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MAHATMA GANDHI ~ Truth never damages a cause that is just.
More than 3,000sq metres of new public space have been added to the Australian Museum.
Photograph: Steven Saphore/AFP/Getty Images
Just before her appointment as the new director and CEO of the
Australian Museum became public knowledge in 2014, Kim McKay sat
anonymously in the Sydney museum’s cafe drinking coffee.
“It was just inside the building’s main entrance, and I remember
thinking, the first thing that hits people when they come inside [the
museum] is the overwhelming smell of greasy hot chips,” she says.
“I thought to myself, ‘Oh my god, all this has to change ... everything is so worn, and I’m going to fix it.’”
On Saturday, after a 15-month major facelift, the Australian Museum will reopen its doors to the public.
Closed for the past 15 months, the Sydney museum finally opens back up on Saturday. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
Director and CEO of the Australian Museum Kim McKay: ‘I
thought to myself, Oh my god, all this has to change.’ Photograph:
Steven Saphore/AFP/Getty Images
The
transformation of the 193 year-old building is what McKay calls her
long-running labour of love, turning a cluttered and chaotic series of
cramped spaces, groaning under the weight of past architectural and
interior design crimes, into a sleek, light-filled institution
aesthetically displaying a carefully curated fraction of the museum’s
enormous collection.
More than 3,000sq metres of new public space has been added in the process.
Even the new cloakroom is a design triumph, the walls of the formerly
dank basement pared back and scrubbed clean to their original creamy
sandstone, hand-hewn by convicts almost 200 years ago.
Convict-crafted sandstone was discovered and restored in
the new cloakroom at the Australian Museum. Photograph: Carly Earl/The
Guardian
The Australian Museum’s new Hintze Hall. Photograph: James Alcock/Australian Museum
The
project, which closed the museum last August, comes with a $57.5m price
tag. Uncovering and restoring the vast building’s heritage sandstone
bones cost $3m alone.
The New South Wales government stumped up $50m and the museum raised
the remainder, largely through the courting of philanthropists, who are
acknowledged in the naming of the museum’s two largest new spaces – the
Hintze Hall (the Hintze Family Charitable Foundation) and the Brian Sherman Crystal Hall. Sydney-based arts doyens Brian and Gene Sherman donated $1m to the rejuvenation project.
The cafe McKay made her vows in six years ago has been demolished,
and a sleek new eatery has been installed on the building’s rooftop. But
the chips have remained stubbornly on the menu.
The view from the Australian Museum’s new rooftop cafe.
Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
On Saturday, McKay will tick off another item on the to-do list she
created upon her appointment six years ago. When the museum opens its
doors, the public will enter free of charge. And that, she says, is “a
real game-changer”.
To make the plan financially viable, the museum sent its most
successful major exhibitions packing: Spiders – Alive and Deadly
exhibition has generated revenue of $1.5m while touring through the US
and Canada over the past three years; Tyrannosaurs – Meet the Family has
earned $2.5m during its five year tour across North America.
The latter has returned home to become the new-look museum’s first special ticketed exhibition.
Australian Museum palaeontologist Matthew McCurry in the
Tyrannosaurs – Meet the Family exhibition space. Photograph: Carly
Earl/The Guardian
Animal skeletons on display at the Australian Museum. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
The enduring fascination with dinosaurs by children and adults alike
has much to do with their fantasy-as-fact appeal, says Matthew McCurry,
the museum’s vertebrate palaeontologist and functional morphologist.
“People are excited by dragons, they are excited by aliens in outer
space … but the difference with dinosaurs is that yes, they part of
another world but this stuff is real.
“We have the bones, we can look for evidence and build this
understanding of what that world that looked like that was so different
from today.”
NSW’s new bill to build 12 gigawatts of clean energy means it could
‘produce almost as much clean electricity as is consumed across South
Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania’.
Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images
There may have been other weeks that packed in as many transformative
developments in clean energy in Australia as the past seven days, but
they don’t come often.
On Friday, the New South Wales
parliament passed laws to build 12 gigawatts of clean energy – roughly
equivalent to the country’s entire existing large-scale renewable
capacity – and 2GW of energy storage in the state over the next decade.
