would make a huge difference to us. Our Patreon account is a safe and easy way to support our work.

In an interview with ABC ahead of the Pacific nations’ development summit, Australian foreign minister Marise Payne said leaders “should be pleased” that the country was meeting its Paris commitments. “That is something that we are absolutely locked into doing,” she said.

This is not the first time Australia has been pressed to abandon its creative carbon accounting methods.

In a peer-review exchange in June about the performance of signatories to the Paris deal in meeting their climate targets, Canada and the EU raised concerns over Australia’s use of Kyoto credits to meet its 2030 target.

Australia insisted it would use the credits.

With the EU currently negotiating a free trade deal with Australia, some experts have suggested it could be a lever to demand stronger climate action.

Brussels has made implementation of the Paris Agreement a condition of all new trade deals, but it remains to be seen how strictly it will be enforced.

We’ve changed our rules on republication. Please read them here

The post Pacific islands criticise Australia’s carbon accounting dodge appeared first on Climate Home News.

The quarterly update of Australia’s greenhouse gases, which span December 2018 to March 2019, showed a 0.7% hike in emissions. Save for agriculture and electricity, all sectors were up. Pollution from the manufacturing, construction and commercial sectors and domestic heating shot up by 6%.

The figures were released five days past their due date, despite a senate order calling on the government to meet the deadline. But before they were made public, the data did appear alongside an interview with energy and emissions reduction minister Angus Taylor in The Australian.

Energy and emissions reduction minister Angus Taylor told the newspaper, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, that the country was on track to honour its Paris Agreement target of 26 to 28% below 2005 levels by 2030. He has previously said this would be done “in a canter”.

Data published by the Department of Environment and Energy in December, however, showed that the country was on course to reduce its emissions by 7% by 2030. Shadow minister for climate change and energy Mark Butler simply dismissed Taylor’s comments as “a lie”.

(Source: Australian government)

Deputy leader of the Australian Greens Adam Bandt said: “The minister has continued with his contempt of the parliament, seemingly dropping the pollution figures to the Murdoch media before making them public.”

“We wouldn’t accept the government selectively dropping the regular unemployment figures to its favourite media outlet. This pollution data needs to be released promptly, regularly and transparently,” Bandt said.

It continues a trend of rising emissions since 2016, making the Paris target increasingly difficult to achieve, experts warned.

“The fact that we haven’t made a big dent in it, is very, very worrying,” climate analyst Ketan Joshi told Climate Home News. “We have made reductions in our electricity sector, a lot of that comes down to technologies such as wind and solar. That is often framed as us on the way to meeting our Paris target, but of course that’s just one sector of Australia’s emissions.”

Head of the climate and energy programme at the Australia Institute think tank Richie Merzian told Climate Home News the newly released data also cemented the failure of one of the government’s key policies to combat climate change: the Climate Solutions Fund.

The fund, which incentivises emissions cuts rather than penalising polluters, has been “insufficient in terms of the reductions that were supposed to flow from the abatement purchase”, he said. In April, the Coalition government axed the fund further, opting to spread $2bn over 15 years rather than 10 years.

“So their plan is to do less of the same, and that plan has failed today and will continue to fail.” The government has said it intends to meet the Paris target using credits won in the era of the Kyoto Protocol – a measure most countries have ruled out.

“Even with Australian government planning to use its credits from Kyoto, it will still fail,” said Merzian.

The government’s delayed release of the figures comes amid growing awareness on climate change in Australia. A poll by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation found that the environment ranked a top issue for 29% of participants, up by 9% in the 2016 election.

The post Australia’s emissions rise again, putting Paris climate promise in doubt appeared first on Climate Home News.

It took Tony Abbott, the architect of a decade of climate agony for Australian progressives, to boil a catastrophic defeat for Labor down to a trademark slogan.

“Where climate change is a moral issue,” the former prime minister and Liberal MP said on Saturday night, “we do it tough. But where climate change is an economic issue, as the result tonight shows, we do it very, very well.”

Abbott was, in fact, giving a concession speech. He’d just been thrashed by an independent who made his climate denial the defining issue for voters in the affluent Sydney seat he’d held for 25 years.

