Thursday 28th of March 2024

australia's signs the paris climate agreement while digging more coal than ever...

carbon pricingcarbon pricing

A carbon price for power companies is set to be considered as part of a climate change review, but the Government has ruled out a return to Labor's carbon tax.

The Department of the Environment and Energy will undertake an internal review next year to examine the best ways to meet Australia's climate commitments.

Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg said the review would consider an emissions intensity scheme for electricity generators, but said the Government would take a sector-by-sector approach.

"We reject an economy-wide approach," he told the ABC.

"What this review has indicated is we will look at a sector-by-sector approach. The electricity sector is the one which produces the most emissions — around a third of Australia's emissions come from that sector.

"We know that there's been a large number of bodies that have recommended an emissions intensity scheme."

Mr Frydenberg said there had been recommendations for a "baseline and credit scheme", which could be similar to an emissions trading scheme where emissions are capped by the Government.

Mr Frydenberg said a discussion paper would be released in early 2017.

In 2014, the Abbott government passed legislation to repeal the carbon tax put in place by Labor.

It followed a lengthy campaign on the tax, which Tony Abbott described as a "historic betrayal" when it was unveiled by then prime minister Julia Gillard in 2011.

The carbon tax began on July 1 the following year and raised $3.8 billion in its first six months, according to a budget update in February 2013.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten today labelled Direct Action a "flop" and called for further investment in renewable energy.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-05/government-to-consider-carbon-pric...

 

MEANWHILE:

A rail line that will link Adani's $21 billion Carmichael coal mine to the Abbot Point port is one step closer, after passing its first assessment hurdle for a Federal Government loan.

The Government's Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) has been asked to consider lending money for the line, running for 310 kilometres from the northern Galilee basin in Queensland to the port.

The ABC understands the board has now completed its preliminary assessment and referred the project for more detailed scrutiny.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-03/adani-carmichael-rail-line-closer-...

santa should be worried...

It's been a tough couple of weeks for Santa and his helpers. Temperatures around the North Pole reached a shocking 20°C hotter than usual and Arctic sea ice extent is also at a record 28% lower than normal.

 

Read more

 

https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/watch-out-santa-the-north-pole-is-20c-...

blowing the CO2 emission budget...

Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are rising despite global reduction efforts, according to detailed projections made by the consultants NDEVR Environmental.

Australia’s emissions jumped by 2.56m tonnes in the three months to September, putting them 1.55m tonnes off-track compared with commitments made in Paris, and 4.06m tonnes over levels demanded by scientifically based targets set by the government’s Climate Change Authority. Emissions for the year to September are above those for the year to September 2015.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/05/australia-is-blowing...

 

Meanwhile Tony Abbott is dismayed that his pissy effort to counter-balance his stupidity will be dismantled in the next budget...

 

waving the gutless white flag...

What an extraordinary capitulation.

Just 24 hours of controversy from entirely predictable quarters and a carefully calibrated process to try to engineer a truce in Australia’s utterly wretched climate politics has been all but abandoned by its architects.

Josh Frydenberg has gone in the space of 24 hours from saying quite clearly the government would consider an emissions intensity trading scheme for the electricity sector to trying to pretend he said no such thing.

The retreat is, frankly, unseemly.

Actually, the retreat is more than unseemly, it’s pathetic – and the consequences of it stretch far beyond yet another apparent failure to do what needs to be done to ensure our economy makes an orderly transition to the carbon-constrained world that the Turnbull government willingly accepted when it signed Australia up to the Paris international climate agreement this time 12 months ago.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/dec/07/what-an-extraordi...

cooking the books in the kitchen...

Australia’s emissions are rising and projected to keep doing so to 2030, meaning the country will fail to meet its 2030 emissions targets, according to government figures.

The official quarterly figures, showing growth in year-on-year emisssions, confirms independent projections from NDEVR Environmental, released earlier this month by Guardian Australia, which predicted Australia’s emissions would be rising.

But the government figures also confirm that emissions are predicted to rise to 2030. Emissions that year are predicted to be 10% higher than the year to June 2016.

By 2030, the report estimates Australia will have emitted 1bn tonnes more than it is allowed to, according to its 2030 commitments.

The figures were released today, just days before Christmas, despite the results being finalised in September, according documents released last night to the Australian Conservation Foundation, under freedom of information laws.

The report from the Department of Environment and Energy clearly indicates that current policies will not allow Australia to meet its 2030 emissions targets.

“These results reflect the fact that the government’s policies are primarily geared towards the 2020 target at this stage,” the report said. Australia’s 2020 targets allow its total emissions to rise.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/22/australias-greenhous...

 

meanwhile in the coal front...:

The business behind the planned Carmichael coal mine in North Queensland is facing multiple financial crime and corruption probes, with Indian authorities investigating Adani companies for siphoning money offshore and artificially inflating power prices at the expense of Indian consumers.

Key points:
  • Two separate investigations into allegations of trade-based money laundering by Adani companies underway
  • Federal Government considering granting Adani a $1b subsidy to build a railway
  • Adani denies wrongdoing

 

Companies under scrutiny for the alleged corrupt conduct include Adani Enterprises Limited — the ultimate parent company of the massive mine planned for the Galilee Basin.

Two separate investigations into allegations of trade-based money laundering by Adani companies are underway — one into the fraudulent invoicing of coal imports and the other into a scam involving false invoicing for capital equipment imports.

"They are very serious allegations and they are being conducted by the premier Indian government agency investigating financial crime," Australia's foremost expert on money laundering, Professor David Chaikin of the University of Sydney, told the ABC.

"The allegations involve substantial sums of money with major losses to the Indian taxpayer."

Adani denies wrongdoing.

The "modus operandi" of the claimed fraud is outlined in a circular issued by India's Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, which was obtained by the ABC.

"Intelligence obtained by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence indicated that certain importers of Indonesian coal were artificially inflating its import value as opposed to its actual value," Professor Chaikin said.

"The objective … appears to be two-fold: (i) siphoning off money abroad and (ii) to avail higher power tariff compensation based on [the] artificially inflated cost of the imported coal."

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-22/adani-companies-facing-multiple-co...

reject the train line and the mine...

Three-quarters of Australians, including most Liberal voters, oppose the government giving a $1bn loan to Adani to build a rail line between its proposed Carmichael coalmine and the Abbot Point shipping terminal.

The government’s Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund (Naif) granted Adani “conditional approval” for a $1bn loan in December last year.

The rail line, if built, would allow Adani to build the country’s biggest coalmine and open up the Galilee Basin to further mines by linking them to an export terminal.

READ MORE:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/31/most-australians-opp...

 

See toon at top...

this carbon sink will sink us...

It would be one of the biggest mines on the planet, occupying an area nearly three times larger than Paris, where world leaders hammered out a landmark agreement to combat climate change in late 2015.

If the A$16.5bn (£10bn; $12.5bn) project goes ahead in Queensland's Galilee Basin - and latest indications are that it will - the coal produced there will emit more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year than entire countries such as Kuwait and Chile, claim its opponents.

Delayed for six years by a stream of legal challenges and environmental impact assessments, the so-called Carmichael mine - to be developed and operated by the Indian mining giant Adani - has polarised Australians.

Supporters, who include local communities, the federal and Queensland governments, and, naturally, the resources industry, insist that it will bring jobs and prosperity to a depressed region of Queensland. 

Critics, on the other hand, among them environmentalists and climate scientists, warn that the 60m tonnes of coal to be dug up annually from Carmichael's 45km (28-mile) pits will exacerbate global warming and threaten the already ailing Great Barrier Reef.

read more:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-38952790

 

See toon at top.................