Remarkably, given Australia’s tortured national climate politics, the
legislation had near-unanimous parliamentary support from the Coalition
government, the Labor opposition, the Greens and most other
crossbenchers. One Nation opposed the bill, filibustering through the
night before its eventual passage.
The scale of what the NSW plan will mean for the grid and – despite
the cautiousness of MPs when the issue is raised – the early closure of
coal-fired power is yet to be fully appreciated. “It’s massive,” says
Tristan Edis, a director with the analysis firm Green Energy Markets.
“It will produce almost as much electricity as is consumed across South
Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania.”
Three days earlier, the Victorian government’s budget included $543m to develop six renewable energy zones. Part of a $1.6bn clean energy commitment, it will be used to buttress and make best use of the solar and windfarms built to meet a state renewable energy target.
AGL, the country’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter, has
announced it will build a large-scale battery next to its Loy Yang A
coal plant in Gippsland. It is the third major battery announcement in
two weeks. Photograph: David Gray/Getty Images
Meanwhile, the energy company AGL, the country’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter, announced it would build a large-scale battery next to its Loy Yang A coal plant in Gippsland. It was the third major battery announcement in thrree weeks, following others near Geelong and Adelaide. All are bigger than anything currently in operation in Australia.
Up north near Townsville, a zinc refinery owned by Sun Metals became the first business of its type to pledge it would be run entirely on renewable energy
by 2040. Down south, the Tasmanian government boasted the near-complete
construction of the Granville Harbour wind farm had tipped the state
over to running 100% on renewable energy.
The ramifications of the change were the focus of speakers at an
online summit hosted by the Australian Financial Review. Some marvelled
at the pace, while others expressed frustration at what they saw as a
leap away from a national electricity market towards the sort of
state-based central planning that was supposed to have died in the 20th
century.
Several analysts said the rapid shift raised another question: where
does it leave the Morrison government’s case for new fossil fuel power
as part of its touted gas-fired recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic?
Scott Morrison and his federal energy and emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, have claimed NSW will need 1,000 megawatts
of new flexible electricity capacity that can be called on at any time –
so not solar and wind – to replace the Liddell coal plant when it shuts
in 2023. They warned the private sector they will instruct the
taxpayer-owned Snowy Hydro to build some of it if companies have not
made commitments by April.
The idea more gas was needed was heavily contested at the time – and is even more so now.
Taylor responded to the NSW plan by warning it will drive away private investors, pointing to AGL and EnergyAustralia saying they would now delay decisions on gas and battery projects.
The NSW’s plan architect, the energy and environment minister Matt
Kean, who has emerged as a media-friendly clean energy evangelist within
the Coalition, says his assessment is new gas will not be needed when
Liddell shuts.
“We think there are other means that could achieve this,” he said on
Friday. “What I am focused on is delivering the infrastructure that will
keep the lights on here and drive prices down.”
Kean describes the NSW plan as a “historic victory for the people of
NSW” that will spark $58bn in investment over the next 20 years and
create thousands of jobs. “Ultimately, NSW is its own government and my
job is to put the people of NSW first, and that’s exactly what we’re
doing,” he says.
On gas, he argues it has an ongoing role to play in generating electricity “but it’s a very expensive way to do that”.
In terms of actual generation, gas plays a relatively minor role in the national grid, providing about 8% of electricity.
It plays a much smaller role in NSW, providing just 1.4% of the
electricity over the past year. The state’s existing gas plants have
been operating at just 6% of their capacity. The main reason is pretty
clear: the average wholesale price for gas power has been more than
twice as expensive as the average across the grid.
Dr
Dylan McConnell, a researcher at the University of Melbourne’s climate
and energy college, is among those who say the state commitments are
pushing gas further out of the picture. “Practically, that is what’s
happening,” he says. “At the moment renewable energy is cheaper, but in
future it will be the batteries and the 2GW of storage in NSW pushing
out gas.”
Simon Holmes à Court, also at the University of Melbourne and a clean
energy commentator, says this is in line with forecasts by the
Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo), which suggest a shrinking
amount of gas-fired generation over the next 10-15 years. “We are
already using less and gas prices are down,” he says. “The fact is, it
is struggling because it is competing with cheaper renewables.”
