Monthly Archives: December 2014

Climate Action, Climate Policy & Planning, Climate Science

Climate clippings 116

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1. Super high speed rail

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The Japanese have run an actual train with people in it at 500 km/h. The Chinese have built a train which can theoretically run at 1800 mph by encasing it in a vacuum tube.

It looks as though high speed rail could become a real alternative to air for intercity travel.

Thanks to John D for the headsup.

2. World’s first power-to-liquids production plant opens

The world’s first power-to-liquids (PtL) demonstration production plant was opened in Dresden on 14 November. The new rig uses PtL technology to transform water and CO2 to high-purity synthetic fuels (petrol, diesel, kerosene) with the aid of renewable electricity.

The article does not say how efficient the process is, but presumably less so than using the electricity directly.

3. World Bank focus on clean energy

The World Bank has traditionally been one of the world’s largest funders of fossil fuel projects. Now it:

will invest heavily in clean energy and only fund coal projects in “circumstances of extreme need”…

No doubt this policy stems from the bank’s commissioned report Turning down the heat.

4. Why the Peru climate summit matters

Hope has been injected into the Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru, scheduled to run from 1 to 12 December by the recent US/China agreement. The optimism stems as much from the fact that the two largest emitters in the world are finally working together as the level of ambition. The EU has also recently pledged to cut emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030.

Countries will be working on the text of the draft agreement for Paris in 2015.

Countries are expected to put forward their contributions towards the 2015 agreement in the form of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) by the end of March [2015]. These will then be used to craft the Paris treaty. The Lima gathering will help provide guidelines and clarity for what these INDCs must entail, especially for developing countries still reliant on fossil fuels to meet fast-growing energy demand needed to achieve developmental goals. These options could range from sector-wide emissions cuts to energy intensity goals to renewable energy targets.

We’ll be represented during the second week by Julie Bishop and Andrew Robb, a climate change denier. Seems Bishop went bananas when she found out, and Robb doesn’t want to be there anyway.

Giles Parkinson reports that we’ve sent a delegation of 14, the smallest in 20 years and probably not enough to be actively obstructive as we were in Warsaw last year.

5. 2014 looks like hottest on record

This is how it’s shaping:

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Record hot years are often El Niño years. This year is a neutral ENSO year so far.

That’s so far; there is at least a 70% chance that El Niño will be declared in the coming months, according to the BOM. Looks like a hot, dry summer.

6. Germany’s largest utility gets out of the fossil fuel business

On Sunday, Germany’s biggest utility E.ON announced plans to split into two companies and focus on renewables in a major shift that could be an indicator of broader changes to come across the utility sector. E.ON will spin off its nuclear, oil, coal, and gas operations in an effort to confront a drastically altered energy market, especially under the pressure of Germany’s Energiewende — the country’s move away from nuclear to renewables. The company told shareholders that it will place “a particular emphasis on expanding its wind business in Europe and in other selected target markets,” and that it will also “strengthen its solar business.”

E.ON will also focus on smart grids and distributed generation in an effort to improve energy efficiency and increase customer engagement and opportunity.

“With its decision, E.ON is the first company to take the necessary steps from the completely changed world of energy supply,” German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel, said Monday.

7. The inconvenient truth of EU emissions

The Commission and European Environment Agency’s Progress Report on climate action says:

according to latest estimates, EU greenhouse gas emissions in 2013 fell by 1.8% compared to 2012 and reached the lowest levels since 1990. So not only is the EU well on track to reach the 2020 target, it is also well on track to overachieve it.

Kevin Anderson is not impressed:

The consumption-based emissions (i.e. where emissions associated with imports and exports are considered) of the EU 28 were 2% higher in 2008 than in 1990[1]. By 2013 emissions had marginally reduced to 4% lower than 1990 – but not as a consequence of judicious climate change strategies, but rather the financial fallout of the bankers’ reckless greed – egged on by complicit governments and pliant regulation.

