One of the stark realities to emerge from the federal election result is that the broad majority of Australians are still not convinced of the importance of effective action on climate change.
A decade of drought and emissions trading, renewables schemes and rising power prices has left them aware, but not engaged. When faced with a suite of less existential issues on the weekend, climate change was not decisive. When pushed, most Australians would probably like governments to just make the problem go away.
Perhaps part of the reason they’re not convinced is because too much of the campaigning around climate change isn’t directed at them. Some of it, like the campaign over the future of the proposed Adani coal mine in central Queensland, may even feel like it’s directed against them.
Blue-collar workers jeering a convoy of protesting greenies makes great television, and plays well to the activist base in Brunswick and Newtown and, apparently, just as well to Queenslanders who don’t like being dictated to by blow-ins from the south.
The show around Adani is just smoke and mirrors; the future of the mine is largely irrelevant to the real debate on energy policy and climate change in Australia.
Adani has been a campaign of convenience by the Greens, to try and wedge Labor, which is bound by the responsibilities of government. Labor governments are obliged to consider it as a mining project on its merits, just like any other resources project. Adani is hardly the first or only coal mine in Australia.
Global greenhouse gas emissions will be largely unchanged whether Adani proceeds or doesn’t. The world consumes around 5.5 trillion tonnes of coal each year to burn in power stations and make electricity. Coal use is declining in developed economies and growing in developing. The Work Bank has been funding coal-fired power stations in a number of developing countries for a while now. It’s likely the last users of coal will be the world’s poorer nations.
The proposed Adani mine, if it proceeds, would produce around 27 million tonnes a year at capacity. Not even half of 1% of global demand.
Demand for coal is determined not by the number of mines, but by the demands of power stations. Owners of these power stations source coal domestically and globally. They will continue to burn coal at exactly the same rate regardless of whether the Adani mine proceeds or not.
You don’t reduce emissions by banning a coal mine, you reduce them by providing a credible and affordable way of making electricity that can replace coal.
The real headline story on climate should be Australia’s accidental experiment in high renewables integration in a large and isolated electricity system. Through a combination of political and policy chaos over the past decade, Australia finds itself a world leader in trying to make renewables work at scale.
South Australia has become a global test case in high renewables integration, with around 50% of generation sourced from wind and solar. It wasn’t planned that way; it just happened. And every day, some hairier than other, it continues to work.
But wait, there’s more. Perth is on course to be the first large-scale grid on Earth powered entirely by distributed renewable energy when growing rooftop solar meets minimum demand on a mild spring afternoon some time around 2025.
Engineers are still working out exactly what supporting technologies will be needed to ensure that grid can continue to operate reliability. This experiment is also unplanned, the product of runaway household solar photovoltaic sales in a completely isolated grid, another uniquely Australian phenomenon.
Solar and wind farms are piling into the grid to fill the last orders of the Renewable Energy Target (RET), which closes next year. But this new capacity is intermittent and still needs back up from firm generators when there is low or no wind and sun.
Battery and chemical storage is emerging but still relatively expensive and tiny in the scale of the grid. It’s highly effective at stabilising the volatility that occurs in high renewables systems. But it’s a long, long way from being able to power entire states for days when it’s dark and still.
Currently this is mainly coming from the remaining coal generators working overtime, which is self-evidently not a sustainable solution, especially as they will continue to age and then close.
Grid managers, governments and energy companies are scrambling to get enough new gas fired capacity and transmission built in time for when the next large coal-fired generator, Liddell in the New South Wales Hunter Valley, closes in 2022. There’s also the Torrens Island A gas generator in South Australia, which is expected to close around the same time.
If this seems like a white-knuckle ride, that’s because it is. Chronic political uncertainty and populism have made a challenging job all the more difficult. Chaos is expensive. Rising electricity prices are the electricity system equivalent of a bank of red flashing warning lights. Reform is urgently needed.
In terms of addressing and solving the technical challenges of a rapidly decarbonising electricity grids there are few, if any, in the world as important as Australia right now. If we get this right we can help lead this transformation in other economies. Yet no political party has engaged with, or tried to sell, this reality. We have just been served a choice between extreme targets or extreme inactivity.
Stark divisions within the Coalition on climate reflect the political lethargy of the issue outside of the inner suburbs of major cities. Sustained messaging of emergencies and radical transformation do not appear to have engaged ordinary Australians. High-profile activist campaigns based around closing down projects in regional Australia only entrench already sharp cultural and political divisions.
The death of Bob Hawke reminded us of a time when this divide was smaller and of a political leader who could authentically bring both sides together. Delivering the wish of most Australians — to move climate and energy back out of the spotlight — will require a political conversation based around how we end the destructive politicisation of energy policy, not exacerbate it.
Matthew Warren is the author of Blackout — how is energy-rich Australia running out of electricity? published by Affirm Press.
The point a lot of people are missing is that India-the sole customer for the Charmichael Mine’s coal-have said more than once that they’ll be ceasing coal imports by the end of 2020. With China also reducing Coal imports significantly, one wonders who Adani plans to sell this coal to.
