Nott's climate change campaign continues

Bega District News, Page: 10
Friday, 23 June 2006

SUNDAY, June 11, was the worst day of the year at Jindabyne, according to Bega Valley campaigner against climate change, Dr Matthew Nott. That was the day he and fellow Tathra campaigner, Mr Grant Prowse, swam six kilometres in Lake Jindabyne to draw attention to the dramatic changes being wrought by our overuse of fossil fuels to create energy. "The water temperature was 8 degrees, and the air temperature was 1 degree," Dr Nott said." There was a southerly gale blowing and there was snow falling.

"We were advised to abandon the swim because the weather was so bad but the idea was to draw attention to climate change so we went ahead." he said. Dr Nott and Mr Prowse were joined for half of the swim by 13-year-old Jesse Greenwood of Batemans Bay and by Ms Julie Mayo-Ramsey, an environmental lawyer from the Eurobodalla. "They retired after three kilometres because they were unable to go on," Dr Nott said.

"Grant and I would not have been able to continue if it had not been for the practical support of Dr Gabe Khouri and Tathra Surf Club member Ben Ellis in a boat and the moral support of a band of sea kayakers from Tathra. "We were very close to the end of our tether when we completed the six km swim." Dr Nott said they had chosen a distance of six km for the swim because "that is the thickness of the biosphere into which we pump seven billion tonnes of carbon each year". "Parents should be campaigning with passion and a great sense of urgency for clean air.

He said they group he had established since his first action in May of getting some 3,000 people to line up on Tathra Beach to spell out the words "Clean Air for Eternity" was taking its inspiration from Germany which has a renewable energy target of 100 per cent by 2050. "Currently 30 per cent of their energy is nuclear and they are planning to replace that with wind and solar power. "Australia should be absolutely embarrassed by that example since we have so much better resources." Dr Nott said.

Timor-Leste Friendship Group says thankyou

Riverine Herald, Page: 17
Friday, 23 June 2006

The Campaspe Timor-Leste Friendship Group has extended its thanks to all those involved in the Konsertu held in Echuca in April. The musical, open-air event raised about $1000 for the people of Liquidoe in East Timor's Aileu Province. The friendship group's chairperson, Campaspe Mayor Judi Lawler said many people donated time, goods and goodwill to ensure the afternoon was successful. Cr Lawler said the group was supporting two students with scholarships worth $1000 a year and would provide the Alternative Technology Association with $500 towards the cost of installing a small wind turbine to generate electricity in areas with no connection to electrical power.

The friendship group meets in the Echuca shire offices every two months on the first Monday of the month. The next meeting is on Monday, August 7, at 7.30pm and everyone is welcome. For information, call Freya Fidge on 5481 2202.

Wind farms forgotten amid nuclear debate, say states

ABC Online
26 Jun 2006

State Environment Ministers have accused the Commonwealth of attempting to curb the growth of wind farms in Australia in favour of nuclear power.

The states have rejected a plan to introduce a national code for wind farms, put forward by the Federal Government at a meeting of state and federal Ministers in Sydney today.

The Victorian Environment Minister, John Thwaites, says the code would have created another bureaucratic barrier to the growth of a renewable energy source. "The lack of support for wind farms from the Howard Government is coming at the same time they seem to be supporting nuclear energy," he said.

"We believe that clean, green, renewable energy wind farms are much more the way to go. "It's a much more preferable way to go than going down the track of nuclear energy." The Federal Environment Minister, Senator Ian Campbell, says the states should be embracing all forms of renewable energy, including nuclear power.

"Ruling out one technology effectively puts your head in the sand on greenhouse and on energy security," he said. "Australians deserve an honest, open and well informed debate on all of their energy options."

Let wind farms pay to help endangered species they hurt

The Age,
June 26, 2006

ENVIRONMENT Minister Ian Campbell's recent decision to use federal endangered species legislation to block a wind farm development in west Gippsland was controversial. Some in the wind industry now worry whether any proposed development is safe, while others, including me, are wondering whether there is a better way to protect endangered species from such uncertain threats.

If further wind developments are blocked on the same grounds — that a single individual of an endangered species may die — the decision may affect the development of Australia's energy infrastructure. It may, for example, lead to the development of more coal-fired power plants. How many orange-bellied parrots will then die from the resultant climate change? If we really intend to protect endangered species, we must tackle these issues.

Perhaps surprisingly, the Kyoto Protocol might have a thing or two to teach us about managing wind farm developments. At the heart of the treaty is a carbon trading mechanism that allows polluters who find it difficult or expensive to reduce their CO2 emissions to offset their pollution by buying carbon credits from those who can reduce their pollution more easily. Why should we not allow a trading system designed to protect endangered species to operate in the case of wind farm developments?

The system could work as follows: if it is considered likely that a wind farm development might kill a single orange-bellied parrot each decade, for example, the wind farm developers should be allowed to offset this risk by funding initiatives aimed at increasing the population of orange-bellied parrots by one individual each decade. Such initiatives might include the protection of important habitat, feral cat eradication programs, or even support for organisations committed to saving the orange-bellied parrot.

Such a scheme has the potential to allow both wind-farm development and save endangered species in a cost-effective manner. It should be subject to review: if more parrots are killed, the volume of "endangered species credits" purchased by the wind company could be increased. The same could be done if the measures funded were found to be ineffective in protecting the species. If, on the other hand, it could be demonstrated that no dead parrots eventuated, the credit scheme could be suspended and the funding reimbursed to the wind farm.

Environmentalists might worry that such an offset scheme would lead to inappropriate development should it be applied more broadly. There is a good argument, however, that climate change and wind-power generation is a special case: without wind we are likely to be forced back to dependence on fossil fuels, which will gravely damage many endangered species.

If we are to win the war for climate stability we need to generate as much low-emission electricity as possible, and wind is one of the most cost-effective ways of achieving this. If the wind industry is to avoid being destroyed by thoughtless NIMBYs, its fossil-fuel rivals or political opportunism, it desperately needs an endangered-species credits scheme.

Tim Flannery is an environmental scientist and director of the South Australian Museum in Adelaide.