Then he really gets stuck in:

In the quarter of a century since the first IPCC report we have achieved nothing of any significant merit relative to the scale of the climate challenge. All we have to show for our ongoing oratory is a burgeoning industry of bureaucrats, well meaning NGOs, academics and naysayers who collectively have overseen a 60+% rise in global emissions.

Climate Action, Climate Policy & Planning, Climate Science

The folly of two degrees

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Back in 2011 David Spratt took a look at where we were in relation to temperature rise and the Holocene. At 2000 we were at 0.7°C above the pre-industrial temperature. This happens to coincide with the Holocene maximum:

Holocene_thin-blue-line 600

Spratt says James Hansen warns that at 0.7°C the ice sheets start to become unstable, so in terms of sea level rise alone we are entering a danger zone. Since then the temperature has risen ~ 0.15°C.

From this point of view the 2°C guardrail looks hazardous in the extreme. Continue reading The folly of two degrees →

Politics & Government

A ragged week in politics

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Tony Abbott is going to disappear from our screens for five weeks. That’s probably paywalled; here’s the important bit:

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My prediction is that Abbott will improve his position in the polls if he goes away for a while!

I’ll come back to Abbott, first the Victorian election.

Labor won by a small but comfortable margin. The best comment I’ve seen is from Dr Kevin Bonham (see the section Predictable Result). Bonham says that many factors were at work, so it is silly to place too much emphasis on first term governments usually being re-elected, for example. He points out that in fact first-term state governments lose often enough (22% in the past 60 years nationwide prior to this election).

Another myth is that voters distinguish between state and federal elections. He says his research indicates that voters tend to like a government of a different hue at each level, so that the state government will stick up for them. It also matters if the federal government is unpopular.

Being of the same party as the party in power in Canberra is a massive weight around the neck of any incumbent state government, especially if that federal government is unpopular. The article showed that a very simple linear model using just the age of a state government and whether the same party is in power federally predicted, without any polling input at all, that the government would lose about six seats (it has obliged).

So the result was very much as expected on those grounds alone.

Since that the federal government is unpopular as well, it can be argued that the Liberals did well to be merely beaten and not thrashed. Their first-term status contributed to that, as perhaps did risky ALP policy tactics, and as in my view did the strong Victorian economy and the better-than-expected leadership of Denis Napthine. But on the other side we find high unemployment and severe internal party turbulence. The Victorian Liberals need to review their candidate screening practices after the enormously damaging Shaw debacle and two embarrassing disendorsements during the current campaign.

Bonham says there were other factors, but federal-state drag was probably the biggest one.

There has been some commentary that Labor turned union links into a positive in the campaign. Given Bomham’s analysis I’m agnostic on that one. At least it was not electoral poison.

Laura Tingle thinks

the bottom line is that the state election turned the psychology of federal politics on its head, as well as force all politicians to reflect on the “givens” of the political discourse.

Until the last couple of weeks, the ALP had settled in for six years in the wilderness of federal opposition.

Tony Abbott and his colleagues came to office presuming they would have a minimum of two terms to implement any tough reforms before enjoying a more loving relationship with the electorate, simply because no federal government in living memory has got less than two terms in office.

Victorians’ decision to turf out the Coalition after just one term has changed all that.

Bill Shorten is now a man in a hurry. Tony Abbott is a man who may run out of time.

She thinks Abbott shows no signs of understanding the way the land lies. Everyone knows he should recast his budget. Half the measures will not see the light of day, but he is determined to plough on. It’s also obvious that he should recast his cabinet. That should be fun!

Also:

The Victorian result suggests you don’t need any great vision, or leader’s charisma, to win an election.

You just need a jaded electorate where browned-off voters can’t think of a persuasive enough reason to give an uninspiring government another chance.

The Victorian result suggests that promoting your disciplined fiscal policy isn’t necessarily a winner; that big roads projects don’t seal the deal; and neither does union bashing.