The price of energy is expected to fall further as more solar and
wind comes into the system. In both NSW and Victoria, the commitment is
not to build the plants, but to sign contracts guaranteeing private
investors a minimum price for the electricity they generate. This is
already happening in Victoria
under the state’s renewable energy target, which has backed 928
megawatts of wind and solar and promised at least another 600MW.
The NSW scheme
will support not just solar and wind energy but also two types of
storage – long-duration technologies that can provide backup power for
eight hours or more (expected to be pumped hydro and batteries) and
“fast-start” generators that can whir into action to ensure grid
stability when needed (batteries and possibly gas).
Both NSW and Victoria will help pay for the grid connections and
other infrastructure needed to get the clean energy online. Tristan Edis
says Victoria has perhaps had less credit for its policy than it might
have because it has rolled it out gradually, where NSW opted for one big
hit.
Other states are heading down a similar path. Queensland has a similar renewable energy zone and auction model run by the state-owned renewable company CleanCo, while Tasmania has contentiously promised 200% renewable energy generation – twice the state’s local demand – by 2040 through a yet-to-be-announced model.
The Morrison government has been critical of some state intervention
in the national electricity market, particularly when it believes it is
unclear what it will mean for electricity prices. Its opponents argue
the states would not be taking these steps if the federal Coalition had
not abandoned the field by repealing a national carbon price, dropping
plans for some sort of replacement and choosing not to extend the
national renewable energy target when it was filled last year.
They also point out the Morrison government is planning its own
interventions, particularly to push for new gas-fired power that others
say is not needed.
In
addition to threatening to build a new gas plant in NSW if private
companies don’t, Taylor is trying to push through legislation to allow
the taxpayer-owned green bank, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, to underwrite five “fast-start” gas plants.
The need for additional gas-fired generation to replace the Liddell coal plant is heavily contested. Neither Aemo nor a government-commissioned taskforce looking at the Liddell closure found there would be a shortfall in generation capacity.
Research commissioned by Greenpeace, found the NSW
government’s model – renewables backed mostly by batteries – was by far
the cheapest option when compared with doing nothing or building a new
gas plant. Photograph: SUPPLIED/PR IMAGE
Taylor says new gas is needed less to ensure reliable supply, and
more to prevent a spike in electricity prices – as happened around the
time the Hazelwood coal plant in Victoria shut much more abruptly in
2017.
Again, this has been challenged by analysts who have considered alternatives to new fossil fuels. Research released on Friday
by analysts at RepuTex, commissioned by Greenpeace, found the NSW
government’s model – renewables backed mostly by batteries – was by far
the cheapest option when compared with doing nothing or building a new
gas plant.
Where does this leave the case for a gas-fired recovery?
There is a separate, and more complicated, argument about the use of
gas for heating and as a chemical feedstock in manufacturing and
industry, where it is not always as easily replaced (though independent analysis has found even here the need for new gas, rather than making better use of existing resources and backing cleaner alternatives where possible, is significantly overstated).
But in electricity, the case for new gas in the short-term appears limited.
In its assessment of what an optimal future grid would look like,
Aemo found it would increasingly run on large and small-scale renewable
energy – potentially by 2035 up to 90% of electricity from solar and
wind at times – supported by “dispatchable” generation that can be
called on when needed.
That dispatchable generation can come from a range of sources
including pumped hydro, batteries and, yes, gas. But Aemo suggested
investment in gas was less likely to make sense than cleaner options due
to cost. It didn’t consider the impact of the emissions from gas, but
it was the only fossil fuel on the list.
Analysts make a similar case, with a caveat. While the amount of
gas-fired power generation is expected to continue to fall in the next
few years, McConnell and Edis say there may be a case for new plants to
be built as more of the country’s coal fleet shuts, depending on how
much other technologies have developed.
These plants would hardly ever be used, and would not contribute much to emissions. Gas
plants differ from batteries and pumped hydro at the moment in that
they can sit idle for all but a few hours a year and be called on only
at times of absolute need, as diesel generators are in some places now.