But away from the lilly pilly-lined streets of northern Sydney, Australians were emphatically rejecting the fullest climate offering from a major party in years.

Comment: Australian voters can’t trust the Coalition on climate and energy

Labor, led by former union boss Bill Shorten, had come to the election promising to end Australia’s ‘climate wars’ with energy reforms that would foster the growth of renewable energy over the country’s traditionally powerful coal industry. It was, Shorten said, time to end a decade of inaction as Australia recovered from its hottest ever summer.

Shorten had been heavily favoured, with betting companies even paying out on a Labor victory in the week before. Instead, the governing coalition of Liberal and National parties was returned to power, aided by a resounding victory in coal country.

In the central Queensland seats of Dawson, Capricornia and Herbert, the swing to the Coalition was 11.3%, 10.7% and 7.6%. Herbert was one of two seats Labor lost in a state where they had to make gains to win government.

In this arid corner of the north east, Indian company Adani plans to dig a massive and controversial new coal mine. The Coalition has backed the project, which still faces state regulatory hurdles, as a job bonanza for central Queensland. Resources minister Matt Canavan’s response to the government’s re-election was a two word tweet: “START ADANI”.

We need your help… Climate Home News is an independent news outlet dedicated to the most important global stories. If you can spare even a few dollars each month, it would make a huge difference to us. Our Patreon account is a safe and easy way to support our work.

On the other hand, Labor has remained ambivalent, saying that it won’t block the development, but it won’t give the project federal finance to build a rail link.

One of the single biggest potential beneficiaries of the Adani project is a billionaire businessman called Clive Palmer. His Waratah Coal company holds major mining leases near the Adani site. The rail and port infrastructure that would service the first mine would make his Alpha North and China First Coal projects, which he claims have even larger reserves, all the more likely to proceed.

In this election, Palmer, a former MP, financed one of the most extraordinary guerrilla campaigns in Australian political history. He reportedly spent AU$60m on Labor-bashing advertising for his own United Australia Party. He ran candidates in every seat, but didn’t win a single one. Then, under Australia’s preferential voting system, Palmer did a deal that meant his 3.4% of the national vote flowed to the Coalition. Late on Saturday, he claimed credit for returning the government.

Amazing. This table shows how preferences from One Nation and Palmer gave the LNP a massive boost in Qld. From @TomMcIlroy https://t.co/CbLe34ZXEF pic.twitter.com/zP9x3QXnGU

— Patrick Commins (@ComminsP) May 20, 2019

In Queensland, Palmer’s attacks found their mark. According to Richie Merzian, director of the Australia Institute’s climate programme, Labor’s fence-sitting over Adani “meant they were unpopular in Queensland where the Coalition were successful in equating coal and jobs… and not popular enough in Victoria where the population wanted climate action”.

The mining union, which is affiliated to Labor, called on the party to back the Adani project. Instead, Shorten’s election offer to communities impacted by the declining coal industry was the establishment of a ‘just transition authority’, but no finance for restructuring their economies.

Climate news in your inbox? Sign up here

Wayne Swan, Labor’s national president and a former treasurer, told the ABC his party had failed to reassure communities that view coal as their lifeblood.

“What they want is someone who respects the dignity of their work and their lifestyles in their region and the whole country, not just the Labor party, has to come to grips with that challenge,” he said.

After suffering such a major setback, Guardian Australia’s political editor Katherine Murphy questioned whether Labor would “have the resolve to go to another election championing an ambitious policy” on climate change.

But others argued the party needed to double down on its commitments, not only to cutting emissions, but to the regions that feed the biggest coal export industry on the planet.

Greens MP Adam Bandt said on Twitter that if Labor jumped to the conclusion that only a small target could win the climate policy struggle “it could cost us all dearly”. He called for an Australian version of the green new deal, the massive investment in transitioning to a cleaner economy currently championed by progressives in the US and Europe.

Climate Weekly: EU beats the zero carbon drum

“The only way out of this cul-de-sac is with a plan for real jobs in new industries located in these coal communities. A ‘green new deal’ can be picked up and applied across party lines and can work as well in Melbourne as in Capricornia if it’s believable,” said Bandt.

