Posts Tagged ‘Australia’
Ross Garnaut began his presentation on the recently released draft supplementary report to the Garnaut Review on Targets and Trajectories, which recommends reduction targets for Australia, with these words:
“There are moments in the history of humanity when fateful choices are made. The
decision over the next few years on whether to take strong action to mitigate human–
induced climate change is one such moment. ”
Much of the media chose to focus on the response of the conservation movement to the report with headlines such as Green groups at war with Garnaut, a simple story that misses the complexity of the issues and, as Garnaut reminds us, the significance of the decisions we face as a nation.
It is perhaps tempting to try and analyse the issues of climate change through the lens of simple stereotypes and simplistic positions.
- The Greenie wants radical reductions now — the risks of climate change require urgent reduction now, not Garnaut’s tiny 10% reduction by 2020, and damn the consequences for the economy.
- Big Business wants to wait for a global agreement before any reductions. Australia is only responsible for 1.5% of global emissions so why risk the economy when we can’t address climate change by ourselves.
- The Politician wants to wait a little longer to test the mood of the electorate and is very worried about figures coming out of treasury about the impact on household budgets.
It may be amusing to Garnaut that he is now being characterised as being on the side of Big Business. Earlier this year when he released the original report he was attacked for being alarmist regarding the impacts of climate change for Australia.
So what fateful choice should Australia make now and what is Garnaut advocating?
The first thing to understand is that Garnaut is trying to find a position that will support a global agreement on reductions. If developing countries, notably China, do not accept significant constraints on their carbon emissions, then it won’t be possible to reduce concentrations of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere to safe levels (around 400–450 ppm by 2050).
The reduction target of 10% of 2000 levels by 2020 that Garnaut recommends will require that Australia makes abatement efforts that are comparable with other developed and developing nations. This is important for us to be a strong participant in global negotiations and to prepare Australia for the more significant reductions that will be needed in the period from 2020 to 2050.
The modelling done to date indicates that mitigations required to achieve this reduction level are about 1.1 per cent of GDP. This will require action from business and will impact household budgets, however, as Garnaut says in his report:
“The costs of well-designed mitigation, substantial as they are, do not threaten to derail the long-term growth path of Australia, its developing country neighbours or the global economy. Unmitigated climate change probably would.”
Earlier this year the government released its Greenpaper. Later this year, after receiving Garnaut’s final reports and additional treasury modelling and reviewing submissions on the Greenpaper, the Government will be making the first of many fateful choices on Australia’s response to climate change.
These are choices that as citizens we should take a keen interest in and that businesses should closely review and consider in their own climate change strategies.
Some recent research at ANU has found that natural forests are a much better carbon sink than plantation forests. As well as storing up to three times more carbon, natural forests hold the carbon for much longer because they aren’t cut down on a rotation basis like plantation forests.
This is one reason that paying money to plant trees is not always the simple option it appears. Many carbon offsetting options in Australia are based on tree planting. In some cases tree planting projects lead to a mono-culture that reduces bio-diversity. Also, when a tree dies, perhaps because of fire or through land-clearing, then the carbon it has stored is released back into the atmosphere.
Interestingly in 1990, the baseline year for calculating emission targets under the Kyoto Protocol, land clearing was responsible for an incredibly high 24.5% of Australia’s overall emissions (Terms and Impacts of the Kyoto Protocol). Thus we have the infamous ‘Australia Clause’ in the Kytoto Protocol giving credit for reducing land clearing and the reason we have been meeting our recent Kyoto targets.
So the Australian Greenhouse Office Green Paper has been released describing the Rudd Government’s first attempt at doing something meaningful in the fight against climate change.
The paper is there to generate discussion ahead of the white paper and draft legislation due for release in December 08. So let’s do just that – generate some discussion:
At Greensense we care about the environment and the impact that any change has on not only our quality of life but our ability to sustain life. We exist primarily to make a difference and secondly to do business. Surely any battle against climate change needs to take the same approach – environment and life first, economics second.
Ross Garnaut summed it up well in his report stating that:
“Without that action, it is probable that Australians, over the 21st century and beyond, will experience disruption in their prosperity and enjoyment of life, and to longstanding patterns in their lives.”
