The rationale for the Climate Change Authority’s July recommendations for Australia’s future emissions reductions targets was clear: they were based on the hard science that the world needs to avoid a rise in global temperatures of more than two degrees, and that much of the industrialised world has now committed to strong emissions reduction targets.
On that basis, it recommended Australia aim for a 30% reduction on 2000 emissions levels by 2025, and a 40% to 60% reduction by 2030.
The Abbott government’s proposed target — a minimum of 26% reduction by 2030 and a maximum of 28% — is so woefully inadequate as to be little more than a joke. It is well short of the commitments made by other industrialised nations such as the United States (one of the few Western economies nearly as emissions-intensive as Australia’s) and will perpetuate Australia’s role as the spoiler of international climate negotiations.
In any event, the government’s targets are meaningless: its so-called “Direct Action” policy won’t achieve the current bipartisan 5% cut in emissions by 2020 (achieving that will instead rely heavily on dodgy international accounting of Australia’s emissions). Achieving even the inadequate goal of a 26% cut by 2030 will require a massive expansion of Direct Action to a point where it will cost tens of billions of dollars, all paid from taxpayers to polluters to undertake efficiency and abatement programs.
Instead, the government will continue the charade of pretending it takes climate change and the challenge of decarbonising the Australian economy seriously, while it attacks renewable energy and backs the increasingly unviable coal industry that so generously donates to the Coalition.
If it’s a joke, it’s one at the expense of our kids and grandkids. They are the ones who will shoulder the burden of climate change, which we dumped on them out of laziness, ideology and sheer partisan bloody-mindedness.
The CCA advice does not leave room to install lots of wind-plus-gas. The target is zero carbon emissions, and those two dates are only waypoints, measuring the momentum of decarbonisation at each date.
Saying that the Libs’ promise is inadequate falls short of pointing out that the ALP’s promise to increase wind to 50% implies that open cycle gas must increase to the other 50% to balance it.
We must throw off our fears about nuclear electricity. Only nuclear can give us carbon-free baseload and let us meet those waypoints.
Roger,
The ALP’s ambition of 50% by 2030 is renewables, not just wind. Renewables are easily incremental over the next 15 years. Just build another wind farm or add solar panels somewhere.
Nuclear, however, isn’t easily added to the energy mix. Just to construct one nuclear power plant somewhere would takes years in planning and consultation with the local population (if you think that there’s irrational fear of wind farms, just wait to see what nuclear will do), even before construction begins, which again takes years.
And in the meantime there’s added CO2 emissions or CO2 emissions not abated during the planning and construction phases which will have to be cancelled out somehow when the nuclear power plant eventually comes on line.
Don’t the conservatives have children? I didn’t realise that it was only the left that procreated.
The nuclear option just isn’t really an option. If we started now and got everything through the regulatory hoops and built it in record time, it would still be lucky to be operational by 2030. Plus the simple arguments that Wayne Robinson puts that mean that it would inevitably meet strong headwinds. 2040 looks like an ambitious timetable to open our first nuclear reactor.
The basic problem with nuclear, apart from the fact that the carbon output it saves will possibly never repay the carbon emitted in creating it, is the simple question:
Where are you going to put it?
Okay, so across the next 15 years, you plan to have built wind farms (or solar), adding the same capacity of open cycle gas each time up to 50% each. Then, what do you plan to do across the next 15 years? By the CCA rules, you would have to dismantle half those gas turbines. And since they are no longer balanced, you must rip up half those windmills too. Something has to replace both of those in the plan.
Sensible planning requires nuclear to be “part of the mix”. Since nuclear is indefinitely sustainable, it might as well be included in the ALP’s “renewable energy”.
With a 19th century ‘Sleeping Beauty’woken up in the 21st running the Australian government you can hardly expect any better. Seeing that this government – the most incompetent since Federation – is on its last legs, we would do better to give more thought to the dire emergencies we must face in the 21st century.