Thank you, Matthew – hard to find a balanced account of matters coal and energy nowadays
In retrospect, going all out against Adani was counterproductive. Adani mine in Queensland. Biggest swing to LNP in Queensland. Coincidence? I think not
Yes, Australians are not yet ready to mobilise the economy for action on climate change – and the tools for change are not yet ready for action. However, there are already resources that can be directed at unsolved problems in how to do it.
Funding for the universities and research institutions already exists and can be increasingly directed to relevant projects. Carbon capture-and-synthesis of fuels needs research. Heat pumps for space heating require development. District heating needs to be planned. Charging for electric vehicles needs an expanding network. A threefold expansion in electricity generation and distribution has to be planned. Operators for the various new industries need to be trained and retrenched workers retrained.
We can be getting ready for when the starter’s gun goes off.
Bob Brown’s convoy, probably the worst thing to do before the election.
After the local people who are under educated, unemployed and desperately holding on to the crock of dingo’s poo promises from Adani of Jobs, 10,000 Jobs oh, we are in the land and environment court, well that would be 1,200 Jobs and the new proposal will bring about 46 Jobs.
The last thing to swing a vote towards either the Greens or Labor, were the “well off do gooders from down south coming up here and telling us what to do”.
And those were the seats that the Labor party had to win.
A little bit of blunt honesty is needed here and now.
The mayor of Rockhampton and Michelle Landry and a few others rocking the boat and stirring things up, and yes there are other politicians doing the same.
The main reason why Adani has not got the go ahead is because this is a company, or to be more accurately, a series of companies ultimately owned by a holding company in the Caymans and then back to Singapore, Which will never pay tax to the Federal government.
Then there probably have accounting errors in the tonnage reported and as such pay little or no royalties to the Queensland government.
When Tony Abbott created his slush fund called the NAIF, through a series of winks and nods he led the Adani’s to believe that, WE, would pay for their rail line, plus other help of the order of $10,000,000,000.
The facial tics from Tony were truly impressive, at the time.
Now we have had an unexpected election loss in the order of 2/3/4 seats, that’s all and the Premier of Queensland, is planning on finalizing the mining application, prior to the environment department’s report.
OK, we all know north and central Queenslanders are doing it tough and need jobs.
In a demonstrated show of confidence in this company, that owns no assets other than, the Abbott Point coal wharf, I think all the politicians both federal and state, need to put their homes and pensions up as a guarantee that Adani will play be the rules and clean up its own mess.
If all of you want guarantee a company that has a track record of creating disaster zones where ever they have operated, in India and in Africa, please feel free to do so, but not with my children and grandchildren’s future.
As for their reputation regarding how they operate, there will be some truly tragic industrial accidents.
What is also apparent is that the privatisation of electricity generation, which began 25 years ago, can now be seen as a long term policy failure. The old State Electricity Commissions (where SEC ällegedly stood for “slow,easy, comfortable) would have all had long term planning units working on how to ensure continuity of supply. Maybe, about the time they were sold off, they had started looking a this thing called the greenhouse effect, and how they were going to respond to a changing energy market, and changing will of the public.
Market forces have proved inadequate at providing energy certainty. Unfortunately, the politicians who drove this agenda are long gone (I’m looking at you Jeff Kennett and John Olsen) and no longer accountable. It seems that only “Labor’s Debt” gets to survive beyond one election cycle.
That’s why now is the perfect time for government to invest in state owned renewable generation policies and take the power back from the private sector.
By not doing that they continue to support privatisation.
btw It was John Howard who set up the national electricity market based on market principles in 1998 and encouraged states to privatise electricity.
I like it. Nationalisation of energy generation by popular stealth.
If local government had the authority to establish local sharing grids, citizens could recover improved aegis over a critical resource. And citizens are already in control of a lot of generation ‘assets’.
Can’t see Scummo imaging this, even in his most inspired moments.
I think we will always need a national grid and that being the case the most efficient use of resources is to centralise power generation and take advantage of economies of scale.
I live on the side of a big hill with lots of trees around. I would love to setup solar ( I do have 700 watts solar / batteries at the top of the hill several hundred metres away to power a FR24 receiver and fun stuff) but there just isn’t enough direct sunlight to make it viable and that is the case for many houses in this area.
So we will always need the grid, apartment blocks will always need the grid, cities and towns will always need the grid, industry needs the grid.
So given that we do need the grid we are better to generate power on a big scale and make the most efficient use of the grid. Big solar, big wind and hydrogen storage. Hydrogen can be used to store excess energy generation on a large scale and release it again via fuel cells or turbine. Hydrogen can also be used to power fuel cell electric vehicles and will be a massive export product in the future.
Petrol heads can even power their ICE V8s on hydrogen. So they can keep their V8 utes after making the conversion (it’s not nearly as efficient as a fuel cell though).
John Howard also encouraged the sale of technology developed at UNSW TO CHINA .Apparantly Australia had no use for this as we had plenty of coal.both solar and wind were enthusiastically developed.Historically hydro electricity was pioneered at Lurline Bay in Sydney many years ago
Has anyone secured fo rthe future the giant hole the adani mine will create.Puts me in mind of one past idea for creating dams -the one that involved an atomic explosion.This one would guarantee no water for NSW.