It seems though, that the government can only speak of economic fear right now, worried of the impact of petrol prices, how low income households will cope, will high emission producing businesses be protected well enough to not take their operations offshore and the list goes on. They can get away withit becausethere is still enough ignorance among the general public on what an increase in global temperatures really means. The thing is – no one will care too much about the economics if there starts becoming a tangible difference in constraining life.
The Green Paper from the outset has a focus solely on the economics of any decision and protection of the very organisations, that since the industrial revolution, are the cause of the problem. So fear is driven around economic impact, with the government’s paper bowing to the green lip service driven by the corporate dollar, rather than tackling the real issue – let’s reduce carbon emissions on every level as quickly as possible for the sake of generations to come.
To solve climate change it requires a massive cultural shift not only at a economics level but at individual household and business level with all tactics being applied to have any chance of making a difference, from carbon trading, green oriented technology and power, offset programs and beyond. By making The Green Paper the first attempt at legislation changes we have made climate change an economic issue rather than a life issue.
So lets get to some specifics to prove the point:
Free permits are being offered to the Emission Intensive Trade Exposed (EITEs) organisations. When a carbon trading scheme should be there to drive down carbon pollution why would we protect the highest carbon producers – economic fear. Where is the investment in innovative solutions to the problem that raises awareness to the real issue and drives a cultural shift in dealing with it. The whole concept of carbon leakage illustrates that the real heart of the issue is not understood by business.
The legislation only targets companies that produce more than 25,000 tonnes of carbon in a year which is 1,000 of the 7.6 million companies within Australia. Now on the one hand it makes sense to focus on the highest carbon producers but here are the issues (even forgetting the free permits to the EITEs). Of the highest producers the agricultural industry will not be included because, “the Government does not consider that it is practical at this stage to include agriculture emissions in the trading scheme at commencement”, yet they are the second highest carbon producing industry. By only targeting 1000 of the 7.6 million companies in Australia we will not create the required cultural shift if we can’t find a way to make it relevant for everyone.
To apply a national carbon limit it assumes a foundation of accurate measurement. This will predominantly occur under the reporting standards generated by the NGER Act 2007. The problem is this only brings companies who produce over 87,500 tonnes of carbon per year reporting by 2010 and those producing more than 50,000 tonnes in 2011. That seems to give a lot of inconsistencies on the governments own plans to address this is a sensible fashion if they want the carbon trading scheme running by 2010.
The government cannot articulate the real impact to the individual household or business with comments in the report such as: “such a concentration of carbon dioxide is expected to have severe impact on our environment” and “the IPCC concluded that Australia’s water resources, coastal communities, natural ecosystems, energy security, health, agriculture and tourism would all be vulnerable to climate change impacts if global temperatures rise by 3 degrees or more.”. The fact that we are vulnerable and the impact is severe doesn’t seem to present a well structured case as to why we need to do something. Cultural shift will drive the change and perhaps investment needsto be made into providing that compelling case (which happens to be something that Greensense is very good at).
So by all means fear the economics of any carbon trading scheme and be sure to join the discussion to make sure there is an effective solution, but lets not forget that the fear should lie in the very issue that the we are trying to fix.
The chances are, if your company doesn’t burn it’s own fuel, have a large fleet of company owned vehicles or generate emissions via industrial processing, then the bulk of it’s carbon emissions can be attributed to the electricity it consumes from the grid. For many organisations their office space will be the largest consumer of this power and therefore source of emissions.
Just a reminder for those of you who miss the link between electricity consumption and carbon emissions - around 50% of electricity in Australia is generated from coal powered power stations and coal is the worst fossil fuel in terms of emissions produced.
In Australia the average office consumers around 250 kWh of electricity per square meter (sqm) per year. If you work in an office that’s 1000sqm it will consume around 250,000 kWh per year — this equates to around 250 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. Just to put that in context the average family car produces around 4 tonnes of emissions per year. If you decided to offset those emissions you’d need around 1200 mature trees.
If you scale those numbers up to an entire office building the figures become scary. Applying the same calculations to an office tower like Central Park in Perth — an impressive 66,000sqm — and you’ll see it’s pushing out over 16,000 tonnes of emissions per year!
Of course some newer buildings maybe be a little more frugal than this while many older buildings may be generating considerably higher emissions per square meter of floor space.
If you’re interested in seeing how your building rates it may be worth checking to see if it’s accredited under the NABERS rating system. This is a performance-based rating scheme for existing commercial buildings to see how they manage their environmental impact.
