If you were looking to the 2009-10 Budget for measures that would restore the climate credibility of the Rudd Government you’ll be disappointed. What is on offer is underwhelming and predictably tilted toward polluting interests.
The “wow” factor — to borrow a phase from The Hollowmen — is provided by the $4.5 billion Clean Energy Initiative, which includes $3.5 billion of new money. Naturally, this funding is spread out over the term of his natural life, lowering the ‘wow’ and raising doubts about whether it will materialise (remember the Howard Government’s underspend on the Safeguarding the Future and Measures for a Better Environment packages?).
The bulk of the new money under the initiative is directed toward two big programs: an additional $2 billion for large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects and $1.4 billion for a solar flagships program. The Government is also establishing Renewables Australia to promote RD&D in the sector, with $100 million in new money to support its efforts.
The downside of the initiative — and the Rudd Government’s climate policy more generally — is the weighting given to coal interests. The group of technologies that fall under the ‘clean coal’ banner might one day play a significant role in helping to cut greenhouse gas emissions and there is no justification for discriminating against them when distributing government assistance. However, the Government’s climate policy is hopelessly skewed toward coal.
The $2 billion for CCS in this budget comes on the back of a 2008-09 budget that contained a generous package of clean coal assistance. Before that we had a decade of coal-friendly budgets under the Howard Government. It is about time some balance was injected into the Federal Government’s energy research assistance measures.
Outside of the Clean Energy Initiative, it is slim pickings on climate change. There is $164 million in new money for energy efficiency, the bulk of which goes to the National Energy Efficiency Initiative — a $100 million program “to develop an innovative smart-grid energy network.” There are also relatively small amounts of money for CPRS policy development and improvements in carbon accounting. And the Department of Climate Change’s offices are getting renovated at a cost of $13.4 million!
If you wade through the budget papers, the remainder of the measures are mostly old programs either rebadged or simply re-spun. The Australian Carbon Trust, which was announced with the recent changes to the CPRS, gets a mention, as do a raft of other measures outlined in previous budgets or the White Paper.
All in all, this budget contains little to get excited about on the climate front. When placed against the amounts pledged for road, rail, port and telecommunications infrastructure, the climate programs are trivial.
So much for climate change being the “great moral challenge of our generation”, as the Prime Minister described it. The path charted by the Government consists of a weak, inefficient and inequitable emissions trading scheme, an investment strategy that is skewed toward polluters and an approach to international negotiation where Australia stays tucked in at the tail-end of the peloton. The Government needs to do a lot more if it wants to live up to the climate change hype it generated before the 2007 federal election.
Hi Andrew,
I mostly agree with your POV here, but strongly disagree with this statement:
“there is no justification for discriminating against them[CCS] when distributing government assistance.”
The justification for discriminating against them is there, in black and white, in the budget document. $2B for 1GW of Clean Coal vs $1.4B for 1GW of Solar. That makes CCS technology almost 50% more expensive. Add to this that CCS will be mercy to the fluctuations of the coal price, and renewables seem a much more sensible option. This also leaves aside the technical challenges/failures surrounding CCS and it’s lack of transplant-ability, which are better addressed in Guy Pearce’s upsetting Quarterly Essay.
I pray to my atheist god that one day we will see some honesty in politics. The key here is money, plain and simple. They are seeking ways to maintain the status quo on coal exports, while still appearing to be serious about climate change. The CC horse will have well and truly bolted by the time CCS is making any measurable difference, so why not be honest about it?
It should be quite obvious that the government position on climate control and carbon dioxide emissions is so much hot air(pardon the pun). Anything which impact on the constituency in terms of reduced consumption, or impact on the unions which support the government will be white anted. The ETS has already been shown to be ineffective which is probably the government’s intention.
The reality is that to reduce carbon based energy consumption standards of living must fall to cover the cost of more expensive energy alternatives. The poor as well as the rich must consume less. Of course this is quite unpopular and therefore the truth cannot be told. Therefore we use doublespeak and obfuscation to cover our tracks.
The current recession is a perfect opportunity to condition consumers as a whole to lower standards of living which would support lower carbon dioxide output in the future. However this would be politically unpopular. Do not expect honesty from politicians