This has international precedent. In Spain, the Socialist government brokered a €250m regional development deal with unions to phase out coal mining. In April, they won back into power campaigning on a ‘green new deal’ platform and increased their vote in mining regions.

Marc Stears, director of Sydney University’s Policy Lab, told Climate Home News Labor needed to “make the economic case for climate reform bigger and more compelling”. He said the idea of an Australian green new deal was “on the right track” but its proponents needed to “persuade people that it is real and not just wishful thinking”.

An even stronger lesson for Australia may come from Germany, where coal is every bit as woven into the political, economic and social fabric. Last week, Angela Merkel said the country would find a path to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Germany’s coal commission, with representatives from across industry, unions, science and green groups, has set out a plan to manage the end of coal within two decades. That is slower than climate advocates would like, but represents a durable compromise with an influential coal lobby.

Without that type of engagement, Australian Labor remains vulnerable to an industry that has again demonstrated its close ties to power and to the electorate.

Republish this article

The post Australia’s coal communities, ignored by Labor, deliver brutal election defeat appeared first on Climate Home News.

New Zealand has an unusual mix of greenhouse gas emissions (unusual for a developed country, that is), as it has large numbers of sheep and cattle, which produce methane from digesting grass. These provide an opportunity for making rapid progress on the country becoming climate neutral.

A draft climate law published last week after extensive consultation, which singles out methane for a separate target, should be welcomed. Instead some have inaccurately interpreted it as a free pass to farmers.

If this truly were a concession to farmers, then nitrous oxide (released from manure and with a longer-lasting and more potent climate impact than methane) would not be required to reach net zero emissions. However, it is.

The government’s proposed methane emissions target is a cut of 24-47% by 2050, compared to “net-zero” for other greenhouse gases. It would be a compromise if methane affected the climate in the same way as carbon dioxide. However, it doesn’t.

The New Zealand government knows this, as do their scientific advisers, which is why they have come to a scientifically informed target, which is more akin to “net zero warming”.

Analysis: How can the biodiversity and climate crises be tackled together?

If you judge the targets on contributions to warming from each of the greenhouse gases, you come to the conclusion that farmers are being asked to do more to reverse global warming than CO2-emitting industries (everyone else).

New Zealand has prioritised science over institutional inertia in recognising the need to differentiate short-lived climate pollutants such as methane from cumulative pollutants such as CO2 in climate policy.

What does the government’s proposed methane reduction target mean for temperatures, alongside the other net zero targets?

Let’s imagine we start from today’s emissions and we draw a straight line to the 2050 targets, reducing emissions steadily over the whole 31 years. What would this mean for New Zealand’s contribution to global warming?

For CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases, every single year until 2050 they will be contributing more to global warming. As the emissions stay in the atmosphere, the amount in the atmosphere builds up and the warming increases year on year.

If New Zealand’s CO2 emissions remain zero from 2050 onwards, the warming from NZ-sourced atmospheric CO2 will remain almost constant over the following decades and even centuries. You have to actively remove the CO2 from the atmosphere to reduce its impact on temperature. Even if the whole world goes to net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050, the accumulated CO2 in the atmosphere will still take many thousands of years to return to preindustrial levels.

Climate news in your inbox? Sign up here

Methane is very different, as its lifetime is around a decade. That means that net zero global anthropogenic emissions of methane would lead to atmospheric methane concentrations reverting to natural levels within a few decades. Reducing methane emissions is therefore a rapidly effective way of reversing global warming, as any decline in methane emissions that is faster than about 0.3% per year will actually cause a reduction in global mean temperature.

This is a fundamentally important point and the cooling from reducing methane emissions should be correctly valued in mitigation plans, which would then allow them to be incentivised based on their climate impacts.

Suppose New Zealand’s farmers hit the lower end of the target range, cutting methane 24% by 2050. That decline in methane emissions would actually generate enough cooling to compensate for the warming generated by all the non-methane greenhouse gases emitted by New Zealand as they approach net zero.

