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Gillard's carbon masquerade

Keith Orchison

Published 12:38 PM, 23 Jul 2010


B-O-R-I-N-G! That’s the only possible response to Julia Gillard’s “moving forward” speech on decarbonisation policy.

If it had been followed by the infamous TV worm, the critter would have been snoring by page three of the eight page speech.

So tired, perhaps, it might not have realised that there are four major weaknesses in what Gillard and the ALP are putting forward.

The first is the need for yet more consultation. Give us all a break! This is an issue on which we have been consulted all we need to be. What Australia needs now is a decarbonisation policy that will stick and provide certainty for increasingly urgent investment in power generation.

The second weakness is that the government will not face up to the reality of its own rhetoric – achieving a five percent cut in emissions below 2000 levels by 2020 requires a 22 per cent reduction in greenhouse gases from the 'business as usual' trend. Nothing the ALP has on the table at present will deliver that.

The third is that she has squibbed yet again the need for a major drive to achieve greater end-use efficiency. Without this, the target for 2020 is not going to be achievable.

Finally, she spent some time talking about power prices and talking up the impact of network charges. Sure, they are the cause of the current surge in end-user bills, but the government knows it cannot get to the 2020 abatement target without a cost on carbon of around $35 per tonne – and knows this will ensure, along with the network charges, that consumer bills at least double between now and 2020.

The campaign speech was an opportunity for the Prime Minister to level with the Australian people on their electricity bill future and she dodged doing so.

Consensus about the carbon plan will come from telling the community the truth. If you want to see national emissions cut, your bills must go up. This will have an impact on business as well as on residential consumers. You can contribute to abatement by being more efficient and more frugal with how you use power, but the heavy lifting has to be done by commerce and industry, which uses 72 per cent of the electricity we consume.

At the end of the day, major steps in abatement will come from closing down existing, older coal-fired power stations – in South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. The only viable replacement for them is gas-fired generation, which will be more expensive. And the coal generators will need to be compensated for premature closure of their plants.

The existing renewable energy target, which Gillard notes will cost $19 billion just for generation construction, will also require several billion more for new transmission lines. Spending $100 million a year on this, as she proposes, will not be enough. And one of the most important contributions to ensuring this work is done is to sort out the regulatory framework for transmission development – something on which state and federal governments have crawled forward over three years.

Finally, for those of us living in NSW, the Gillard pledge that all new power stations must meet “best practice standards” for emissions raises interesting questions. Does this mean, that 2,000 MW of new coal power can be built if the plants meet today’s best practice standard for coal technology?

How long will it take to establish these standards – because NSW needs to be breaking ground for new baseload plants before the next federal election?



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3 Comments


Don Callanan wrote:

Australia is in an incredibly strong position with respect to carbon emissions reduction (See Gillard's carbon masquerade, July 23).

All we have to do is build a handful of nuclear reactors – and bingo, the job done, let's move on.

23 Jul 2010 12:51 PM

Brian Dirou wrote:

Keith,

I understand some of the newest coal-fired power stations in NSW are about 96 per cent efficient, with 4 per cent heat loss, and most harmful particulates are captured (See Gillard's carbon masquerade, July 23).

Would this not be an adequate standard toward which other generators might be improved if they want to stay in business using coal?

Upgrading for continued use of coal might not be cost-effective for some old generating plants compared to conversion for gas fuelling.

But why on earth should we lean too heavily toward gas-firing when we already have an acceptable standard with newer coal-fired power stations?

23 Jul 2010 1:12 PM

Dennis Thompson wrote:

Yes, the answer is nuclear power generation, using Australia's considerable uranium reserves (See Gillard's carbon masquerade, July 23). But no Labor opposes it. It makes you wonder, doesn't it?

25 Jul 2010 12:36 PM



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