Minister creating a hostile environment

The Weekend Australian,
June 24, 2006

CRAIG Chappelle has learned the hard way the danger of standing between federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell and political opportunity.

When a group led by Chappelle was seeking to build a wind farm in the holiday town of Denmark, south of Perth, last November, they did everything by the book, winning state government approval and then $240,000 in federal funding for the project. But when Senator Campbell got a whiff of community unease about the project - and the possibility of an electoral backlash in the seat of veteran Liberal MP Wilson Tuckey - he suddenly moved to scuttle it.

"He barnstormed into town without telling us and made all sorts of ridiculous comments about the plan," Chappelle said yesterday of Campbell, who has tried to freeze funding for the wind farm. "It was a political grandstanding exercise." A stunned Chappelle wrote to the minister about his behaviour: "For you to sweep into town virtually unannounced and pontificate on a project you clearly had no knowledge about, spent precious little time getting acquainted with, and then condemned to gratify a rowdy minority, displayed incredible arrogance. To cap that by publicly threatening to withdraw an existing federal grant is stupefying."

Barely seven months on, Campbell's critics have only grown louder, with business and green groups accusing the nation's Environment Minister of playing politics with the environment on a grand and damaging scale. They say a raft of baffling decisions, poorly explained and inconsistent, have sent a chill through the country's mining, renewable energy and infrastructure industries.

This week, the minister decided to try to soothe jangled nerves when it appeared that a $650 million pulp mill in South Australia was under threat from a red-tailed black cockatoo that had never been seen on the planned site. The developer of the planned Penola Pulp Mill, which would employ 600 people during production and permanently employ 120, was told the project would need federal approval because of the potential danger it posed to the cockatoo, which feeds more than 4km away.

The notification alarmed the project's managers, given Campbell's decision in April to stop the $220 million Bald Hills wind farm in regional Victoria, supposedly because of the threat it might pose to the endangered orange-bellied parrot. Campbell's bizarre Bald Hills decision was criticised by pro-business and green groups, who say it had less to do with parrots than with a pre-election promise by the Liberals to oppose the Bald Hills plan.

So this week, when a rare bird threatened to spark another political controversy, a gun-shy Campbell effectively pre-empted his department's findings by telling The Australian that he did "not expect any problems" from the cockatoo issue.

Campbell strongly denies any inconsistency in his approach. "We have an approvals process which is applied consistently based on science and based on what is recognised internationally as one of the best environmental (planning) processes in the world," he told The Weekend Australian yesterday.

Danny Kennedy, campaign manager with Greenpeace Australia Pacific disagrees. "Consistency is not this minister's strong point - he does what is politically expedient. His record so far is all style and no substance. He is big on having parrots and whales on the front page but there is nothing of substance on climate change and the energy revolution we need to have."

The Business Council of Australia has also been unsettled by the parrot and cockatoo controversies. "When you look at those sort of decisions, and they appear to come out of the blue without clarity about why they were taken, it creates a sense of concern about making long-term investments," says Maria Tarrant, director of policy at the BCA, which represents the nation's top 100 companies.

Andrew Macintosh from the left-wing think tank The Australia Institute believes Campbell is driven by political rather than environmental motives and is misusing the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. "The use of the act has descended into a farce," he says.

Ironically this might be less controversial if Campbell were a consistent colour on environmental issues, but the minister has proven to be uneven in his passions. "On the positive side he has been a strong voice for whale conservation and he has also recently been acknowledging that we need to look at a carbon price to tackle Greenhouse," says Don Henry, executive director of the Australian Conservation Foundation. "But on the negative side, environment legislation has been applied weakly by Ian Campbell and his predecessors."

Although Campbell has been big on saving whales and the orange-bellied parrot, he has been less loving towards other animals. The flatback turtle on Barrow Island in Western Australia did not get preferential treatment, with Campbell this month choosing not to block the $11 billion Gorgon gas project there despite the threat it poses to the rare turtle.

Campbell has also dismissed concerns about the southern blue-fin tuna which remains a legitimate target for commercial fishermen despite being endangered. "He is hunting with the hounds and running with the foxes," says Chappelle. "You can't pick up where he is coming from or where he is going to. That makes it tough."

Earth hottest in 400 years

The Herald Sun
AP 23 Jun 2006

THE Earth is the hottest it has been in at least 400 years and perhaps thousands of years, US scientists say.

The US National Academy of Sciences reached that conclusion in a broad review of scientific work requested by the US Congress. In a report released yesterday it found the "recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia".

A panel of top climate scientists told lawmakers Earth was running a fever and "human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming".

Their 155-page report said average global surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere rose about half a degree Celsius during the 20th century.

The report was requested in November by chairman of the House Science Committee Congressman Sherwood Boehlert, a Republican, to address those who questioned whether global warming was a major threat.

Climate scientists Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes had concluded the Northern Hemisphere was the warmest it has been in 2000 years.

Their research was known as the "hockey-stick" graphic because it compared the sharp curve of the hockey blade with the recent uptick in temperatures and the stick's long shaft to centuries of previous climate stability.

The scientists confirmed that research from the late 1990s was "likely" to be true, said John "Mike" Wallace, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Washington and a panel member.

The report's conclusions "are very close to being right" and are supported by even more recent data, Prof Wallace said.

Overall, the panel agreed that the warming in the last few decades of the 20th century was unprecedented over the last 1000 years, though relatively warm conditions persisted around the year 1000, followed by a "Little Ice Age" from about 1500 to 1850.

Japan kick-starts biofuel transport

The Herald Sun
21 Jun 2006

JAPAN plans to have 40 per cent of cars running on biofuels within five years in a bid to slash greenhouse gas emissions and foreign oil dependence.

Vehicles account for about 20 per cent of energy consumption in Japan, which is nearly entirely dependent on the Middle East for oil.

The Environment Ministry would launch a project to boost the production of ethanol made from sugar cane produced on Miyako island in Japan's southern island chain of Okinawa, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun business daily revealed.