People want to have services – and a government – that works.

We go into the last week of Parliament with no cunning plan in sight for delivering the clean finish to the year the Prime Minister keeps promising his troops.

In fact Abbott has been spruiking his government’s achievements and is exhorting his troops to keep reminding us how good they are over Christmas.

He’d be better advised to let us be!

Two opinion polls have the LNP improving slightly, but still in a land-slide losing position. Newspoll has Labor 54-46, closing from 55-45. At Morgan the story is exactly the same, but half a point better for the LNP. That is, it is now 53.5-46.5 to Labor.

Meanwhile Campbell Newman in Queensland is unlikely to invite Abbott to help him campaign in the upcoming election. His strategy of being boring and keeping his head down seemed to work for a while, but ReachTEL now has Labor in front 51-49.

Climate Policy & Planning

The folly of Galilee basin coal

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In Climate clippings 115 I cited an article from The Conversation which suggested that Australia’s coal and gas exports are being left stranded.

Just four countries account for 80% of Australia’s fossil fuel exports – China, Japan, Korea and India.

China is on the verge of “peak coal”, rebalancing the economy away from energy intensive industry and introducing a national emissions trading scheme.

Japan is on an energy efficiency drive to reduce its fuel import bill.

Korea has introduced a tax on coal of AU$18 per tonne and is finalising an emissions trading scheme.

India has doubled its tax on coal which funds renewable energy projects and has signalled its intention to stop importing coal within 2-3 years.

Yet the Queensland Government has signed off on a $16 billion development of a huge Galilee Basin mine and is prepared to chip in with a few hundred million to enable the infrastructure to be built.

Premier Campbell Newman said that “the State Government would work with resource companies to make strategic investments that could create up to 28,000 new Queensland jobs.”

At the same time the Queensland Government has introduced water reform legislation which seems squarely targeted at providing unlimited water to the Galilee Basin mining operation. This is being done in a reckless manner at the possible expense of graziers and towns in the area. Indeed careless disregard is being shown for the integrity of the Great Artesian Basin itself.

Tristan Edis at Climate Spectator has taken a look at the folly of official of the official Bureau of Resource and Energy Economics forecasts on fossil fuel energy production. Edis looks at the Australian Energy White Paper, a paper from BZE (Beyond Zero Emissions) entitled A fossil economy in a changing world and the IEA World Energy Outlook 2014. I recommend reading Edis’s article in full but two graphs tell much of the story. First the Australian Energy White Paper fossil energy production projection:

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That is the glorious future envisioned by our Tea Party governments in Canberra and Brisbane. Here they are being mugged by reality. The dotted line represents the improved cost of coal production. The continuous line represents the price trajectory:

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I would just point out that the author of the BZE report and the article from The Conversation linked at the top of the post is Stephen Bygrave, who is CEO of Beyond Zero Emissions and Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Science at UNSW Australia.

Finally John Quiggin at The Conversation takes a look at the economic case for fossil fuel divestment. As he says at his blog, the bottom line is:

Leaving aside the ethics of divestment and pursuing a purely rational economic analysis, the cold hard numbers of putting money into fossil fuels don’t look good.

Unless universities are willing to bet on the destruction of the planet they have committed themselves to understanding and preserving, divestment from fossil fuels is the only choice they can make. Forward-thinking investors of all kinds would be wise to follow suit.

In blunt terms we are dealing with stranded assets here. Beyond that Abbott, Newman and their acolytes should be arrested for treason. Or something!

I’m wondering too whether Clive Palmer’s Galilee Basin holdings will prick his financial bubble.

Climate Action, Climate Policy & Planning, Climate Science

Turn down the heat : confronting the new climate normal

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Turn down the heat : confronting the new climate normal is a massive 320 page report prepared for the World Bank by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics, and hence highly authoritative. Continue reading Turn down the heat : confronting the new climate normal →