Clean Energy Finance available to Australian companies first
Australian companies get first shot at green energy cash, David Wroe, Brisbane Times, May 23, 2012 AUSTRALIAN companies will be guaranteed the chance to pitch for business flowing from the Gillard government’s $10 billion clean energy fund that Labor will announce today in an effort to sell the benefits of green jobs at home.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet will announce today that the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which will provide grants and government investment to green projects, will require candidates to show they are
giving local firms a fair go to supply parts and services……
Mr Combet, meanwhile, will introduce today legislation to set up the $10 billion corporation, to be chaired by respected businesswoman Jillian Broadbent. It will require candidates for funding to have Australian Industry Participation Plans, which are a key part of the government’s broader manufacturing strategy.
Under these plans, which are already used by the resources sector in return for tax breaks, projects have to demonstrate they have given Australian firms ”full, fair and reasonable opportunity”. A wind farm, for example, might have to show it has offered Australian firms the chance to supply the turbine towers. http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/political-news/australian-companies-get-first-shot-at-green-energy-cash-20120522-1z39j.html#ixzz1vjfBtHvJ
Australia’s clean, non nuclear, soil giving hope to Japanese farmers
Japan farmer harvests hope in our soil, BY: SUE NEALES The Australian May 23, 2012 JAPANESE farmer Takemi Shirado still sounds grief-stricken and shell-shocked when talking about last year’s Fukushima nuclear disaster that so devastated his rural community.
Catastrophic radiation contamination of the soil means his family won’t be able to sow rice on their Iwaki rice paddies, about 60km from the crippled defunct power plant, for at least 300 years. Other local farmers are starting to grow leafy vegetables on less-contaminated fields, but are finding consumers too scared to buy their risky produce.
But Mr Shirado is clearly not a man to moan and mope. Instead he has come to Australia as head of a consortium of Fukushima farmers to see if north Queensland’s fertile Burdekin valley might hold the solution to his prefecture’s long-term fallout-affected food problems.
Mr Shirado’s dream now is to turn the sugarcane fields around Ayr into fertile flooded rice paddies growing Japanese rice varieties in traditional organic ways, to supply the people of his ruined home prefecture once again with their staple food…… ”So far this looks like being a very good area for growing rice; I think we can grow four crops a year here and the water is very pure too.”……http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/japan-farmer-harvests-hope-in-our-soil/story-e6frg6nf-1226363955828
EPA recommendation on uranium mine a dangerous new low – Australian Greens
“Toro has not revealed estimates of future mine closure liability and has not submitted a final rehabilitation plan. This is remarkable given the company intends for post-closure liability to pass to Australian taxpayers only 10 years after mining ceases, though the consequences of the mine will endure for many centuries. This project should not proceed until there is a full public inquiry as provided for under the Act into the wider environmental and public health consequences of uranium mining in WA.”
May 21st, 2012 The Environmental Protection Agency should change its name after today’s appalling recommendation to approve Western Australia’s first uranium mine at Wiluna, WA Greens said today.
Greens national spokesperson on nuclear policy Senator Scott Ludlam said “The proposal by Toro Energy is full of gaping holes. If the EPA is prepared to back this half-baked, messy scheme – it sets a dangerous low standard for uranium mining in Western Australia”.
“The EPA recommends that the Minister ‘notes the EPA has concluded that it is likely that the EPA’s objectives would be achieved’. Well if this shoddy plan is all it takes to achieve the EPA’s objectives, then its objectives need to be reformed urgently in the interest of public health and safety.”
In his submission to the EPA, Senator Ludlam had identified a several alarming flaws in company’s impact assessment of the proposed mine. Read more »
Musicians in the struggle for Aboriginals’ justice against Australia’s nuclear industry
The band also show their passionate connections to country in the song “Story”, whose deep story belies its brief lyrics. ”Behind the lyrics lie one of the darkest stories of modern Australian history,” says Basil. “The dispossession of desert people by our country’s involvement in the atomic bomb-making industry.