In other words, the 24% reduction in methane would offset the warming impact of all the other emissions. New Zealand could declare itself climate neutral almost immediately, well before 2050, and only because farmers were reducing their methane emissions. That’s a free pass to all the other sectors, courtesy of New Zealand’s farmers.

Dr Michelle Cain is a science and policy researcher and Oxford Martin Fellow at the Environmental Change Institute and Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford

The post New Zealand’s farmers have a chance to be climate leaders appeared first on Climate Home News.

Given that, it would seem astonishing that anyone remotely concerned about the efforts on climate change and energy policy would even consider voting for the Coalition, given the complete hash they made of the issues over the last six years.

What is most remarkable is that through three different prime ministers – Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison – the policies have barely changed from those set out under Abbott, the man who admitted that he thought climate science is crap.

The Coalition has agreed only to low-ball targets, and still has no plan to get there. It has sown confusion and chaos in the electricity market, and remains absurdly hostile to new technologies and the very idea of making serious efforts to reduce emissions.

For comprehensive expert coverage of Australian energy and climate news, follow our friends at RenewEconomy

The Coalition is still in love with coal

Any party whose leader (Scott Morrison) and deputy leader (Josh Frydenberg) were proud to wave and cradle a lump of coal in parliament can’t hide the fact that the party is, well, pro-coal, and ignoring climate.

It may have become a bit of an embarrassment in the current election campaign, but many in the junior Coalition partner the Nationals, are openly touting new coal-fired generators in north Queensland.

This is despite the fact that every serious analysis finds that new coal is more expensive than renewables and storage, even without counting emissions costs.

That support has come from the likes of Barnaby Joyce, resources Minister Matt Canavan (whose Twitter account has him wearing a coal company hard hat), and local MPs George Christensen and Michelle Landry, who last week suggested the government should not just underwrite a new coal generator, it should indemnify it from emissions reduction targets.

They have struck down, or tried to strike down, all meaningful climate policies and institutions

Rarely has there been such joy among Coalition ministers as there was just after the repeal of the carbon price had been confirmed in parliament.

And do remember that, at the time, three of these ministers – Greg Hunt, Kelly O’Dwyer and Christopher Pyne, were portrayed as moderates.

Hunt, the then environment minister, has since revealed his true stripes by teaming up with another member of the Coalition, Dutton, in an attempt to lead the Liberals even further to the right.

The carbon price was not the only Coalition victim.

The Climate Change Commission was the first to go – replaced by the privately funded Climate Council – the Climate Change Authority was defenestrated, and attempts were made to kill the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, and the renewable energy target.

We need your help… Climate Home News is an independent news outlet dedicated to the most important global stories. If you can spare even a few dollars each month, it would make a huge difference to us. Our Patreon account is a safe and easy way to support our work.

They still don’t like renewables, and won’t be photographed with any

One of the most galling claims of the election campaign has been Angus Taylor and Scott Morrison’s repeated assertion that the recent $25 billion of investment in wind and solar was the result of the Coalition’s policies.

Even on Tuesday, Morrison claimed, “Australia is going through a renewable energy investment boom, and that is happening under the policies that we’ve been pursuing, as a government,” Morrison said.

Let’s be clear: the investment in renewables is despite the Coalition policies.

The 20% RET was legislated by Labor, with the support of the Coalition, and then Abbott spent several years trying to have it scrapped, succeeding only in slashing its scope by around a third and engineering a three-year investment drought while doing so.

Energy minister Angus Taylor, a long term anti-wind activist, spent the first few months of his tenure saying there was already too much wind and solar in the system, before then also trying to claim credit for them through a policy that he and the Coalition tried to destroy.

How to explain then that no federal Coalition minister has attended the opening of any of the dozens of new wind and solar farms they are trying to champion now, and we can’t see any evidence they have even visited one?

The only visit we have seen photographed is Barnaby Joyce’s participation in a soil-turning event for the White Rock solar farm in his own electorate.

Which at least is better than the long time anti-wind campaigner Taylor, who did not attend the opening of the Crookwell 2 wind farm earlier this year, even though it is in his electorate of Hume, and he is the energy minister.

