Bosses heed climate warning

Australian
Monday 5/2/2007 Page: 29

AUSTRALIAN business leaders have heeded the blunt warning in the latest intergovernmental report on climate change which predicts that temperatures could rise by up to 4C by 2100 and sea levels by up to 29cm.

The report, six years in the making and drawing on research from 2500 scientists from more than 130 countries, says the evidence for global warming is now "unequivocal". Its thrust is that "business-as-usual" will lead to unacceptable risks, underscoring the urgent need for concerted international action to reduce the worst impacts of climate change.

Origin Energy's managing director, Grant King, said the report added further weight to the scientific argument for urgent action to address climate change.

"Last year, based on similar scientific work by CSIRO and economic analysis by Aliens Consulting, the Business Roundtable on Climate Change recommended early action to adopt a comprehensive domestic climate change policy, complementing the inevitable emergence of global action. The report reinforces that recommendation," he said.

Paul Anthony, chief executive of AGL Energy, said the company took the consequences of climate change extremely seriously. "In almost every part of business the impact of climate change is absorbed."AGL Energy is one of the premier investors in renewable technology in Australasia with one the largest suites of renewable, carbon emissions generation assets while it has also a significant investment program for the future in renewable energy."

Mr Anthony said an example of AGL Energy's acceptance of the climate change argument was its $660 million investment in the 95 megawatt, $660 million Macarthur wind farm in western Victoria which is planned to begin generating from 183 turbines later this year.

The oil and gas sector's peak lobby, the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association, described the IPCC report as a "sober, careful and comprehensive overview" of the status of climate change science. APPEA chief executive Belinda Robinson said national and international policy responses must be similarly considered, measured and multifaceted.

"Just as the IPCC avoids hysteria, so should our responses. The report leaves little doubt in my, and judging by a range of polls, most people's minds that climate change is very, very serious," she said. "But in tackling it there is absolutely no room for knee-jerk, ill-informed approaches that have more to do with political optics than a genuine desire to understand the complexities in settling on a suite of policies that serve the best long-term interests of Australia and the world."

Ms Robinson warned that until commercial, environmental and technological drivers combined to dictate Australia's future energy profile, the emphasis must be on keeping all gas, clean coal, renewable, nuclear and a variety of other energy options open, as well as well others not yet dreamt of. "We must not be seduced by an arrogant attraction to a simple answer that may reflect the energy fashion of the moment but unlikely to deliver us the solution," she said.

Business Council for Sustainable Energy executive director Ric Brazzale said the report would remove any of the lingering doubts over climate change and enable business and government to get on with the job of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Last December's announcement that Australia's greenhouse gas emissions were projected to exceed the Kyoto Protocol target an increase of 9 per cent on 1990 levels shows Australia's policy priorities must change.