Early birds feel the heat

The Herald Sun
21 Jun 2006

MIGRATORY birds are arriving earlier in Australia and leaving later, most likely because of global warming, a study has found.

Researchers analysed the movements of migratory birds visiting southeastern Australia since the 1960s. Using published literature, bird observer reports, and observations of bird watchers, the team compared the arrival date for 24 species and the departure for 12 species over the past 40 years.

Heading the study were Macquarie University PhD students Linda Beaumont and Ian McAllan, together with Associate Prof Lesley Hughes. The study is believed to be the largest of its kind in the southern hemisphere, and is published in the international journal Global Change Biology.

The study found half the species analysed -- which included sandpipers, kingfishers, bee eaters and plovers -- showed a significant trend towards earlier arrival since 1960. It showed they were arriving on average 3.5 days earlier each decade across the study group, and staying an average 5.1 days later.

Temperature change in Australia of around 0.5C since the 1960s was "very likely" to be influencing the birds' migratory patterns, Ms Beaumont said. She said the big concern was that the change would alter the life cycles of birds, including when they reproduce. "(A temperature change of) 0.5 degrees for us is nothing, but birds and insects respond very rapidly to changes in temperature," she said. "Birds time their breeding so that when the eggs hatch it coincides with the optimal timing for whatever is the source of their food."

There was also a danger that short distance migratory birds, such as the channel-billed cuckoo, may stop migrating become permanent residents of southeastern Australia, she said.

Greenhouse gases 'under-reported

From: Reuters in London
June 22, 2006

MANY countries may be grossly underestimating the quantity of greenhouse gases they emit according to a new method of monitoring output, scientists said today.

The new "top-down" system measures the actual amount of gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere, compared with the traditional "bottom-up" method which estimates what is likely to be produced on the ground.
The findings, still the subject of scientific debate, could destabilise the European Union's fledgling carbon trading system and have implications for the Kyoto Treaty.

"Work at the (European Commission's) Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Italy suggests huge under-reporting of many national CH4 (methane) emissions," said Euan Nisbet of London's Royal Holloway University.

"Top-down science is still somewhat in its infancy. But the gas they measure is there, not an estimate of what they think should be there."

According to work by Peter Bergamaschi at the JRC in Ispra, Italy, top-down science suggests Britain may be reporting only half its actual methane emissions and France only two-thirds, the magazine New Scientist said today.

By contrast, Ireland and Finland may be over-reporting the methane coming from their peat bogs.

Britain defended its estimates today, saying they were calculated in line with international guidelines reviewed each year by independent international experts.

The government's Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) said in a statement it believed Mr Bergamaschi overestimated British methane emissions by at least half.

"Bergamaschi's work cannot separate natural methane emissions from man-made ones. There is significant uncertainty in how much natural methane is produced in the UK, which is carried into Bergamaschi's model," DEFRA said.

Mr Nisbet said making the same calculations for carbon dioxide, more plentiful but less damaging, was more complicated.

The world needed a chain of monitoring stations, similar to the seismic system set up in the 1950s to monitor nuclear bomb tests, he said.

Mr Nisbet said China, which is building a coal-fired power station a week to fuel its booming economy, had good monitoring as had Canada and Kyoto refuseniks the United States and Australia.

There was virtually no monitoring in South Asia, very little in Africa and the tropical oceans were scantily covered.

Debating nuclear, but what about our rich renewable resource?

Rashida Nuridin
20 June 2006

We produce the highest amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) per capita in the world. One third of this pollution comes solely from the production of electricity. It is imperative that we take urgent action now to reduce our CO2 emissions.

The Federal Government is calling for a “full blooded” debate on nuclear power in Australia, with the pretense that it will be a solution to our GHG emissions. This doesn't make sense when we are not seriously harvesting the free, safe and rich renewable resources that are available.

Wind farms and other renewables can be up and running in a matter of months. Nuclear power stations take many years. In the US, the most recent nuclear power station to come on line took 24 years from start of construction to commercial production!

Don't be fooled by the “clean” tag the government is giving nuclear. The production of nuclear power is a multi stage process. The nuclear “cycle” includes mining, milling, enrichment, power production and waste management, with transportation needed between each of these processes. Although the emissions of GHG's attributed to the power generation phase may be low, this is not the case for the remainder of the cycle. Transport is also required between each one of these processes adding further to the emissions attributable to the full cycle of nuclear power. They also require an enormous quantity of water for cooling.

Renewables such as solar, wind, wave and hydro are simple; they directly convert the raw energy source into electricity with no harmful side effects and minimal full energy cycle GHG emissions, particularly in the case of wind.

Further, high-grade uranium deposits are only expected to last a few decades and when demand increases this will be depleted much sooner. If we then turn to using lower-grade uranium “the CO2 emissions become similar to those of a combined cycle gas fired power station” (Dr. Diesendorf, UNSW).

After 50 years there is still no safe long term solution to waste disposal. It will be 240,000 years before the radioactivity of the “high level waste” is no longer a concern. Are you prepared to leave this legacy for your children and future generations to deal with?

Nuclear power is high risk. With an increased terrorist threat, weapons proliferation and sabotage are a reality. No other energy source requires the substantial level of security as nuclear power.

Twenty years on, have we forgotten the lessons of Chernobyl? Even today's nuclear experts concede that nuclear accidents are inevitable. As more nuclear plants are built, so too does the risk of the next major accident.

Nuclear energy is uneconomical. It requires massive subsidies (the most highly subsidised power of all) and isn't self supporting anywhere in the world . The estimated cost of subsidies to the nuclear power industry in the US, for example, is “US$115 billion in direct subsidies, compared to less than $10 billion for wind and solar combined” (ACF). Just one nuclear waste repository in Nevada is expected to cost US$50 billion. As soon as it is opened in 2010, it will be filled to capacity by the nuclear waste accumulated in the US.

The average lifespan of a nuclear power station is only 21 years (similar to that of a wind turbine) and the cost of dismantling Britain’s nuclear power stations for example is estimated at around 70 billion pounds sterling.

Perhaps those who argue against the economics of wind don’t realise that nuclear power is more expensive. On a global scale, renewable energy already supplies more power than nuclear.