The Coalition’s only climate policy is a scare campaign

If you were to believe the Coalition, Labor’s climate, energy and EV targets will kill the economy, bring an end to meat raffles, the sausage sizzle and perhaps even the weekend itself. Not only that, it will take more than one day to drive from Sydney to the Gold Coast and it will take five days to charge an EV with rooftop solar.

The absurdity of the claims is only matched by the modelling produced by Brian Fisher of BAEconomics that puts a cost of Labor’s 45% emissions reduction targets at up to $542 billion by 2030, based around out-dated pricing of renewables and storage and abatement costs that are 10 times higher than elsewhere.

These figures have been unanimously slammed by respected economists and academics, and the Australia Institute has released a report pointing out just how far wide of the mark that Fisher, and his Coalition boosters, are on the subject.

There has also been a succession of laughable claims – delivered through Murdoch media and usually through unsourced “exclusive modelling” – about the performance and charging of electric vehicles.

They don’t like new technologies

The Coalition’s response to EVs has been extraordinary, egged on by stories in the Murdoch media so ridiculous they look to have been made up.

But the Coalition has form. From the moment the Tesla big battery has been proposed and installed, the Coalition has been saying the dumbest things about the technology, comparing it to the Big Banana, the Big Prawn, and the Kardashians.

Which is a pity, because as demand for thermal coal, and maybe even LNG, decline in future years, Australia would be well advised to embrace these new technologies. And go big on hydrogen, to underline a potential new export industry.

Australia also has all the minerals needed for the storage and EV sectors, and many of the technology smarts. But it won’t get far as long as its policy makers are troglodytes.

They still don’t believe the science

The Coalition’s official line is that they accept the science of climate change, but their policies suggest nothing more than lip service.

That’s not surprising, given that Tony Abbott famously said that the science of climate change is crap, and even in a tough electoral struggle with independent Zali Steggall is still holding the same line.

When Malcolm Turnbull was prime minister, his efforts to try and do something more on climate and energy were throttled by his devil’s bargain with the Nationals, who clearly don’t accept the science.

Backbenchers such as Craig Kelly are also still going crazy on Facebook (he hasn’t been allowed in non Sky public during the election campaign). It’s really quite mind boggling.

And of course, its not difficult to point to Morrison’s attitude towards coal, who as then treasurer under Turnbull, chaperoned a piece of coal in to the House of Representatives, provided to him by the Minerals Council. (His chief of staff is the former long-serving deputy CEO of the MCA)

“This is coal” he exclaimed, “don’t be afraid, don’t be scared”.

Was he talking to the opposition or to the lump of coal?

The-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, right, introduces Peter Dutton as his home affairs minister in 2017 (Photo: Commons)

They think the climate impacts on other nations are very funny

This was one of the more embarrassing moments for the Coalition, involving former leader Abbott, would-be leader Peter Dutton and current leader Scott Morrison.

Dutton had been talking with Abbott and Morrison ahead of a conference on refugees. Abbott had just returned from Port Moresby for discussions that included climate change, and clearly they weren’t happy about having to wait around.

“Time doesn’t mean anything when you’re about to have water lapping at your door,” Dutton said, before the conversation was brought to a sudden halt when Morrison pointed out there was a boom mike and their quotes were being recorded.

They are not interested in the environment

How else to explain the actions, or the lack of action, of environment minister Melissa Price, and the apparent approval of the leadership?

Price controversially approved the Adani coal mine and the uranium mine in the two days before the election was called, and failed to respond adequately to recent UN reports, particularly the warning of major species loss that was released last week.

Price’s performance has earned her the near-unanimous assessment of the worst environment minister ever.

Her performance has been so bad, and has been such an embarrassment, that Price was not even present when the Coalition’s environment policy was released during the campaign.

The Greens put out a missing person’s notice to see if Price had been seen. Apparently, the former mining industry lawyer was too busy electioneering in her safe seat of Durack in W.A.

New Zealand introduces ‘zero carbon’ bill with concession to farmers

The right wing will still be in control

Some targeted campaigns against some of the main agitators are likely to thin out some of the conservative ranks. Dutton is on a wafer-thin margin in Dickson, and Abbott is facing arguably the most formidable campaign ever waged in Warringah.