By comparison, pumped hydro and batteries need to be called on more
regularly to justify their existence.
McConnell says if companies or governments do feel compelled to back
gas plants, they would be wise to ensure they can also run on hydrogen,
given where the future of energy is headed.
“The reality is complex,” McConnell says. “I’d like to think the
answer on new gas is ‘no’ but having gas turbines that are
hydrogen-ready may not be the worst thing we can do. But we don’t need
them now.”
Temperatures reach into the mid-40s in some parts of Australia
Guardian staff with AAP
Temperatures were expected to hit the mid-40s as parts of South
Australia, New South Wales and Victoria are hit by an extreme heatwave.
Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/AAP
Much of Australia is in the grip of an extreme heatwave with
temperatures reaching into the mid-40s and total fire bans in force in
parts of South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria.
South Australia followed up a scorching Friday with a similarly warm
Saturday, with temperatures hitting 46C in Port Augusta and Coober Pedy.
An extreme bushfire risk was declared for the Adelaide Hills. On
Friday, a grassfire north of Adelaide burnt through 650 hectares.
The state’s Country Fire Service advised those in the at-risk districts to put their bushfire plan into action and keep track of any updates.
In
the town of Coober Pedy in northern South Australia, where the
temperature hit 46C on Saturday, about two-third of residents live in
underground dug-outs.
“Whilst people in dug-outs will be fine today, we really are
concerned about the people that live above ground in housing, in houses
above ground and also people that are visiting from other parts of the
state, particularly from up north,” the Coober Pedy district council
chief executive, Dean Miller, told the ABC. “We’ll be looking out for
people to make sure they stay hydrated and have access to water and
shade.”
In the state of New South Wales, temperatures exceeded 40C across the west and in coastal areas on Saturday.
Most of Sydney, including the CBD, recorded temperatures of 40C on
Saturday as strong north-westerly winds held back the sea breeze. The
highest-recorded temperature was at the airport, at 41.7C.
The Bureau of Meteorology manager Jade Golding said November records
for warmest overnight minimums in some parts of NSW likely tumbled on
Friday night, while daytime records could also fall this weekend.
NSW and Sydney would swelter until at least late on Sunday afternoon,
when a gusty southerly was expected to cool temperatures for Monday.
“It’ll be a really long, uncomfortable night (on Saturday) and then a
really long hot day and then a really windy southerly change,” Golding
said. “The body doesn’t really get much respite, it’s quite hard.”
Temperatures across NSW would then spike again on Tuesday as heatwave conditions enveloped inland areas.
Golding said the weekend swelter would likely spur bushfire concerns,
with the Rural Fire Service forecasting severe danger across southern
NSW regions on Saturday including the Riverina. She said fires would be
fuelled by strong grass growth over a rainy winter.
The RFS issued a total fire ban for most of eastern and north-eastern
NSW for Sunday, including Greater Sydney, Illawarra, the Hunter and
north coast. No fires would be permitted out in the open.
One 416 hectare blaze at Myrtle Park, east of border town Deniliquin,
was downgraded to “advice” level after being brought under control on
Saturday afternoon. The RFS’s large air tanker was on scene to assist
firefighters.
The RFS deputy commissioner, Peter McKechnie, urged residents to have a fire plan ready and prepare their properties.
“This is the first time since the devastating season last year we’ve
seen widespread elevated fire danger,” he said. “Know what to do if a
fire threatens you, know where you’ll go.”
North-west Victoria also felt the heat, with temperatures in Mildura
on Saturday reaching 45C – its previous record for November was 45.5 in
2012. Swan Hill was forecast to hit 44C and Echuca was expecting 42.
The state’s Country Fire Authority declared fire bans for the Mallee,
Wimmera and northern country regions. Gusty winds were also forecast
for Saturday, particularly in the north-west, plus thunderstorms in the
afternoon and evening.
“The Mallee district will reach an extreme fire danger rating for the
first time this season due to the forecasted gusty winds and increased
grassland curing in the area,” the CFA acting chief officer, Alen
Slijepcevic, said.
“Northern country and Wimmera will also experience elevated dangerous fire conditions, with a severe fire danger rating.