Renewable energy made up an average of 20% of Australia’s electricity from the 1960’s through to the mid 1970’s. It has gradually declined to 8% and projected to make up only 8.8% of our electricity by 2010 (ABARE). Compare this to an EU wide target of 21% by the same year.

Worldwide, wind power is the fastest growing energy sector with energy capacity doubling every 3 years - in 2005 it increased by 43% more than the previous year. Australia has one of the best and most consistent wind resources in the world, but without community and government we are being left behind.

Countries such as Germany have one third of our renewable resource, yet are one of the world leaders in both solar and wind installations. Germany's commitment to renewables is reflected in their decision to phase out all of its nuclear power stations by 2020. Countries with a high ratio of nuclear power such as France and even Sweden, the nuclear power capital of the world, are increasing their renewables.

There is a small vocal minority in the community who oppose wind farm developments. Hype created by these individuals is a smokescreen to a “nimbyism” based primarily on aesthetics. The recurring fictional rhetoric they preach regarding bird kills, noise and unreliability have long been proven false by independent scientists and engineers the world over.

WWF, Greenpeace, ACF, David Attenborough, David Suzuki, The Royal Society For The Protection Of Birds In Britain and most other world leading environmentalists all publicly promote wind energy along with other renewables as being the way forward for electricity production. They would not take this stance if they believed wind farms posed a threat to bird or animal populations.

As far as noise is concerned, you can hold a conversation at the base of the biggest modern wind tower, while the turbine is working at full speed, without raising your voice (35-45 dB (A) at 350m ) and at 97-99% reliability, wind turbines far exceed the performance of coal plants.

I am a visual artist and aesthetics is very important to me, but I don't let it cloud my judgment. Let's put things in perspective. What is more important, your view being “spoilt” or addressing global warming?

The vocal minority should not be allowed to jeopardise the benefit to the silent majority on such a critical issue. We all share the same atmosphere. It is not a localised issue, it crosses all borders and affects us all.

I have focused on wind power because it is currently one of the most economical ways to increase the mix of renewable energy in the overall production of electricity. We all want electricity. I’m sure given a choice most of us would prefer to have clean power.

Next time you flick the switch on, think about where your power is coming from, and your contribution to GHG emissions.

Green power for the future

The Australian
June 10, 2006

Impressive advances are being made in clean coal technologies, writes Andrew Trounson

IT seems almost too good to be true. Can we really make our dirty coal-fired power stations green? Have we discovered the silver bullet to slay the monster that has transformed our abundant coal reserves into sources of evil greenhouse gases?
As the Prime Minister's crusade to reassess the potential for nuclear power gained momentum this week, the coal industry was claiming that by the time nuclear power could become a reality in Australia, the technologies for effectively plugging greenhouse gas emissions from coal power plants will have been commercially proven.

The idea is to commercialise technologies that "clean" coal before it is burnt to bring down emissions closer to natural gas, which generates about half the emissions of brown coal. Carbon dioxide emissions would then be captured and compressed into almost liquid vapor that could then be piped to geological sites and injected hundreds of metres underground.

But while achieving this energy nirvana for the world's coal resources is feasible, it will be expensive, making alternative sources, such as natural gas and renewables, such as sun and wind, relatively more competitive.

According to numbers from the National Generators Forum that represent the country's main coal and gas-fired generators, by 2015-20 the generating cost of coal with carbon capture and burial, or sequestration, will be roughly the same as that for nuclear and wind.

Critics such as the environment lobby are concerned that carbon capture and sequestration technologies are unlikely to be widely enough employed to significantly cut global emissions until 2020 or more. That, they say, is too long a wait while we continue to burn coal, and that we should stop building new coal-fired plants and extending the life of new plants in favour of proven gas and renewable energy. It is why Victoria's decision last year to extend the life of the Hazelwood brown coal power plant from 2009 to 2031 so angered the environment lobby and renewable energy industry.

Nevertheless, there hasn't been a new coal-fired plant built in either Victoria or NSW in the past 10 years, with new capacity already largely coming from gas.

The seductive attraction of the self-styled clean coal technologies is the huge potential gain to be had from sequestering carbon emissions from coal, given its importance as a power source.

Australians get nearly 80 per cent of their electricity from coal-fired generation and the country has coal resources big enough to last hundreds of years.

And despite the threat of climate change, the energy-hungry populations of China, India and the rest of the developing world will be demanding ever more cheap fossil fuels to raise them out of poverty.

Globally, fossil fuels are expected to remain the planet's primary energy source until at least 2050, by which time scientists warn that we need to have stabilised carbon levels in the atmosphere or face serious, and in some places devastating, climate change. Many already think climate change is under way with the rising incidence of floods, hurricanes and other events.

China, where coal supplies 69per cent of the country's power, is effectively installing the equivalent of Australia's total coal power industry every year.

The International Energy Agency expects China to account for 26 per cent of all new global emissions between 2002 and 2030, more than all the emissions from the developed world combined. And in the 20 years to 2025, the IEA expects coal to account for 33per cent of global carbon dioxide growth.

Clearly, finding a solution to coal emissions is where the biggest dividends can be made in cutting global emissions. According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, scenario analysts suggest that including carbon capture and sequestration in a carbon dioxide mitigation portfolio could cut the cost of stabilising its levels in the atmosphere by 30 per cent or more.

"There is no reason why by 2020 we can't be putting a quarter of our emissions from coal and gas back into the ground, and no reason why by 2030 it wouldn't be about half," Mark O'Neill, chief executive of the Australian Coal Association, says.

It is the huge size of this tantalising alchemist's cherry that has driven the formation this year of the six-nation Asia-Pacific partnership on clean development and climate that is betting on technology to beat climate change.

It brings together Kyoto rebels Australia and the US, with the world's emerging energy consumption giants China and India. In the US the Government has teamed with industry, including coal giants Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, to invest $US1 billion ($1.34 billion) in the FutureGen project that aims to have the world's first commercial scale emissions-free coal-fired generator in operation by 2012 using carbon capture and sequestration.