“In the ’50s and ’60s, two groups of desert people living thousands and thousands of kilometres apart were taken out of their homelands. The song’s lyrics name those places. ”In the north, Pintubi people were taken to Papunya. Blue-streak rockets fired from Woomera landed on their country. “In the south, Maralinga pe
Anti-nuclear brothers are radio activists, Green Left , May 21, 2012,By Mat Ward Nuclear Kop The Super Raelene Brothers www.superraelenebrothers.com.au
Anti-nuclear activist band The Super Raelene Brothers first made it into the pages of Green Left Weekly in 1995. But the duo, who have just dropped their latest atomic-bomb-atomising EP, Nuclear Kop, were making m usic way before then….. We create songs that celebrate what we see and where we are. We also build songs that voice concern about what is happening or not happening in our local community.”
Those concerns have led them to release songs such as “‘Wiya Angela-Pamela”, which went to number 1 on Triple J’s Unearthed charts in 2010, and a cover of Redgum’s 1980 classic “Nuclear Cop” ― both available as free downloads on their website . Read more »
India’s democracy in peril
Should India’s troubled democracy give way to an authoritarian, and more militaristic regime – should Australia be send ing India uranium, the fuel for its nuclear weapons? - Christina Macpherson
Australia’s next big problem: India’s democracy, SMH, May 21, 2012 Here’s a nasty thought: the big threat to Australia’s commodities-underwritten prosperity extending out to 2030 and beyond is India’s democracy. Much worse though is the threat that irresponsible democracy poses to India itself.
Present crises aside, Australia’s is supposed to live happily ever after thanks to India picking up the commodities demand slack as the Chinese economy matures, thus extending our resources boom for another decade or
two,….,
India barely has manufacturing industry thanks to a conspiracy of poisonous protectionism, stifling bureaucracy and
endemic corruption, never mind the gross waste of resources that is the caste system……
.Should the day arrive when one brand or another of authoritarianism – nationalistic, religious or military – is able to seize control through gross government failure, lack of demand for Australian coking coal could be the least of the region’s concerns. http://www.smh.com.au/business/australias-next-big-problem-indias-democracy-20120521-1z08u.html#ixzz1vYS6w3JG
Success of solar power is giving a shock to Australia’s utilities
Fear and loathing as utilities grasp impact of solar PV, REneweconomy By Giles Parkinson 21 May 2012 Australia’s power generators and electricity network operators are viewing the rapid falls in the cost of solar PV and an anticipated surge in installation with an increasing level of concern.
The potential of solar PV to deliver cost-effective options for home and commercial consumers has been apparent to many in the industry for some time.
The report delivered by the Victorian Competition and Efficiency Commission into solar feed-in tariffs merely confirmed this, and offered it as a potential excuse for the utilities’ apparently lack of enthusiasm to ensure connections for solar PV and other forms of distributed energy.
While plunging costs are good news for consumers, who can turn to solar PV in increasing numbers with the emergence of innovative financing solutions, it is a massive headache for the incumbent generators and network operators, who are about to witness business models built up over decades being shredded by a technology that is as disruptive to the electricity industry as mobile phones were to telecoms…..
Australia has just over 1.5GW of solar PV installed on rooftops now – so there is little apparent impact on the NEM as it stands. By 2020, when the percentage of households with solar PV is expected to treble from around 7 per cent now to 19-20 per cent, the impact is significant.
By 2030 and 2035, it takes a large slice out of the generators’ earnings pie – an impact that has already been established in Germany, which has 25GW of solar PV and counting, and which we documented in our piece “Why generators are terrified of solar.”
It should be remembered that the profit projections – and the debt repayments – built into the Australian generators’ financing models depend almost entirely on the “super dividend” they receive when peak demand surges and the cost of wholesale electricity rises up to 10-fold for just a few hours of the year. A large deployment of solar PV will quite literally throw a spanner in those works…… http://reneweconomy.com.au/2012/fear-and-loathing-as-utilities-grasp-impact-of-solar-pv-15262
Revolutionary new Australian project studies runaway climate change
Australian Project Simulates Runaway Climate Change Climate Central : May 19th, 2012 By Oliver Milman, The Guardian An Australian university has embarked upon an ambitious project — hailed as the first of its kind in the world — to simulate how the environment would cope with runaway climate change.