“As a result, we have declared a total fire ban across all three weather districts.”
In south-east Queensland, the heatwave was expected to last into mid-next week.
Reinforcements were being sent to the state’s Fraser Island to help
contain an out-of-control bushfire that has been burning for the past
six weeks.
Tourists were ordered to stay away from the blaze, which had burned
through 74,000 hectares so far, and stay off the island’s inland tracks
and roads.
Hotter, drier winds with the potential to carry the fire in a southerly direction were forecast over the weekend.
The blaze is believed to have been started by an illegal campfire on 14 October.
Last summer’s bushfires in Australia destroyed 2,476 homes, claimed 26 lives and burned 5.5 million hectares of land.
‘Analysts say the government’s climate record could present a key
obstacle to Cormann’s prospects, given the OECD has long been arguing
for stronger global action on the issue.’
Photograph: Sam Mooy/Getty Images
Nearly two years before Mathias Cormann
embraced the language of a “green recovery” and rapid net-zero
emissions goals, the then finance minister’s government received a
report rebuking it for Australia’s climate performance.
Australia remained one of the most carbon-intensive countries in the
developed world, and would fail to reach its 2030 emissions pledge
without major changes, the report warned. Among its many calls for
action was “pricing carbon emissions more effectively”.
This critical report was not the latest offering from green groups or from some bunch of lefty activists but from the economic boffins at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – the very body Cormann is now campaigning to lead.
While Cormann is seeking to burnish his economic credentials as Australia’s longest serving finance minister as he crisscrosses Europe in a Royal Australian Air Force plane,
analysts say the government’s climate record could present a key
obstacle to his prospects, given the OECD is dominated by European
countries and it has long been arguing for stronger global action on the
issue.
“On climate change, Australia’s record will not fly,” says Bill Hare,
a veteran climate scientist, campaigner and the founder and chief
executive of Climate Analytics.
“Governments are not stupid, they have highly intelligent officials
and ambassadors who work out what is really going on and advise them. My
real concern is that the attempts by the federal government and Cormann
to essentially try and invert reality are really going to damage the
Australian brand.”
In a sign the government – which has officially supported Cormann’s
campaign – sees climate as a potential wrinkle, his promotional material
makes clear that he too values the importance of environmental action.
As Guardian Australia revealed this week,
Cormann has used a “vision statement” for the position to declare that
pursuing “effective global action on climate change is a must and we
must get to zero net emissions as soon as possible”.
This
is strikingly different from his rhetoric in the context of domestic
political debate as recently as February 2020, when Cormann accused the
Labor party of making “extremist pronouncements” pledging to reach
net-zero emissions by 2050.
“What I am saying is making commitments, meaningless commitments
without actually properly assessing what the economic cost is, the
impact on jobs, the impact on power prices and the impact on emissions,
is extremist and irresponsible,” Cormann told Sky News at the time.
Cormann, when first announced as Australia’s nominee for the OECD position, argued that the political debate in Australia was not about the “what” but about the “how” of curbing emissions.
While leaving room in his OECD
promotional material for different countries and regions to differ in
their precise policy responses, Cormann promotes a vision where – under
his leadership – “we can come together to share ideas about our
collective green recovery effort on our journey towards a low-emissions
future”.
There is no mention of the Coalition government’s previous repeal of
the carbon pricing scheme that helped drive cuts in Australia’s
emissions, nor its efforts – thwarted by the Senate – to abolish the
Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy
Agency. Picking up this thread, the Australian Greens have written
to ambassadors of 36 OECD member countries excluding Australia to warn
that selecting Cormann would be a blow to tackling climate change.
The OECD has long held a policy position that “putting a price on
carbon is essential to drive the technological and behavioural
innovation necessary to limit climate change”. Its analysis has
suggested that market-based instruments like cap-and-trade emission
trading schemes can “keep the costs of climate action low”.
Hare argues the OECD “has done a lot of good work on climate change,
including thought and political leadership in recent years”.
“I think if you look at virtually anything that the OECD has
published in recent times you would find that the government of which
Cormann has been a senior minister is pretty much opposed to, or hasn’t
done, or has no intention of doing [those actions],” Hare says.