In Australia the coal industry is putting $300 million into a technology development fund. Low emission technologies for fossil fuels are also expected to take the bulk of the Government's $500million low-emission fund announced last year, much to the chagrin of the renewable industry that complains the Government is punting too heavily on coal.

There are several low-emission coal demonstration projects under way in Australia aimed at reducing and or capturing coal emissions. But the most important is a $30 million trial of geo-sequestration in Victoria's Otway Basin by the Government-backed Co-operative Research Centre for greenhouse gas technologies.

Late this year the CRC plans to start injecting carbon dioxide underground into an old gas well at Nirranda, 20km east of Warrnambool in western Victoria. It will be piped from a naturally occurring underground reservoir some 2km away, with 100,000 tonnes of the gas to be re-injected underground over two years.

That compares with the 400million tonnes of carbon dioxide Australia emits every year. The CRC estimates that Australia has enough geological capacity to store up to six billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, which, assuming an injection rate of 50 million tonnes a year, would give us 120 years of storage.

But while the capture and sequestration technology is feasible and is used to varying degrees already in the oil and gas industry, the challenges of achieving carbon capture and sequestration shouldn't be underestimated.

To get a feeling for the scale of the undertaking to capture and store coal emissions, it has been estimated that the volume of flue gas emitted by coal-fired power stations across Australia every year is equivalent to about 20 times the amount of natural gas produced every year from Australian gas fields.

Capturing, compressing and storing such vast quantities of gas would be a Herculean undertaking. But since only 14 per cent of this vapour from a coal-fired power station is actually carbon dioxide, the key is using various technologies to strip out the nitrogen, oxygen and water vapour and significantly reduce the amount of gas that needs to be captured.

The other challenge is finding places to store the gas. While potential geological sites have been identified within reasonable distances of population centres in Victoria and Queensland, no such sites have been indentified within a 500km radius of Sydney or Newcastle. In an age when proposals for a gas pipeline between Papua New Guinea and Queensland are close to becoming a reality, this isn't an insurmountable problem, but it adds significantly to the overall cost.

There are also inevitable concerns over the safety of transporting and storing large quantities of concentrated carbon dioxide. Concentrated carbon dioxide is nasty stuff. In 1986, a freak geological disaster released a massive natural bubble of carbon dioxide from under Lake Nyos in Cameroon that asphyxiated more than 1700 people.

However, an IPCC assessment found that piping carbon dioxide posed no greater risk to the public than piping natural gas, and could be lower. And storing the carbon dioxide would involve injecting the gas hundreds of metres underground into reservoir rocks that have held oil and gas for millions of years.

Climate is biggest security challenge

The Australian
June 10, 2006

Patrick Walters, National security editor

CLIMATE change now poses a graver long-term security risk to Australia than terrorism, with a high likelihood it will produce destabilising civil conflict and unregulated population movements in Asia and the Pacific. That is the conclusion of leading Australian security expert Alan Dupont, the co-author of a new study on climate change and security to be published next week.

The report concludes that the "now irrefutable" evidence the planet is heating up will generate major national security challenges for Australia.

"It is the most significant issue confronting us because of its global dimensions and because it's almost certain to happen," Dr Dupont said yesterday.

"In probability and magnitude, it's well ahead of terrorism and just about anything else I can think of, short of a major global war or a nuclear exchange."

The study, to be published by the Lowy Institute, argues that the wider security implications of climate change have been largely ignored and seriously underestimated in public policy, academia and the media.

It calls on the Howard Government to adopt a more strategic approach to climate change, including setting up a taskforce to examine the policy connections between climate change and national security.

The Australian intelligence community, led by the Office of National Assessments, should co-ordinate a wide-scale assessment of the climate change risk to Australia, the report says.

"The likely speed and magnitude of climate change in the 21st century will be unprecedented in human experience, posing daunting challenges of adaptation and mitigation for all life forms on the planet," Dr Dupont and leading climate scientist Graeme Pearman conclude after analysing the latest scientific evidence of climate change.

Dr Pearman, former head of the CSIRO's division of atmospheric research, says the evidence the earth is heating up is irrefutable. "We are in no doubt that the planet has warmed," he told The Weekend Australian.

"We are highly confident that most of that warming has been due to greenhouse gas increases and that those will continue into the future, at least for some time, because of the momentum of our energy systems. We can anticipate further warming through this century."

Scientists now concede there is a real risk that previously forecast estimates of a 1.4C to 5.8C rise in global temperatures could be exceeded by 2100.

Climate scientists now "overwhelmingly accept" that the world's glaciers and northern ice cap are melting at faster rates and sea-level rises will threaten many coastal and low-lying areas.

Weather extremes, including droughts and severe floods, could lead to food, water and energy shortages in Asia-Pacific nations.

Climate change could also lead to "destabilising and unregulated population movements in Asia and the Pacific" as well as the threat of state collapse in the most severely affected developing nations.

Danes seek broader research links

About The House, Page: 26 Friday,
16 June 2006

Danish scientists have told a delegation of Australian parliamentarians that more formalised links between Australian and Danish research institutions would be of benefit to both countries. The scientists, working at the Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences Foulum Research Centre, told the delegation while there are many personal contacts between Danish and Australian scientists and some specific project collaboration, broader contacts through formal research agreements would be welcome.

In the recently released report on its visit to Denmark and Sweden, the delegation, led by Speaker David Hawker, called for broader research links to be explored, given the strong interest that Australia and Denmark share in agricultural production and research. At the Foulum Research Centre, the delegation met with Australian scientist Dr Mark Henryon who briefed the delegation on projects in which the research centre had been involved. These included projects to breed disease resistant pigs and better trout andmarron. Dr Henryon told the delegation such projects could provide Australia with some "good food for thought". Other scientists told the delegation they would welcome Australian collaboration in the field of cloning.

Warnings about the future of the wind energy industry in Australia were also issued to the delegation during inspections of the Vestas Wind Systems headquarters in Denmark. Vestas has wind turbine manufacturing operations in Portland, Victoria and Wynyard, Tasmania. Vestas representatives told the delegation a lack of certainty regarding future renewable energy targets in Australia, coupled with public opposition to wind turbines in some areas, have generated significant concerns about the future viability of their Australian operations."Given the impact this could have on jobs in Australia and the potential loss of an alternative energy producer, these concerns need to be taken seriously, ' the delegation said in its report.