The decade-long study, at the University of Western Sydney’s Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment , will subject Australian bushland to heightened CO2 levels and altered rainfall patterns consistent with a “business as usual” global increase in greenhouse gases. Read more »
Australia’s Clean Energy Finance money is going to dirty gas, rather than renewables
Gas is not a new, emerging technology worthy of support. Gas power would keep Australia on a very high path of emissions compared with world averages.
It would take the building of a few initial solar thermal plants to bring its building costs down to a reasonable, commercially viable level.
But the CEFC is clearly not aiming at that result….
The conclusion is that the CEFC will probably do nothing to break the grip of the fossil fuel industry “greenhouse mafia” on Australia’s politics and energy supply.
First, because it has so much potential for supporting “clean” gas, not really clean renewable energy.
Clean energy finance, or gas industry handouts? http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/51071, May 19, 2012 By Ben Courtice A concentrated solar thermal power plant. The CEFC will probably do nothing to break the grip of the fossil fuel industry “greenhouse mafia” on Australia’s politics and energy supply. The Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) is being set up under the Clean Energy Future legislation (the carbon price package). It will provide $10 billion to support renewable and low-emissions energy.
That’s the message that most climate-concerned people have been hearing from the Labor government and the Greens.
Unfortunately, it now seems overly optimistic. The recently completed CEFC expert review shows it may give most of its support to gas projects. Read more »
Australia’s love-in with USA and NATO
(I don’t know about the rest of Australians, but I found this article a bit sick-making – Christina Macpherson)
every time NATO deploys Australia is there as a great, great friend of the United States.
The increased formalisation of ties between NATO and partnership countries will be discussed at a meeting on Monday to be addressed by the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.
US turns the screws on NATO, lauds its ally Australia SMH, May 19, 2012 ”… the report was enthusiastic of the expanding role of non-NATO partnership countries, such as Australia, which was, it noted, among a small group of countries that contributed ”real combat or niche capabilities to the mission” in Afghanistan. Read more »
Pakistan says it, as well as India, should get Australian uranium
Pakistan has contended that since Australia has lifted its ban for a country that has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it too should be allowed to benefit from the concession.
Uranium sale: Australia says cases of India, Pak different, Business Standard, 18 May 12, Unlike Pakistan, India has an exemption from Nuclear Suppliers Group Press Trust of India / Islamabad May 18, 2012, Amid Pakistan’s demand that it be given access to Australian uranium for which India has been granted green light, Australia has said it
believes Islamabad is not eligible to buy the yellow cake from it. Read more »
Australia will be an international pariah if new Northern Territory Intervention laws go ahead
The chairman of the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples says it’s a major disappointment that the Government is extending laws for another 10 years, without the consent of the people concerned. Les Malezer says the laws are racist. Read more »
Australia’s relentless growth is destroying Australia’s environment
We’re losing the natural places and things that make Australia Australia. And we’re losing our ability to get out there, to notice and to care about that.
Next year let’s give the environment its first proper slice of the Budget pie.
Crumbs not enough for our environment, The West.com.au Charlie Sherwin May 17, 2012, “……….In this day and age do we really so desperately need another coal mine, or another surge of urban growth? Enter the pesky greens, so that now it’s not just the wildlife getting in our way, but the environmental regulations that stop us taking more habitat and growing our bottom line.
The COAG business forum, the Premiers, the Government and the Opposition are right now ganging up to protect the bottom line by “streamlining” regulation and reducing the Federal Government’s role in environment protection.
It’s a global economy, and after a couple of hundred years of this we’ve grown and used a quarter of the Earth’s natural energy, half of its freshwater run-off and two-thirds of its habitable land surface to feed our unrelenting growth.