“Now with the world looking at a critical decade ahead, with the
fastest emission reductions in a most rapid period of energy
transformation needed to meet the Paris agreements goals, it is
impossible to imagine Cormann playing a constructive role in all that.”
It is possible, however, with the global economic downturn triggered
by Covid-19, that member countries will have their attention focused on
more immediate challenges.
Cormann has told OECD countries that, if selected, his agenda will
include strengthening economic resilience, expanding global trade and
investment, and designing “more effective, efficient and equitable” tax
systems. He also pushes for liberal democratic values.
The material sent to OECD nations includes statements of support from
a range of Australian business and political figures, including the
prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the opposition leader, Anthony
Albanese. The Labor leader described the Coalition figure as “a skilled
negotiator with the ability to effectively engage across the political
spectrum” and who is “known for being a man of his word”.
While there has been political controversy this week over the cost
of Cormann’s travel, the government has defended the candidacy as
important. The government has appointed a campaign taskforce of about
eight dedicated staff, who are helping to schedule meetings, coordinate
messaging and update the itinerary. Guardian Australia has also
established Cormann is travelling with a doctor, a step that appears to
be linked to Covid-19 precautions.
Cormann has already held meetings in Turkey, Denmark, Germany,
Switzerland, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Belgium, Spain and Portugal since the
beginning of November, and has further visits planned to Austria, the
Slovak Republic, Hungary and France – plus trips across to the South
American member countries of Chile and Colombia – to press his case.
If successful, Cormann would serve a five-year term as secretary
general of the Paris-based OECD from 2021 to 2026. But he has strong
competition for the role, with nine other candidates in the field.
The other candidates include Sweden’s nominee, Cecilia Malmström, who
has strong links across the OECD’s European member states, given she
served for four years as EU commissioner for home affairs before taking
the role of EU commissioner for trade from 2014 until last year.
Malmström is one of seven candidates from European countries.
America’s candidate, Christopher Liddell, is a senior official in the
Trump White House and would appear unlikely to succeed after the
presidential election result. Canada has nominated William Morneau, who,
like Cormann, is a former finance minister.
The OECD selection processes are somewhat mysterious but will
include a job interview-style meeting with member state ambassadors in
France shortly. The OECD says the chair of the selection committee, UK
representative Christopher Sharrock, will “carry out confidential
consultations with individual members, in order to narrow the field of
candidates and ultimately identify the candidate around whom consensus
can be built for appointment”. A final decision is due by March.
Most of the talks are happening behind closed doors, so it is
difficult to assess how Cormann’s message is being received during his
European travels. While most countries are keeping their cards close to
their chest, Luxembourg’s finance ministry said it had held “good discussions” with Cormann, while Slovenia’s prime minister said he found the Australian to be “a strong candidate”.
The rising cost of Cormann’s campaign – which the government has
refused to reveal at this stage of the process – has led some people to
question what Australia would be getting out of having Cormann in the
top job.
On this point, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade maintains
that the OECD is a “pillar of global economic governance and a core
multilateral organisation” – but Australia has not yet played a
leadership role there.
“If we want international institutions such as the OECD to thrive, we
must step forward and offer to lead them,” a Dfat spokesperson says.
Dave Sharma, a Liberal MP and former Australian ambassador to Israel,
says the potential leadership role is important for Australia. That is
because the OECD is an important standard-setting body. It is one of
several organisations, he says, that “underpin the ‘rules of the road’
for the liberal world order”.
“Having an Australian leading the OECD would ensure our values and
viewpoints have a prominent role in helping shape the operating system
and rules for the global economy for the decades ahead,” Sharma says.
‘The recent shift in the prime minister’s language invites two questions: is there a pivot under way, and is the shift real?’
Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP
Scott Morrison’s language about Australia adopting an emissions
reduction target of net zero by 2050, and about climate action more
generally, is starting to warm up. The recent shift in the prime
minister’s language invites two questions: is there a pivot under way,
and is the shift real?