There are however some hard-right coalition members in some very safe seats. These include members of the Monash Forum, including Barnaby Joyce, Ian Goodenough, Kevin Andrews and Craig Kelly. Senators Eric Abetz and Matt Canavan are not up for re-election in 2019, by virtue of winning six-year terms in 2016.

Many younger members of the Coalition are also from the right faction – and let’s not forget the influence of those MPs who cut their teeth at the right-wing Institute of Public Affairs – including James Patterson and Tim Wilson.

The “moderate” side of the Coalition has also been depleted. The exit of the more “reasonable” Coalition members in Julie Bishop, Christopher Pyne, Julia Banks and Kelly O’Dwyer, will likely leave the conservative wing with considerable influence over whoever leads the party after the election.

This election

After the 2013 election, it seemed almost unthinkable that climate change could register as a serious political topic. But after going through a dark period, and some concerted campaigning on the issue of climate change and support for renewable energy, it has re-emerged as the issue of the 2019 campaign.

Labor leader Bill Shorten expressed it succinctly during the leadership debates: “Scott Morrison wants three more years of the last six”. The renewables sector can’t afford this, nor can households afford three more years of energy policy chaos.

This article was originally published on Renew Economy.

The post Australian voters can’t trust the Coalition on climate and energy appeared first on Climate Home News.

The government proposed a 24-47% cut in methane from 2017 levels, in a compromise with farmers. Almost half the country’s emissions come from agriculture, driven by large sheep and cattle herds belching methane.

Based on the UK model, the bill would set up an independent climate change commission to review and set “emissions budgets” on a five-yearly basis.

Prime minister Jacinda Ardern said her Labour Party had built a “practical consensus” with coalition partners NZ First and the Greens to create the 30-year plan.

The National Party sided with the farming lobby, however, saying the proposed rate of methane cuts was too fast. “New Zealand has been a global leader in sustainable agricultural production,” said opposition leader Simon Bridges in a statement. “For this leadership to be enhanced the sector must continue to embrace change, but this target goes beyond credible scientific recommendations.”

Jacinda Ardern commits New Zealand to zero carbon by 2050

Ardern came to power in 2017 promising a zero carbon law. In recent months, tens of thousands of schoolchildren in New Zealand have gone on strike to back stronger climate action.

The bill aims to “safeguard the future that those school students will inherit”, said climate minister James Shaw. The split emissions target is consistent with holding global warming to 1.5C, he argued, adding: “Agriculture is incredibly important to New Zealand, but it also needs to be part of the solution.”

In a special report on the 1.5C stretch target of the Paris Agreement last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said global CO2 emissions needed to reach net-zero by 2050. Methane should be cut by at least 35%. It is a more potent warming gas than CO2, but it breaks down faster in the atmosphere, so its effects are short-lived.

Net-zero commitments under consideration by the UK, France and others would need to be swiftly followed by major developing countries to keep 1.5C in reach.

First thoughts on NZ #zerocarbonbill #zerocarbonact : 1.5 legal commitment is stunning, congratulations to @jameshaw and govt. Separating methane is a political compromise but is action for the 1st time. Let’s not underestimate how zero NO2 target could drive land use change.

— Christina Hood (@cjhood71) May 7, 2019

New Zealand faces distinctive challenges due to the dominance of farming – particularly livestock – in its economy and emissions profile. With 10 million cows and 28 million sheep to 5 million people, concerns from the industry have proved hard to ignore.

There are limited techniques available to reduce the emissions each animal produces from digesting grass. Farmers fear they may have to shrink herds to meet the climate targets.

“This will impose enormous economic costs on the country and threaten many regional communities who depend on pastoral agriculture,” said Tim Ritchie of the Meat Industry Association.

We need your help… Climate Home News is an independent news outlet dedicated to the most important global stories. If you can spare even a few dollars each month, it would make a huge difference to us. Our Patreon account is a safe and easy way to support our work.

At the same time, plant-based meat alternatives are threatening to disrupt the meat industry. Farming commentator John Hart tweeted: “While we argue, Beyond Meat just had the largest IPO of 2019 at US$5 billion. ‘Fewer cows’ is coming, ready or not.”

