As the release of Professor Garnaut’s long await report review into emissions trading draws nearer, the fierce lobbying on both sides of the debate is intensifying, and so is the background noise.
Some of it is just plain silly. Take, for instance, reports that 30,000 "scientists" had signed a petition disputing the truth of anthropogenic global warming. Such petitions are important to climate sceptics, keen to debunk the idea that there is near unanimity that the world is heading towards irreversible climate change and that humans are the cause. Special interest groups are keen to dilute new policies designed to mitigate global warming.
This particular petition is the culmination of more than 10 years work by the impressive sounding Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. But this institute is actually just a family-run business run by Arthur Robinson, a chemist who once specialised in peptides, his wife and their son, Noah. They also run a home schooling business, sell DVDs on how to survive a nuclear war, and are strong on the right of citizens to protect themselves and drive as many miles in their pickup as they damn well want.
At a press conference to announce the petition, Robinson admitted that only 40 of the 30,000 signatures had come from people claiming to be climate experts. The rest were from people said to have general science, maths, or related degrees. And no, none had been vetted to see if their degrees actually existed. But, in any case, his research had found that increased levels of carbon dioxide was good for humans and the environment.
But back to the main debate. The two key issues surrounding the government’s carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS) will be on the extent of the industries included, and the status of the government's promised mandatory renewable energy target (MRET).
This latter issue has become a major new battleground for the fossil fuel intensive industry, which argues strongly that such a target adds an extra and unnecessary distortion to the market, and will simply push up prices while doing nothing to further reduce emissions.
A paper to be released next week by the energy research firm Climate Risk offers an interesting counterpoint.
The argument for a renewable energy target is that the world needs to do something pretty quickly about reducing the level of carbon emissions. Even proponents of "clean coal” technology such as the former Xstrata coal boss and current Santos director Peter Coates agree that such technology will not be available before 2020, and maybe long after.
So new technology is needed and it needs scale to compete at a cost level. One argument is that an emissions trading price will sort that out. But will it?
Climate Risk’s Karl Mallon says he’s not so sure. According to his modelling, a simple emissions trading scheme will lead to the easiest and cheapest targets being tackled first – planting of trees, energy efficiency, and then maybe an excursion into wind technologies.
He calls this sequential development, but what is needed is concurrent development, so new technologies and industries that can carry the load of future energy needs can be grown at a sustainable rate.
"What we find very starkly is that if you use 'technology neutral' systems, your solutions end up cannibalising each other” he says. "The easy things go first, but it takes 10 years before you get investment in other renewables, but by then you’ve left development of those industries too late.”
"If you go with the sequential system – you can’t reach the targets inside plausible industry growth rates. If someone wants to put on the table that 40 per cent annual growth rates for major energy provisions is plausible, then fine. But have you checked this with the engineers? Apart from war time, it is not really creditable.”
Mallon points out that the wind energy and solar industries have flourished in Germany and California because of specific policies that make up the difference between the market price of energy and the cost of new technology.
To rely solely on an ETS would be like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. "The solution is to get a nutcracker,” Mallon says. "This is not a big problem. If the cost is $1.5 billion a year to meet cost shortfalls for technologies that will not be able to compete under ETS, this is not a major cost."
"All you are doing is picking up a shortfall while they get to economy of scale. Without an MRET, you would have wait too long. You would run out of development time, or have to lift the carbon price so much that it would have a massive impact everywhere.”
Indeed, Mallon wonders that perhaps the MRET should be even more targeted. Rather than a 20/20 target that could be dominated by wind, perhaps the target should be more focused on individual technologies.
Some of it is just plain silly. Take, for instance, reports that 30,000 "scientists" had signed a petition disputing the truth of anthropogenic global warming. Such petitions are important to climate sceptics, keen to debunk the idea that there is near unanimity that the world is heading towards irreversible climate change and that humans are the cause. Special interest groups are keen to dilute new policies designed to mitigate global warming.
This particular petition is the culmination of more than 10 years work by the impressive sounding Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. But this institute is actually just a family-run business run by Arthur Robinson, a chemist who once specialised in peptides, his wife and their son, Noah. They also run a home schooling business, sell DVDs on how to survive a nuclear war, and are strong on the right of citizens to protect themselves and drive as many miles in their pickup as they damn well want.
At a press conference to announce the petition, Robinson admitted that only 40 of the 30,000 signatures had come from people claiming to be climate experts. The rest were from people said to have general science, maths, or related degrees. And no, none had been vetted to see if their degrees actually existed. But, in any case, his research had found that increased levels of carbon dioxide was good for humans and the environment.
But back to the main debate. The two key issues surrounding the government’s carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS) will be on the extent of the industries included, and the status of the government's promised mandatory renewable energy target (MRET).
This latter issue has become a major new battleground for the fossil fuel intensive industry, which argues strongly that such a target adds an extra and unnecessary distortion to the market, and will simply push up prices while doing nothing to further reduce emissions.
A paper to be released next week by the energy research firm Climate Risk offers an interesting counterpoint.
The argument for a renewable energy target is that the world needs to do something pretty quickly about reducing the level of carbon emissions. Even proponents of "clean coal” technology such as the former Xstrata coal boss and current Santos director Peter Coates agree that such technology will not be available before 2020, and maybe long after.
So new technology is needed and it needs scale to compete at a cost level. One argument is that an emissions trading price will sort that out. But will it?
Climate Risk’s Karl Mallon says he’s not so sure. According to his modelling, a simple emissions trading scheme will lead to the easiest and cheapest targets being tackled first – planting of trees, energy efficiency, and then maybe an excursion into wind technologies.
He calls this sequential development, but what is needed is concurrent development, so new technologies and industries that can carry the load of future energy needs can be grown at a sustainable rate.
"What we find very starkly is that if you use 'technology neutral' systems, your solutions end up cannibalising each other” he says. "The easy things go first, but it takes 10 years before you get investment in other renewables, but by then you’ve left development of those industries too late.”
"If you go with the sequential system – you can’t reach the targets inside plausible industry growth rates. If someone wants to put on the table that 40 per cent annual growth rates for major energy provisions is plausible, then fine. But have you checked this with the engineers? Apart from war time, it is not really creditable.”
Mallon points out that the wind energy and solar industries have flourished in Germany and California because of specific policies that make up the difference between the market price of energy and the cost of new technology.
To rely solely on an ETS would be like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. "The solution is to get a nutcracker,” Mallon says. "This is not a big problem. If the cost is $1.5 billion a year to meet cost shortfalls for technologies that will not be able to compete under ETS, this is not a major cost."
"All you are doing is picking up a shortfall while they get to economy of scale. Without an MRET, you would have wait too long. You would run out of development time, or have to lift the carbon price so much that it would have a massive impact everywhere.”
Indeed, Mallon wonders that perhaps the MRET should be even more targeted. Rather than a 20/20 target that could be dominated by wind, perhaps the target should be more focused on individual technologies.
.png?itok=dawChXiY)
How safe is social?: Top 5 social media security scares for 2015
Mobile ransomware, work-at-home fraud and horrid videos all set to claim new victims in 2015.
Telstra doubles its Asian reach
With the $850 million acquisition of Pacnet, Telstra's Asian ambitions are progressing at a fast clip. In this video Stephen Bartholomeusz explains why it's a much better strategy than becoming a domestic, dividend-focussed company.