The story so far
We know the Coalition’s history on climate policy. The Abbott
government repealed Labor’s climate price, attempted to gut the
Renewable Energy Target and abolish agencies driving a transition to low
emissions energy. Morrison while treasurer brandished a lump of coal in the parliament,
telling his opponents not to be “scared”. For much of this year, the
Coalition has ignored persistent entreaties from environmentalists and
major business groups to adopt a target of net zero emissions by 2050 at
the latest, and to use the economic recovery from Covid-19 to lock in
the transition to low emissions. Morrison has never ruled out adopting a
net zero target but has created the impression the government wasn’t
interested – an impression reinforced by the government’s declaration
that it would pursue a “gas-led recovery” after the pandemic.
When and why did the language change?
In the couple of weeks before the US presidential election on 3 November, Japan, China and South Korea adopted pledges taking them closer to net zero. Morrison also had a private conversation with the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, in which net zero was raised. Leaders were anticipating the likely election of Joe Biden.
The Democrat had promised to end the backsliding of the Trump era and
revitalise international climate negotiations, starting with bringing
the US back into the Paris deal. Biden’s appointment of John Kerry as
his climate envoy after winning the election is a further signal of
seriousness. From the moment Biden was projected as the likely winner,
Morrison’s language began to change. It became noticeably warmer.
Morrison now says Australia wants to “reach net zero emissions as
quickly as possible”.
What about 2030?
Before we get to 2050, Australia has an emissions reduction target
for 2030, and the government will be under pressure to update that
commitment with a higher level of ambition in the next round of
international climate talks.
Australia’s current target is a 26%-28% cut below 2005 levels, and
the government has been planning to meet that (not very ambitious)
target using carryover credits from the Kyoto period.
Official government emissions projections released in December last
year found Australia was not on track to meet the 2030 target unless it
used the credits. Australia’s use of the Kyoto-era concessions has been strongly opposed by a large number of nations in international climate discussions, and experts say there is no legal basis for their use under the Paris agreement.
After Biden’s victory, Morrison used a speech to business leaders to signal,
hey presto, magic happens: Australia might not deploy the accounting
trick to help meet the 2030 target after all. The prime minister said:
“My ambition is that we will not need them and we are working to this as
our goal, consistent with our record of over-delivering.” The hint from
Morrison was that new projections, expected to be released in December,
will show Australia is on track to meet the promised cut without
carryovers.
How can that happen?
In part, because the Australian government has not been great at
forecasting future emissions and tends to substantially change its
estimates each year.
Estimating future emissions is difficult. Each year, officials make
assumptions about what will happen in 50 areas of the economy and come
up with projections of how much will be emitted. For more than a decade,
they have significantly over-estimated how much CO2 the country will emit in the years ahead before revising down the projections, sometimes significantly.
The biggest miscalculation has been in electricity generation.
Renewable energy has come into the grid much faster than the government
expected – the national 2020 renewable energy target was met ahead of
time, state targets in Victoria and Queensland have started to have an
impact and the cost of solar and wind energy continues to drop, making
investment more attractive. Officials also overestimated how much grid
electricity the country would use – demand has fallen, in part due to
nearly a third of homes now having solar panels.
For
reasons that are not clear, the official projections have assumed there
would be less renewable energy in the system than the models used by
the Australian Energy Market Operator, which runs the power grid. Addressing this will bring future projections down.
There are other anomalies. The projections do not factor in drought,
which in recent years has reduced emissions from agriculture as farmers
have had to substantially reduce cattle and sheep numbers.
Officials last year revised down the emissions forecast for the next
decade by 344m tonnes. If a similar readjustment were to happen this
year, it could lead to the government saying it was now on track to meet
its modest 2030 target without the carryover credits.
Has anything else changed that could affect the projections?
The only new policy of note from the Morrison government this year
has been its low-emissions technology roadmap. Released in September, it
claimed developing five new technologies could “avoid” 250m tonnes of emissions a year by 2040.
There was been no explanation of how that number was reached, and
with the arguable exception of “clean” hydrogen, the government has not
yet committed significant new funding to develop the technologies. It is
unclear how this policy could reasonably change the projections in a
meaningful way.
More noteworthy is that, while the federal government has tried to
slow the influx of solar and wind by neither continuing nor replacing
the renewable energy target, the states keep stepping in to fill the
gap.