The delegation also urged the federal government to examine the feasibility of bringing the Nobel Prize Centennial Exhibition to Australia. During an inspection of the Nobel Museum in Stockholm the delegation was informed by the museum director that the Nobel Prize exhibition was being taken on a world tour, but Australia was not one or the planned destinations for the exhibition. The delegation felt this matter should be looked into, given Australia's impressive involvement with the Nobel Prize over many decades, including the recent awarding of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine to Australians Barry Marshall and Robin Warren.

Crows Nest firm in wind farm flap

Rural Weekly, Page: 6 Friday,
16 June 2006

IT ISN'T easy being green, as Crows Nest Shire Council has found. Council chief executive officer Dave McEvoy was at the Energy Resources Information Forum in Dalby last month to update participants on the progress of the Energreen wind farm, which has brought Crows Nest Shire Council and a group of opposing residents to the Planning and Environment Court. On August 7 the Planning and Environment Court will hear an appeal against Crows Nest Shire Council's approval of the wind farm at Upper Pinelands on two grounds: that approval was not in accordance with the shire's planning scheme and that the wind farm would be a detriment to flora and fauna in the area."The council saw major economic benefits in this project, mainly in carbon dioxide savings," Mr McEvoy said.

"This installation is capable of supplying one-third of the generating output of Tarong Power Station or enough electricity to supply a city twice the size of Toowoomba."But council also understands the concerns of residents -it was a matter of weighing the good against the bad."You just can't hide 85 metretowers behind a few trees," he said. Mr McEvoy said it was important that Commonwealth and state governments looked at extending their renewable energy targets, as without a stronger commitment to renewable energy it would remain difficult to attract more investment and development into the sector.

"We need to use a range of solutions and develop a range of technologies to meet our future energy needs," Mr McEvoy said. The Crows Nest wind farm was first proposed in June 2004: the initial proposal was for 65 turbine towers to be built in Crows Nest Shire and another 10 in neighbouring Rosalie Shire, with Crows Nest Shire Council leading the project. It was approved in late August last year, with Mayor Geoff Patch using his casting vote in favour of the proposal, worth an estimated $250 million and 16 local jobs. The appeal was lodged in January.

Gorbachev warns against new nuclear power plants

© 2005 www.abc.net.au
Last Update: Friday, June 9, 2006. 5:47am (AEST)

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whose time in office included the world's worst nuclear accident, says countries building new nuclear power plants to tackle global warming should think again. From Japan to the United States, governments seeking an alternative to burning fossil fuels for power are reviewing the de facto ban on building new nuclear plants that followed the explosion at Chernobyl nuclear station in Ukraine in April 1986. "Think again, think seven times again before you leap and start construction of new nuclear power plants," Mr Gorbachev told a meeting of British lawmakers at London's Houses of Parliament, speaking through an interpreter. "With my experience of Chernobyl I know what is involved."

The explosion of one reactor required a superpower country to spend tens of billions of roubles. "Still there was the longer pollution of the soil, the deaths of a number of people and consequences that will be far reaching." Nuclear advocates, who argue that nuclear power emits little of the major greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, reject comparisons with Chernobyl. They say the Chernobyl design was flawed and the plant badly run, and that the accident could not be repeated with new designs, fail-safe mechanisms and technology.

But Mr Gorbachev says climate change can only be stopped through a combination of developing new energy sources like solar and wind and increasing efficiency of energy usage. New predictions being studied by UN scientists for a report next year point to average global temperatures rising by three degrees Celsius this century, melting ice caps and causing floods, storms and famines. Environmentalists mostly agree with Mr Gorbachev that the answer lies in non-nuclear and non-carbon alternatives to traditional power sources like nuclear, coal, gas and oil.

Court sets August date to hear wind farm challenge

© 2005 www.abc.net.au
Last Update: Thursday, June 8, 2006. 1:00pm (AEST)

The Federal Court has set aside four days to hear the Victorian Government's attempt to overturn a ban on the Bald Hills wind farm in the state's south-east. The State Government approved the wind farm near Wilson's Promontory, despite strong objections from locals. After a two-year study, the Federal Government banned the wind farm to protect the orange-bellied parrot. The State Government and generation company Windpower are challenging the ban in the Federal Court.

The case is scheduled to start on August 28 before Justice Weinberg.

Greener water and light

The Australian,
June 08, 2006

Why the need for nuclear when carbon pricing is more efficient energy use?
By Nic Frances

WE all know the federal Government is touting nuclear energy as a solution to global warming and as a "clean" way to power giant water desalination plants. But there is a far more immediate and cheaper alternative. And one state is showing the way. In NSW, more than 100,000 households have already received free of charge, a six-pack of low-energy light globes and many of them a water-saving shower head as well.

That number could easily grow to a million or more households before the end of this year.

Yes, in the halls of power, promoting simple consumer energy efficiency in the suburbs and regions may sound pretty uninspiring alongside grand visions of multi-billion-dollar nuclear power plants lining our coast, next to similarly expensive desalination plants. Yet it's an amazingly easy, if low-key way for Australia to avoid building a number of new base load power stations altogether - whether coal, gas or nuclear - and save huge volumes of water.

So, as the nuclear debate we're being told we have to have gathers fury, and carbon dioxide emissions rise at the same rates as the political hot air in Canberra, one state is quietly fighting climate change through a very simple market-friendly action. It put a price on carbon.

The NSW Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme, Australia's only mandated carbon trading system, has started a quiet revolution in the suburbs. A revolution that could soon spread around the world.

It may surprise many people to learn that carbon trading is now a dynamic, multi-million-dollar a year market in NSW with buyers, sellers, brokers, watchful regulators and new businesses rushing to compete.

In a little more than two years, about 20 million tradeable carbon credits, worth more than $250 million at today's market prices, have been created via accredited carbon dioxide emission reductions from 159 separate projects, and more than six million have been traded.

