Nick Xenophon Team will block cuts to Australian Renewable Energy Agency: What About Labor?
Nick Xenophon Team’s decision to block ARENA cuts puts pressure on Labor http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-10/labor-under-pressure-amid-renewable-energy-funding-cuts/7832656 AM By political reporter Naomi Woodley The fate of future funding for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) now rests firmly with the Federal Opposition, after the Nick Xenophon Team (NXT) confirmed it would block the Government’s proposed budget cut.
Key points:
- $1.3bn cut is contained in Government’s omnibus savings bill
- Passing of bill to devastate renewable energy industry, Nick Xenophon says
- Labor caucus expected to consider funding cut on Tuesday
The $1.3 billion cut is contained in the Government’s omnibus savings bill, which is currently before Parliament.
Senator Xenophon said if the bill was passed it would devastate the renewable energy industry in Australia.
The real risk of the Government’s slashing of the renewable energy fund, ARENA, is that we will see a brain drain of our best and brightest leaving this country,” he said.
The Government wants to cut ARENA’s funding as part of plans to set up a Clean Energy Innovation Fund that would hand out loans instead of direct grants.
Senator Xenophon said while his team would not support the funding cut, there was scope to change the way ARENA worked.
“There ought to be a change in the funding mechanism to ensure that if a renewable energy technology has commercial success then the grant ought to be repaid, and there ought to be the ability for ARENA to take an equity in that project so it can reap the benefit of that,” he said.
He will ask Labor to support such an amendment when the bill reaches the Senate.
‘Acid is now on Labor’
The NXT’s decision to block the funding cut puts more pressure on Labor to decide how it will vote. Continue reading
Banks ready to back big solar projects: renewable energy jobs on the rise
Banks looking even closer at backing big solar projects: Clean Energy Council, Brisbane Times, Tony Moore , 8 Sept 16, Australian banks will invest more heavily in solar energy projects within the next 12 months, Clean Energy Council chief executive Kane Thornton said after Thursday’s announcement that 12 new solar farms Australia-wide had been backed by $100 million from the federal government.
The federal government’s Australian Renewable Energy Agency on Thursday announced 12 large-scale solar projects – six in Queensland – had received federal support.
ARENA chief executive Ivor Frischknecht said improved efficiencies had meant solar energy producers were getting much more bang for their funding buck than they were even two years ago. “In 2014, the grant funding needed for large-scale solar projects was $1.60 a watt,” Mr Frischknecht said.”In 2015, this dropped to 43 cents at the EOI stage of ARENA’s $100 million large-scale solar funding round; and to an average of 28 cents in June 2016 when full applications were submitted,” he said.
“The average requirement of the projects we are taking forward today is an incredible 19 cents a watt.”
Mr Thornton said solar projects would soon begin to rely less on federal government for funding to begin operations. “We really at the threshold of saying that once we see another round of these of these projects we are going to see the costs decline to the point when they are built on their own, without the government support,” he said. “I think it is months, if not maybe a year or so, before we can expect them to go ahead without further funding.”
Mr Thornton said banks were now closely examining the viability of investing more heavily in solar and renewable energy projects in Australia.
The first major investment in solar energy by Australian banks came in 2013 when NAB and ANZ invested in a 20 megawatt solar plant in Canberra. More investment in solar plants followed, while banks have questioned some large new coal projects……….
Mr Thornton said scale of new solar farm plants was lowering production costs to the point where it was “cost comparative’ with coal and gas.
Mr Thornton said it was now time to begin training workforces that worked in traditional energy supply companies to work in renewable energy. http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/banks-looking-even-closer-at-backing-big-solar-projects-clean-energy-council-20160908-grc5ol.html
Stockholm Environment Institute very critical of Australia’s high rate of carbon emissions
Australia’s carbon budget to be exhausted in six years, Stockholm group says http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/australias-carbon-budget-to-be-exhausted-in-six-years-stockholm-group-says-20160908-grbql4.html Peter Hannam
Australia will burn through its “fair share” of carbon within six years if the more-ambitious end of the global warming goals agreed to at the Paris climate summit is to be achieved, a respected European think-tank says.
Restricting warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial times implies a global carbon budget of less than 250 billion tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent from 2015, the Stockholm Environment Institute said in a new study. The planet has warmed about 1 degree in the past century alone.
Taking Australia’s share of this budget to be 1 per cent – arguably a generous measure as the nation makes up just 0.3 per cent of the world’s population – the country will emit that 2.5 billion-tonne portion within six years at present polluting rates.
“[Australia’s] transformation to a post-carbon era must be rapid and comprehensive, and include diversification away from fossil extraction for energy and export,” Sivan Kartha, the author of the report, said.
Among the world’s largest polluters on a per-capita basis, Australia had “a high level of responsibility for the greenhouse gases that have caused the climate problem”. Its wealth and technical capabilities, though, also gave Australia “a level of capacity to help solve it”, the report says.
Geoffrey Cousins, president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, said the Turnbull government “had made new commitments in Paris, talked them up when they came back but not a single policy has changed since then”.
“There is no great urgency, things will just roll nicely on, and we continue to approve new coal mines,” Mr Cousins said, adding the Stockholm report revealed how little time was left to take serious steps to cut emissions.
Two developments on Thursday offered conflicting signals of government action on climate.
As revealed by Fairfax Media, $92 million in grant funding by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency had sparked almost as much as $1 billion in private funding that will triple the size of large-scale solar in the country.
The government also announced $30.05 million to fund a new ARC Centre for Excellence for Climate Extremes. The seven-year funding will mean the existing centre, based at the University of NSW, can morph into a group study on why rising temperatures are triggering a disproportionate increase in extremes such as heatwaves.