The big one is the NSW plan
to underwrite 12 gigawatts of new wind and solar over the next decade –
a development that will be banked by Canberra as “progress” in terms of
projected national emissions reductions, but also criticised
by the federal energy minister, Angus Taylor, because it might bring
forward the closure of coal plants, which is of course a necessary
development if you are a government now wanting to trumpet a downward
trend in emissions. You know it makes sense.
Would a lower emissions forecast be good news?
Lower emissions would, of course, be great. But if it happens it
isn’t something we should get too excited about, for two reasons.
The first should be pretty obvious – the government will not have
actually done anything yet. These are projections, not actual emissions.
Before Covid-19 hit, Australia’s national emissions remained stubbornly flat under the Coalition, having dipped only about 2%
in the more than six years since it was elected. They will be lower
this year due to the pandemic, but that is not something the government
can claim credit for, and it may not continue.
The second reason is, as mentioned above, Australia’s target is
nothing to crow about. It was a fudge from the beginning. The size of
the cut – 26%-28% – was just a lift of the US commitment under the Paris
agreement, with one notable difference – the Obama administration
promised that target for 2025, while the Australian government pushed it
back to 2030.
Getting to net zero emissions, as scientists say is necessary, isn’t
just about the end goal. It’s about how much you emit as you get there.
To play its fair part in meeting the goals of the Paris agreement, Australia can only emit so much over the next three decades.
Advice to the government in 2015 suggested playing its part would require a cut equivalent to between 45% and 65% by 2030. A recent analysis by analysts at the Climate Action Tracker found Australia’s fair share over that timeframe was 66%. The current target does not get the job done.
So will the government do more on climate?
It is not impossible, but it is far from guaranteed.
There will be pressure on Australia over the next year not only to
set a target of net zero by 2050, but to go further by 2030 than
promised. The US under Biden will be required to set a new target for
that date and other major countries are expected to do the same.
Dropping the plan to use carryover credits will not be enough to satisfy
their expectations.
Apart from saying we can meet our (lowball) 2030 target without a
Kyoto-era accounting trick (cue applause) there’s no sign at the moment
the government is working up a higher 2030 target. It is working on a
long-term climate strategy, which was a commitment under the Paris
agreement. It was due this year, but has been pushed back to before the
next major climate summit in Glasgow late next year. It is expected, but
not guaranteed, to include modelling of what future action on climate
will mean for Australia.
There are a couple of other policies in the works. The government has dumped a long-promised electric vehicle strategy
and replaced it with the promise of a “future fuels” plan on hydrogen,
electric and bio-fuelled vehicles, but it is not expected to deliver
significant new commitments to accelerate an emissions cut.
Potentially more significantly, it has also said it will look at the
safeguard mechanism, a Tony Abbott-era policy that was supposed to limit
emissions from big industrial sites. So far, the scheme has barely justified its existence. Companies have mostly just been allowed to increase their CO2 limit, known as a baseline, and pollute more.
Presumably recognising this is not sustainable, the government earlier this year said it accepted a recommendation from a review headed by former Business Council of Australia president Grant King
that the mechanism should be changed so that companies would be
rewarded for cutting emissions below their baseline if they were
undertaking “transformative” projects and not just producing less or
shutting down. It sounds like a step back towards carbon pricing –
rewarding cuts and, if the Coalition can stomach it, finally penalising
increases in emissions.
Would the government go back to carbon pricing?
Morrison should use his political capital and his internal authority
to drive a substantive change – but he won’t want to lose his job over
it. Part of what’s going on with Morrison’s shift in language is the
prime minister testing how much he can get away with: how positive can
he sound about emissions reduction before the right of the Liberal party
starts having a tantrum, or before the National party has a public
meltdown because someone has whispered coal is not good for humanity
after all? Think of Morrison as inching along a dimly lit ledge several
stories above the ground.
But the rest of the world isn’t waiting for the Coalition to get its
act together. Action on emissions is picking up elsewhere and at some
point Australia will have to deal with rising CO2 from big industry and
transport.
In the meantime, as the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO recently reported, climate change is already here and extreme weather events are getting worse.
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