Russel Norman of Greenpeace New Zealand said the bill “sends some good signals” but had watered down ambition on methane and lacked clear enforcement mechanisms.

“What we’ve got here is a reasonably ambitious piece of legislation that’s then had the teeth ripped out of it. There’s bark, but there’s no bite,” he said.

Republish this article

The post New Zealand introduces ‘zero carbon’ bill with concession to farmers appeared first on Climate Home News.

With a federal election looming, the government followed up on prime minister Scott Morrison’s threat not to “tip money into that big climate fund”.

Since 2015, Australia has given $187m to the fund, which finances projects in the developing world that cut emissions or promote resilience to climate impacts. The budget document said Australia made its “final” contribution of $19.2m in December.

Around a third of Australia’s overseas development budget is spent in the climate-vulnerable Pacific. But the Australia Institute’s Richie Merzian said multilateral institutions, such as the Green Climate Fund, were able to leverage private investment in projects in “a way that the Australian Government has struggled to do”.

Why is tiny Nauru getting $26.9m in climate finance to build a port?

“The GCF has co-financing capabilities and regional coverage that Australia couldn’t possibly provide,” he said. Merzian also noted that Australia’s overall aid budget was dropping when measured against the growing economy.

In a statement, Oxfam Australia said the budget was a “catastrophic failure of leadership in the face of the climate crisis – which is out of step with a majority of Australians – and growing inequality and it undermines the future of our Pacific neighbours”.

The Green Climate Fund formed part of a compact between poor and rich countries that was the basis for the Paris climate agreement. Having spent nearly half of its original $10.3bn allocation, the fund has signalled it intends to start raising new finance from developed countries this year.

By the time the hat is passed around, Australia’s position may have changed. The country is expected to hold elections next month, with the major parties sharply divergent on climate policy.

Climate Weekly: Get the all the climate news, straight to your inbox

In a speech last year, shadow foreign minister Penny Wong said “it goes without saying” Labor would “be willing to work with” multilateral organisations including the Green Climate Fund to combat global warming.

This week, Labor gave an indication of the domestic climate package it will take to the poll. The partial release indicated it will try to revive the national energy guarantee, formerly a government scheme that saw Australia’s last prime minster overthrown in favour of Morrison.

The Labor version is more stringent and would cut emissions in the electricity sector 45% on 2005 levels by 2030. (The now-dropped coalition government plan aimed for 26%.) Labor also pledged that half of all new cars sold would be electric by 2030.

Polling puts the opposition Labor party, with leader Bill Shorten, in the lead. The government, on the defensive, has called Labor’s climate policy a “Trojan horse for a carbon tax” and announced tax cuts in a bid to win back voters.

In its budget, the Liberal-National coalition announced $2bn over 15 years to finance what treasurer Josh Frydenberg called “practical emission reduction activities”. These include funding farmers and indigenous land managers to store carbon in the soil.

“Through our measures, as we have done in the past, we will beat our international emission reduction targets,” Frydenberg said on Tuesday.

Australia’s emissions grew last year by 0.9%, according to the latest government data. The country has been criticised for using a system of pollution credits from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to meet its targets while allowing real emissions to continue rising. Labor has said it would close that loophole.

The Australian Conservation Foundation’s chief executive officer Kelly O’Shanassy said the scheme needed reform to close loopholes that could see some of that money spent upgrading old fossil fuel plants.

The amount available for climate projects pales in comparison to fuel tax breaks for businesses, O’Shanassy added. “In this budget the government plans to spend $4.36 subsidising pollution for every dollar it spends on climate action.”

Republish this article

The post Australia stops payments to Green Climate Fund appeared first on Climate Home News.

Fijian prime minister Frank Bainimarama told Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, “Here in Fiji, climate change is no laughing matter”.

Bainimarama is a seasoned operator who has outlasted seven Australian prime ministers and no one missed his reference. Former prime minister Tony Abbott was once caught by a stray microphone laughing at a joke about “water lapping at [Pacific] doors”.