So we’re displacing other species. Australia’s landscapes, bush and wildlife are paying for our growth. Read more »
Western Australia’s repressive police regime, in the interests of mining companies
So is this the new Australia, produced by the longest mining boom in our history? One in which the views of residents and traditional owners are meaningless and where the state provides armies of foot soldiers, free of charge, to the big end of town? All this while the companies behind the project remain stony silent about actions taken in their name to divide and destroy Broome.
Not a word when last year Aboriginal women and their grandchildren were dragged away by tactical response police to allow the safe passage of Woodside’s contractors down the access road to James Price Point.
Miners hiding behind Barnett’s police army BY:LYNDON SCHNEIDERS . The Australian , May 19, 2012 THIS week the government of Western Australia dispatched about 200 police officers to the sleepy tourist town of Broome to do the dirty work for several of the world’s largest oil and gas companies.
This mini army has been assembled on the doorstep of the Kimberley wilderness for one purpose — to suppress the widespread opposition of the Broome community to the construction of the proposed $40 billion James Price Point industrial precinct.
In a startling admission, WA police commissioner Karl O’Callaghan confirmed earlier this week that the decision to drag police off their beats across the state and send them to Broome would cost taxpayers $100,000 a day, for an undisclosed period and with no cost to the companies involved in the project. The final bill will likely be several million dollars.
All this to move away and silence a dogged and growing band of locals who have stood in the way of the plans of a consortium of the world’s biggest companies, including Shell, Chevron, Woodside, BP and BHP Billiton, to build this massive gas plant in a beautiful and sensitive part of the remote Dampier Peninsula. Read more »
Australian uranium company Paladin has to raise wages after African workers’ strike
Paladin agrees to hike salaries Daily Times, , 18 May 2012 Caroline Kandiero Paladin Energy Limited has agreed to review salaries for its local workers but in six months time following the kwacha devaluation.
Workers at Kayelekera Uranium Mine in Karonga run by Paladin from Friday May 11 walked off the mine site in protest against the company’s refusal to agree to a demand to grant an immediate 66 percent pay increase following the recent 50 percent devaluation of the national currency….
http://www.bnltimes.com/index.php/daily-times/headlines/sports/6452-paladin-agrees-to-hike-salaries
Dubious future for uranium market – will BHP pull the plug on the Olympic Dam project?
projects such as the massive expansion of the Olympic Dam copper-uranium mine in Australia and the potash development in Canada are far less certain…… Where the money is put will say a lot about their expectations for demand for specific commodities now and into the future.
Knives Are Out, But Will BHP and Rio Cut?, WSJ, By Robb M. Stewart, May 16, 2012, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto have signaled that harder times lie ahead for global miners but have given little indication of where the cuts, if any, will come to the billions of dollars worth of mining projects that both have in the pipeline in Australia and globally.
Neither is backtracking on their long held view about China’s long-term demand for iron ore and coal, but it is now clear that not every expansion project is guaranteed to get off the ground in the current environment–and those that do will be phased in over a longer time period…
… “Clearly what we’ve seen over the last 12 months or so is that our projected rate of cash generation has changed. So on balance while we still want to invest throughout the cycle, it just means that our ability to do those projects will change as the cash flow generation has changed,” Marius Kloppers, chief executive of BHP, told a mining conference in Miami overnight…..
