The government is attracting lots of good headlines for its Victorian “rewiring the nation” announcement today — a $750 million loan for an interconnector between NSW and Victoria, and an end to the stalemate over who will fund the Marinus Link across Bass Strait, $1.5 billion for renewable energy funding, including offshore wind.
On the vexing issue of the approval processes that dog electricity infrastructure projects, there’s only a promise of “coordination” between state and federal governments.
The funding is significant and welcome, and a sharp contrast with the previous government, in which a lazy energy minister only got out of bed to devise ways to keep coal-fired power stations going.
But in other core areas of energy policy, Australia continues to look a lot like it’s still in the Morrison years.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen early on tapped former chief scientist Ian Chubb to lead a review of the integrity of Australian carbon credit units. That review will report by December. Meanwhile, Bowen has cracked on with reforming the safeguard mechanism, which will form the heart of Labor’s domestic emissions reduction policy.
Australian carbon credit units are fundamental to that policy: polluters emitting CO2-equivalent levels above a descending baseline must either reduce those emissions or purchase them (the government has ruled out the purchase of international credits).
But the whole system is worthless if they aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, and it’s become clearer over the past year that that is exactly the case.
The Morrison government debauched and devalued ACCUs and nobbled the so-called Clean Energy Regulator, a now wholly discredited body charged with running the ACCU market as well as operating the Coalition’s disastrous emissions reduction fund.
The Australia Institute, in its submission to the Chubb review, has bundled up several of its recent reports on ACCUs, the CER and other aspects of the Morrison era of climate denialism. In aggregate, the conclusions are stunning — the entire system of ACCUs and the operation of the ERF has been — to put it charitably — greenwashing of the highest order.
A particular case surrounds the always important issue of “additionality” of Australian carbon credit units — do they represent CO2 emissions that have actually been abated? The CER can provide no assurance of that — especially the 20% of ACCUs reliant on avoided deforestation.
Those credits work like this: if a landholder has a permit to bulldoze forest and doesn’t do so, they can get an ACCU. Except, how can you guarantee they wouldn’t have left that land uncleared anyway? (Never mind more complicated issues like how a drought or a flood or a bushfire might simply obliterate the trees anyway, liberating the carbon “stored” back into the atmosphere.) As the Australia Institute pointed out earlier this year, in allocating permits for avoided deforestation, the CER made some truly ridiculous assumptions — like that rates of land-clearing would in the absence of ACCUs surge between 750 and 12,000%.
The CER, already discredited by the revelations of Andrew Macintosh about the lack of integrity of ACCUs, hit back at the Australia Institute, claiming it misunderstood how ACCUs from avoided deforestation worked. Except, astonishingly, it was the CER that didn’t understand its own scheme — it claimed that the ACCUs were designed to cover a “permanence” period of up to 100 years, when its scheme design makes clear the ACCUs reflect the avoided deforestation over 15 years.
That’s before we get to the inclusion of another discredited carbon abatement method, carbon capture and storage, in the ERF by the Morrison government at the request of former fossil-fuel industry executive Grant King. As the Australia Institute points out, the entire design for the inclusion of CCS in the ERF was carried out by fossil-fuel companies in secret.
The extent to which the Chubb review is tackling these issues is unclear. The government continues to spruik CCS as a credible method despite all evidence against it; the CER continues to function, despite all the evidence against it. The Chubb review team also includes two business figures who make money from carbon credit trading markets, and the secretariat includes staff from the CER and designers of the avoided deforestation method.
The Chubb review might come good, find that large numbers of ACCUs are worthless, recommend far more stringent requirements for additional verification, and the replacement of the CER with a credible body. But anything less would leave a hopelessly discredited system in place — one in which business, government and politicians have a strong vested interest as method of greenwashing. There will be a lot of opposition to any serious fix of a badly broken ACCU system.
All of these relate to what are called “Scope 1”, or direct emissions. Much of Australia’s contribution to global emissions comes via our fossil-fuel exports. The government’s policies on enabling gas exports, and allowing fossil-fuel companies to pretend to offset them with CCS, is indistinguishable from the previous government. So too is its direct subsidisation of gas exports — including the $1.5 billion free infrastructure it is intending to build in Darwin — without any business case — for gas exports, and the inland rail (albeit under review) project which is designed for coal exports..
The continuing theme of this government on climate is miles better than its predecessor, but still far too invested in fossil fuels. Literally.