Bainimarama went on. “I urged your predecessor repeatedly to honour his commitment to clean energy.”

“From where we are sitting, we cannot imagine how the interests of any single industry can be placed above the welfare of Pacific peoples and vulnerable people in the world over,” lamented the Cop23 president at their meeting in the Fijian capital of Suva.

Morrison has only been in the role for half a year, having toppled Malcolm Turnbull in a leadership battle fought in part over climate policy and whether to even have one.  The new PM Morrison is of the no-climate policy persuasion.

Australia won’t give money to Green Climate Fund, says PM

Yes, this is the same bloke who brought a lump of coal into the Australian parliament, telling everyone not to be afraid.

Despite overseeing Australia’s steadily increasing emissions and having no policy to reduce them, Morrison claims the country will meet emissions reduction targets “at a canter”.

Worse still, Morrison is doing all he can to subsidise Australia’s fossil fuel industries, which are putting the Pacific’s welfare at risk. He is rushing to fund construction or refurbishment of gas and coal-fired power stations, before a likely May election. Morrison is tipped to lose this election, so he is anxious to lock in more coal by signing binding contracts before leaving office.

This is despite analysis suggesting that new coal power in Australia is actually more expensive than renewables with limited back-up storage by Australia’s public science agency, CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Regulator.

There’s more Australian policy that worries the Pacific – fossil fuel exports. Pacific leaders have long called for restrictions on fossil fuel development, particularly a moratorium on new coal mines, an idea Australia, the world’s largest coal exporter, does not support.

Undeterred, the Morrison government is encouraging new drilling for oil in the Great Australian Bight, digging more coal out of Queensland (including support for the Adani coal mine) and fracking oil and gas in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. If Australia’s LNG ambitions are reached, it will rival Qatar as the largest gas exporter in the world – adding to its infamous position as the largest supplier of coal.

Knowing all this, Morrison didn’t come empty handed to Fiji. He brought a few trinkets to make up for genuine concern, including an A$2 billion Pacific Infrastructure Fund.

The problem is that A$1.5bn will take the form of concessional loans, which most indebted Pacific island countries can’t afford. Morrison’s colleague and former minister for the Pacific Concetta Fierravanti-Wells was so appalled she published an opinion piece (whilst he was in Fiji) blasting him for the ‘debt-trap diplomacy’. The other AUD$500 million will be grants, cut from existing Australian aid projects. For a A$4billion aid program that has already been trimmed – it is cutting into bone. Recall that Morrison had already shutdown Australia’s support to the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which he decided without the advice (or even courtesy of informing) his Department of Foreign Affairs (DFat).

Global issues need global coverage

CHN is dedicated to bringing you the best climate reporting from around the world. It’s a huge job and we need your help.

Through our Patreon account you can give as little or as much as you like to support our work. It’s safe and easy to sign up.

So it is with some irony that on this trip to Fiji, Morrison announced that DFat deputy secretary Ewen McDonald would head up the newly created Australian Office for the Pacific. McDonald was the co-chair of the GCF board for three of the last six years and helped champion Pacific interests in the GCF, garnering the region’s respect. The capable and well-respected diplomat will have his work cut out for him managing the relationship under Morrison’s direction.

Bainimarama’s speech during Morrison’s visit wasn’t just for the Aussie PM but all Australians. Climate change will impact far and wide, including “Australia as well” he mentioned, “where soaring temperatures have reached record highs in several major cities just this week.” Working from Australia’s capital Canberra, which hit 40C-plus for the third day in a row, the message is resonating here. It’s likely the Fiji PM knows the Australian public is on his side – three in four Australians think the country is already experiencing the effects of global warming, like more heatwaves and extremely hot days, according to the Australia Institute’s 2018 Climate of the Nation report.

Most Australians would agree that climate change is certainly no laughing matter. Given the Australian public’s support for climate action, even for phasing out coal, the next Australian election might at least give the Pacific something to smile about.

Richie Merzian is the climate and energy programme director at the Australia Institute. He can be found on Twitter @RichieMerzian

The post The ‘laughing matter’ of Australia’s relationship with the Pacific appeared first on Climate Home News.