Jacques Nasser, the mining giant’s chairman, speaking in Sydney on
Wednesday made it even clearer: the US$80 billion over five years that
BHP has previously said would be invested on its mining and petroleum
businesses, is no longer a target. Read more »
This month
For international news, go to nuclear-news ion for Western Australia’s energy future
http://ifyoulovethisplanet.org/?p=5755 Mary Olson on how women are more vulnerable to atomic radiation
- Muckaty Gathering 25 May 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1J9q-OeEO4 - NuclearKop http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpMhhzkeYjk
Anti nuclear action below: - more info at Action Australia « Antinuclear and at Event details « Antinuclear
- http://www.communityrun.org/petitions/put-the-brakes-on-toxic-trucks-no-nuclear-waste-at-muckaty
- Online Petition - against the proposed national radioactive waste dump at Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory http://www.gopetition.com.au/petitions/no-nuclear-waste-dump-at-muckaty.htmlUranium Free WA Sign the online charter saying no to uranium mining in Western Australia http://ccwa.org.au/takeaction/uraniumnotforsaleSIGN THE PETITION TO STOP LYNAS RARE EARTH EXPORTS TO MALAYSIA http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/ban-rare-earth-exports/
EVENTS
- May 29 – Melbourne - Amnesty International panel on weapons and war .
- May 29 – 30 Melbourne - Wind Farms conference
- May 30 Darwin - expert Panel on Nuclear Waste Dump plan for Muckaty
- June 2 - Nuclear Abolition Day
- June 13 - Melbourne -Lizards Revenge -Shut Roxby Down
- June 14 Melbourne Beyond Zero Emissions ZCA 2020 plan.
- June 19 - Melbourne Public meeting US FORCES IN AUSTRALIA: SECURITY OR THREAT? USforcesflyer-2.pdf
The Nuclear/uranium industry and WOMEN - theme for May 2012
Deceptive information given to women about breast cancer. Women are repeatedly told about “genetic causes”, about “risks of obesity:. about “diet factors”, about “not having babies”, or “having a baby at a later age” even about “stress” – as causes of breast cancer. The not so subtle message is that it is THEIR FAULT – a problem caused by the individual woman, so – the only preventive actions must be those made by individual women.
The facts are otherwise. The single most proven cause of breast cancer is ionising radiation. After that, other environmental causes exist, amongst the wash of chemicals, and synthetic hormones, that pervade our environment. After that – probably some hereditary susceptability, amongst some women.
Why is this so? One could conclude that breast cancer is a growth industry. There’s money at every point in this sorry cycle – from the radiation from nuclear fuel through to the medical radiation used to detect and treat breast cancer. There is no money clearly involved in shutting down a toxic industry, and preventing millions of breast cancers.
How does ionising radiation cause breast cancer? Ionising radiation comes in several forms. for example, Gamma rays, x-rays, and some sub-atomic particles such as alpha particles and protons In ionising radiation, a tiny electron is released from an atom, and enters a body cell, hitting the DNA in the cell’s nucleus, and damaging it. The damaged DNA sends out ‘wrong’ messages telling the cell to divide in an uncontrolled manner – cancer develops.
“...the time between radiation exposure and breast cancer development is longest in young women and shortest for older women; young children do not show a detectable elevation in breast cancer occurrence for some 35 to 40 years after exposure. Radiation-induced breast cancers appear to occur later in life during the same ages when breast cancer rates, in general, begin to increase. It appears that a single exposure of sufficient dose during early life can increase breast cancer risk even 50 years later...
the relationship between radiation dose and breast cancer risk can be described by a straight line which implies that no matter how low the dose, there is some small risk associated with the exposure.…
The risk of subsequent breast cancer from very high doses is lower than that which might be expected from the effects of lower doses. This is because radiation at high doses is an effective killer of cells and dead cells are not able to develop into cancer…..
Young girls are at highest risk …when a young girl is exposed to radiation, she will have menstrual cycles for several decades that might enhance the development of any underlying damage caused by the radiation. There is evidence to suggest that exposure to the immature breast during early development, and around the age of beginning menstruation, carries a higher risk than at other times of a woman’s life.
It is unclear how radiation exposure of the breast during pregnancy affects a woman’s breast cancer risk. However, a recent study of women treated for Hodgkin’s disease concluded that pregnancy might be a time of increased sensitivity of breast tissue to the cancercausing effects of radiation……”
.” John D Boyce, Jr, DSc, Scientific Director,Program on Breast Cancer and Environmental Risk Factors in New York State.. Ionizing Radiation and Breast Cancer Risk