Thank you for this article.
“if a landholder has a permit to bulldoze forest and doesn’t do so, they can get an ACCU. Except, how can you guarantee they wouldn’t have left that land uncleared anyway? (Never mind more complicated issues like how a drought or a flood or a bushfire might simply obliterate the trees anyway, liberating the carbon “stored” back into the atmosphere.) ”
As an old outback kid and regional worker who has seen a lot of country over a long period of time, I also have this concern.
It is incredibly painful to travel through periodically semi arid country that has been cleared from horizon to horizon. It’s a step to desertification and species extinction.
The present day machines to clear country are so effective that great damage can be done very quickly.
The sort of people that will do this sort of thing, seem to be very hard to trust with regeneration of land.
It’s hard to comprehend how we can justify and allow any further permanent land clearing under any circumstances. (Careful management of semi renewable species like Mulga for drought fodder may have specific rules – but this has nothing to do with carbon credits).
Personally I think owners who wilfully break these rules (they know the score) should lose their land and it should be rewilded.
Thank you for your article.
It’s a wonder that those monstrous “present day machines to clear country” (such ‘agricultural’ megamachinery being one of the largest single items in our decades long, and rising, trade deficit with the USA) have not led to an Antipodean Ed Abbey monkey wrench gang – sugar is very cheap and very effective.
When one looks at effect, especially on the inland country cleared by axe ringbarking and generations blood, sweat & toil the waste of human life, biodiversity and soil fertility is heartbreaking.
Now it floods because there are so few trees, or even grass, on the overgrazed earth, packed down hard by a century of hard hoofed stock, to absorb the current pluvial conditions.
Indeed, it is very very hard to see the land you speak of nearby other land that has not (for whatever reason) had the same degree of use/abuse. Most people simply don’t have the opportunity (away from public roads) to quietly see, compare, absorb and comprehend. Much of the inland is already fragile and marginal, extended periods of drought and 50 degree days could really turn some of it into some kind of desert. The unnatural intensity of rain when it returns then tends to generate fierce floods.
As (presumably) a city based journalist, I admire Bernard for being able to identify some of this.
Been disappointed in Albo’s lot. Like LNP lite. No principled stand or demonstration of same against coal and gas. Just heard of approval for some private squillion dollar gas project.
No they are very different, as Labor does not have the privilege of being platformed by our right wing pro fossil fuel and ‘libertarian’ media 24/7/365 but is constantly denigrated while precluding neutral presentation of policy initiatives; while the anodyne ABC gives passive support and promotion of right wing media themes.
Any carbon tax would be inflicted on every ordinary Australian, Tony Abbott then Peter Dutton warned. It is nonsense of course, taxing carbon instead of people benefits everybody except the biggest emitters. However government could speak to the tax sensitivity of the public by rebating all carbon taxes to all taxpayers. The carbon tax rebates in Canada have proved very popular, so their carbon tax will stay.
Get on with it
Tony Tax talk show ended and ain’t for restarting
Malcolm tried a pivot
Scotty crafted a campaign of crap that the nats taxed all of us on with billions for bunk
The LNP don’t have a pathway to run back to. The teals tore it up
Get it done
Back in the 1970s areas such as western Sydney had air badly polluted from industry. Governments of the day stepped up courageously and forced companies to cut pollution by filtering chimneys and also reducing water pollution. Car exhausts were filtered and new forms of petrol were required. Predictably every step raised a chorus of heckles from polluters.
It was the same with car seat belts. Today we all benefit from clear air and children don’t routinely fly through windscreens at accidents.
The whole idea of carbon credits is a fraud no better than letting belching trucks buy credits from cyclists. The urgent need is to lower carbon emissions not offset them with accounting chicanery.
Carbon offsets and CCS are both patently scams designed by fossil fuel companies to pull the wool over everyones eyes. And our pollies are happy to go along with it as long as they “get looked after”. I am reminded of a carbon capture scheme at Henbury Station in the NT in 2010. The idea was that the station would destock and let the grass and trees grow. Thats a lot of carbon taken out of the atmosphere, right? The idea was that companies would then pay to get these credits to offset emissions. 2010 was a wet year and grass grew like Topsy. The problem was that 2011 was a dry year and, once the grass dried out, the whole lot went up in smoke. Bushfires everywhere. Not much carbon left on the ground after that. You gotta laugh.