Globally the world's carbon trades totalled more than $US10 billion in value in 2005, up from $US1 billion in 2004. According to a World Bank carbon trading expert, last year's figure is considerably more than the entire trade value of the US wheat crop, at about $US7.1 billion, making carbon a commodity on the make internationally.

Unlike nuclear power stations, a price on carbon is no longer a theory, at least in NSW. And it lets ordinary people make a difference. When customers take the crucial step of installing the globes and shower head, they can on average cut more than $150 a year off their energy and water bills, while also reducing annual carbon dioxide emissions by up to one tonne and water use by about 21,000 litres a year. If one home does it the savings are worthwhile but small. If a million homes do it, the economic and environmental benefits from this energy and water-saving activity are large. And that's the plan in the next year, a million homes.

Installation in a million homes would reduce pressure on government to increase supply by building new power stations and dams, cut carbon dioxide pollution by about one million tonnes a year (equivalent to taking 300,000 cars off the road permanently) and save about 21 billion of litres of drinking water a year. So it's good economics and good politics. It saves money for those who shop and vote. It helps the environment. And it creates economic activity and jobs.

Replicate that across most of the six million or so homes in Australia and the savings both financially and environmentally will get very big indeed. And all governments need to do is put a price on carbon. If this approach was taken nationally, the benefits would be considerably greater than the entertainment created by the nuclear debate. We'd see consumers benefiting financially, the environment being protected, and government avoiding some costly and politically unpalatable infrastructure decisions. Add to this the entrepreneurial businesses that are finding creative ways to seize the opportunity the market has created and that's a lot of winners.

Having spent much of my working life searching for innovative ways to help the socially disadvantaged - among other things, I ran the Brotherhood of St Laurence for five years - I reckon I know a good deal for people when I see one. For my money, a nuclear future isn't the debate we need at all. Certainly not until we've exhausted the opportunities for simple energy efficiency in all walks of life, from our homes to our grandest infrastructure. It may seem an old-fashioned ethic, but "waste not want not" - in this case of energy and water - makes more sense than creating hot air and nuclear waste.

Nic Frances, an Anglican priest, is founder of Easy Being Green, a company with a goal to make 70 per cent of Australian homes 30 per cent more energy and water efficient within 10 years.

Great pall of China

The Bulletin, Page: 60
Tuesday, 13 June 2006

GLOBAL warming is the classic boiling frog issue. It's done very slowly. Too quickly, and the frog jumps out. The global-warming frog has been a long time aboiling.

A continuing debate among experts as to whether the temperature is even rising has kept the issue docile. (I have always accepted Mark Twain's version of "an expert" as being just somebody from out of town.) But it's now settled that boiling is actually occurring. Even the US Climate Change Science Program, the George W. Bush administration's co-ordinating agency for global-warming research, conceded last month that it had found "clear evidence of human influences on the climate system".

That falls rather short of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's recent description of climate change as "a challenge so far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its destructive power that it alters radically human existence". Our own prime minister, John Howard, has eschewed the apocalyptic approach. With his trademark pragmatism and political guile, he has declared that it's time Australia had a full scale national debate on nuclear power.

The knee-jerk reaction of the Canberra commentariat has been to define the Howard initiative as an exercise in wedge politics aimed at exploiting Labor Party differences over this policy space. There might be more than a grain of truth in this. But the global-warming issue has reached a point where it can no longer be ignored. Of course, some people have been saying that for years.

But in the democracies of the developed world, such warnings have had little currency among elected officials. The long-term nature of the threat meant that consideration, let alone actual action, could be postponed because its solution involved unpopular measures. This complacency has now been displaced by an emerging sense of urgency. A major contributing factor to this mood shift has been the fast-gathering economic implications of China's rapid industrialisation.

It's not just that Howard has suddenly focused on our absence of a nuclear policy in an Australia that has significant uranium reserves. We will have to deal with China, a country that proposes to build 30 nuclear reactors during the next two decades to supplement its present nine reactors. That's part of it. Doubtless Washington would be much more comfortable with such a trading prospect if uranium was enriched in Australia, not China but that could require considerable marketing on the domestic political front.

However, China's voracious appetite for energy represents a larger, more vexed and pressing issue than potential Australian uranium sales. Its industrialisation drive has been a major global disinflationary force in recent years. As Morgan Stanley's Andy Xie points out, manufacturing production has relocated to China on a massive scale in the past five years, due to the country's cheap labour and lax enforcement of environmental standards. Xie believes that the lack of enforcement of environmental rules may have been more important than labour costs in attracting production relocation.

Whether that's been the case or not, the reality has been that the world has dumped a large quantum of its industrial pollution in China in the past five years. According to China's Environmental Protection Agency, pollution is 12 times the world average per unit of GDP. The emission of sulphur dioxide is 22.5 million tonnes compared with a maximum carrying capacity of 12 million tonnes for the country.

The World Health Organisation estimates that (500 million people are exposed to SO2 levels above their emission standards. When mixed with nitrogen oxides and chemically transformed, SO2 causes acid rain -which devastates crops and forests. WHO estimates that 30% of China is seriously affected by acid rain. Two-fifths of the country's major river bases are polluted.

Ninety per cent of the rivers running through cities are severely polluted. Some 300 million rural residents have no access to purified water. Two-thirds of the population suffers from poor air quality. China is estimated to emit 13% of global carbon emission from fossil fuels -second only to the US, This share is projected to rise to 18% by 2025. The health costs, mostly paid in terms of life quality and age expectancy, implicit in these environmental statistics are huge and growing.

Not surprisingly, there are disturbing implications in terms of social and political stability, especially from peasants dispossessed of land to make way for factories. The Beijing government is conscious of this and has moved pollution control up its political agenda. But just as China's large and growing contribution to greenhouse warming is a global, not simply a Chinese problem, so too are the economic consequences. China's policy of export-led growth through rapid industrialisation on the back of low-cost labour and minimal pollution costs has been a major factor in delivering low inflation to developed economies, especially the US.

China now acknowledges the need to normalise pollution costs. As Xie puts it: "Part of the unsustainable disinflation from 2002 through 2005 has to be regurgitated." That could be very difficult for a US economy that is struggling with high oil costs and a heavily indebted household sector to handle. Recent volatility in financial markets partly reflects concerns about how the Federal Reserve will react should inflation pick up.

With the strong correlation we see across global financial markets, any shock on Wall Street will cascade through the global system. Under such circumstances, especially given the unknown dimensions of the global market in leveraged derivatives, we could see the financial market tail wagging the non-financial economy dog. The uneasy relationship between global warming and global financial-economic health is not going to be a phase. The linkage will be ongoing.

The imminent dilemma involves China and the US, but the populous developing economies of India, Brazil and Russia are also engaged in industrial catch-up. That has obvious implications in terms of energy production and greenhouse emissions. The China situation further underlines the flawed nature of the Kyoto treaty. Kyoto's failure is usually ascribed to the refusal of the US and Australia to ratify the agreement.

Even had they done so, Kyoto would not have solved the pollution problem driven by the breakneck industrialisation of China. Importantly, Kyoto has not been a waste of time. It has launched a carbon-trading market that, despite early teething problems, holds out the real prospect of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the developed countries where it is operating. Kyoto also demonstrated the practical futility of imposing a top-down command model on environmental policy.

There is no way the US Senate will ever accept a UN direction on domestic economic policy. Even Australia, with no history of intransigence, would not go along with Kyoto. The major flaw in the Kyoto approach, however, is that it had no answer to the developing economies' demands that they had a moral right to catch up with the developed world. One way to address this issue is to point to China's experience in discounting the social and political costs of pollution.

Warwick McKibbin from the Australian National University believes that individual countries could address their economic aspirations with locally based carbon-trading markets. It's a model he has been developing and refining for nearly a decade. The concept has been successfully pioneered in the US where acid-rain pollution has been dramatically reduced. While there is no costless way to stop and then reduce global warming, the impact of a long-term, gradual approach is far from draconian.

But the delays involved in conceding that global warming was actually a problem have increased the costs. The devil has not been so much in the detail as in the politics. And, to be honest, that's still the case.

Consider all energy options

Hervey Bay Observer, Page: 18
Wednesday, 7 June 2006

World Environment Day is a reminder of the need for Australia to consider all its energy options, the Australian Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE) said yesterday. The Australian Government's own figures show that even accounting for all existing measures to curb climate change, Australia's greenhouse emissions from stationary energy will be 63% higher than 2000 levels by 2025. Clearly something more than 'business as usual needs' to be done, and the clean energy industry welcomes the Prime Minister's debate on future energy generation. But the debate must consider all the options that can reduce emissions immediately - including gas, renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Describing the need to act now as an imperative, the Executive Director of the BCSE, Mr Ric Brazzale, said it would be many years before the outcomes of the debate on energy made an impact. "Should nuclear power prove viable in Australia it would take at least 15 years before it made even the slightest impact on our emissions," said Mr Brazzale. "Likewise with cleaner fossil fuels and geosequestration. These technologies are far from proven and have a long way to go before they could be considered economic."

Yet Australia cannot wait - while it will take 10, 15 or 20 years for 'new beaut' technologies to come on stream, our emissions will continue to grow and the task of adjusting to a global carbon-constrained economy becomes more costly. "If we are to avoid future shocks to our prosperity and economic growth it is essential we continue to deploy known, existing cleaner energy generation. This includes gas, geothermal, wind, solar, bioenergy, and hydro - while maximizing opportunities for the easiest, cheapest greenhouse reduction of all: energy efficiency," Mr Brazzale said.

Powerful solution

The Australian, Page: 24
Monday, 5 June 2006

MORE than 90 per cent of Australia's electricity comes from fossil fuel fired power stations. This energy use accounts for about 68 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, making it by far the largest contributor. More than a quarter of a million households and businesses are choosing to purchase some or all of their electricity from government accredited Green Power sources. Green Power is renewable energy produced from clean renewable sources such as solar, wind, water and biomass.

The National Green Power Accreditation Program sets stringent environmental and reporting standards for renewable energy products offered by electricity suppliers to households and businesses. When customers choose a Green Power accredited product, energy suppliers agree to buy a requested amount of electricity from approved new renewable energy sources. Green Power electricity provider sales and purchases are then independently audited on an annual basis. The Green Power tick is the guarantee that contributions are helping bring about the installation of new sustainable energy projects.

Since its inception in 1997, sales of green Power through the National Green Power Accreditation Program have reduced greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation by about 2.75 million tonnes a year. This is reckoned to be the equivalent of taking more than 600,000 cars off the road for a year.

Local plan to cut greenhouse gases

Mordialloc Chelsea Leader, page: 8
monday, 5 june 2006

Kingston Council will invest $250,000 in the next five years to cut greenhouse gases and save water. the council has adopted a greenhouse action plan to reduce its own greenhouse emissions by 20 per cent by 2010 from 2000 levels. street lighting accounts for about half of emissions and council community buildings contribute 42 per cent of CO2 emissions. the plan was discussed when kingston held its first climatechange forum on april 5, attended by more than 50 residents who were encouraged to do their bit.

mayor topsy petchey said protecting the environment was the responsibility of all levels of government and the community. "global warming is expected to threaten our water supplies, the weather, crop production and health in the lifetimes of our children, " cr petchey said. the council will: fit key council buildings with energy-efficient lighting; upgrade airconditioning; progressively buy 15 per cent of its electricity from wind farms or hydroelectricity schemes; continue to buy energy-efficient office equipment; enforce the state government's five-star energy rating for new houses; encourage car-pooling among its staff; buy smaller, more fuel-efficient fleet vehicles; and, upgrade toilets to dual-flush at northcliffe lodge in edithvale, install water tanks at waves leisure centre and install waterless urinals at kingston arts centre.

Wind part of solution to Australia's energy needs

The Ballarat Courier, Page: 21
Friday, 2 June 2006

THE energy debate in Australia will continue to take centre stage as Australia's energy requirements skyrocket at a level higher, per capita, than any other develo