According to the Stockholm report, a large fraction of the world’s proved fossil fuel reserves will have to stay in the ground for any “plausible budget” to keep global warming the “well-below 2 degrees” goal agreed in Paris.
That means the market for Australia’s fossil fuel exports will need to “rapidly reduce and ultimately disappear”.
“Action taken to increase Australia’s capacity for fossil fuel production – such as increasing export capacity or commissioning new coal mines – is difficult to reconcile with the goals of the Paris Agreement,” the report says.
Australia is the world’s second-biggest coal exporter and also the second-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas.
Michael Anderson on the question of a Treaty with Aboriginal people
Our people today are signing Indigenous Land Use Agreements, ILUAs, without truly understanding what they are surrendering to the oppressor colonial state and no-one fully informs them of the consequences. Will a treaty be the same?
Justice Willis [in R v Bonjon, Supreme Court of New South Wales 1841] adds: “I repeat that I am not aware of any express enactment or treaty subjecting the Aborigines of this colony to the English colonial law, and I have shown that the Aborigines cannot be considered as Foreigners in a Kingdom which is their own”.
Justice Willis then reasoned that: “Aboriginal people remained ‘unconquered and free, entitled to be regarded as ‘self-governing communities’. Their rights ‘as distinct people’ could not be considered to have been ‘tacitly surrendered’. As they were ‘by no means devoid of legal capacity’ and had ‘laws and usages of their own’, ‘treaties should be made with them’. The colonists were ‘uninvited intruders’, the Aborigines ‘the native sovereigns of the soil’ “
We are under occupation by a foreign power, which keeps us in our place by superior force Ghillar, Michael Anderson https://linksunten.indymedia.org/en/node/190003 by: Ghillar, Michael Anderson (Account: Nuclear Worrier)09. September 2016. Bathurst, Put clearly, Australia does not have its own sovereignty. Under its British constitution all governments in Australia are caretakers in occupation and govern for the non-Aboriginal people who call themselves Australians. In point of fact federal, state and territory governments govern in right of the crown of Britain. Former prime ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott appear demented when opposing treaties.
By Ghillar, Michael Anderson, Convenor of the Sovereign Union, last surviving member of the founding four of the Aboriginal Embassyand Head of state of the Euahlayi People’s Republic
Former prime ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott confirmed yesterday (8/9/16) that they vigorously oppose any ideas of a treaty between the Commonwealth of Australia and First Nations peoples in Australia: ‘John Howard has described talk of a treaty as “appalling” ….”I’m appalled at talk about treaty, that will be so divisive and will fail,” Mr Howard said and Tony Abbott says he has never supported the idea. …”A treaty is something that two nations make with each other, and obviously Aboriginal people are the first Australians, but in the end we’re all Australians together, so I don’t support a treaty.” [ http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-08/conservatives-lock-in-against-treaty-with-indigenous-australians/7825298 ] Continue reading
Traditional Owners fight on: appeal Carmichael mine Federal Court decision
http://wanganjagalingou.com.au/traditional-owners-fight-on-appeal-carmichael-mine-federal-court-decision/ 8 September 2016
“An appeal to the full bench of the Federal Court of Australia was filed today by -senior Traditional Owner and spokesperson for the Wangan and Jagalingou (W&J) family council, Mr Adrian Burragubba, challenging a decision of Justice Reeves in relation to the Queensland government’s issuing of mining leases for Adani’s Carmichael coal mine, handed down on 19th August 2016.
“Mr Burragubba said: “We said ‘no means no’ and so we will continue to resist this damaging coal mine that will tear the heart out of our Country. The stakes are huge.In the spirit of our ancestors, we will continue to fight for justice until the project falls over.
““The decision of the Native Title Tribunal in April 2015 to allow the issuing of the mining leases by the Queensland government took away our right to free, prior and informed consent.
It effectively allowed the government to override the decision that we made nearly two years ago to reject Adani’s ‘deal’,” Mr Burragubba said. … “
Australian Conservation Foundation ordered to pay costs for Adani case
September 8, 2016. ENVIRONMENTALISTS have been hit with a massive bill after a Federal Court ruling in just one of many cases against the Adani coal project, while a second group has launched yet another attempt to derail the project….. (subscribers only)
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/crime-and-justice/australian-conservation-foundation-ordered-to-pay-costs-for-adani-case/news-story/20a030d675a2edb873a9888fd1e152ea
Last year, all of China’s new power demand was met by wind and solar
Data: All China’s new power demand met by wind and solar last year http://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2016/09/08/data-chinas-new-power-demand-met-wind-solar-last-year/ [good graphs] September 8, 2016 by Joe Sandler Clarke @JSandlerClarke China dramatically increased the portion of its electricity generated from wind and solar in 2015, with the growth in the two forms of power alone exceeding the rise in the country’s total electricity demand.
Wind and solar comfortably met this new demand, producing 186.3 TWh and 38.3 TWh of electricity in 2015, compared to 153.4 TWh and 23.3 TWh the year before. That’s a dramatic increase: 21% and 64%, respectively.
To give those numbers more context, China’s increase in power generation from wind and solar in 2015 (48 TWh) alone was twice Ireland’s entire electricity demand the previous year (24 TWh).
Half UK energy needs In fact, Chinese wind alone could have met more than half the UK’s entire energy needs in 2015 (304 TWh).
The expansion of renewable energy generation was made possible by China vastly increasing its wind and solar capacity in 2015, up 28% and 54% respectively on 12 months previously. In total, the country made up nearly half of the world’s new solar and wind capacity last year.
Coal use falls The increased use of renewable energy, together with a marked economic shift away from heavy industry sectors, has meant that coal use in the country has dropped for a third year in a row, though it is still the biggest source of global CO2 emissions.
Last week, China announced that it was ratifying the Paris climate agreement, alongside the United States, in a move widely hailed as historic.
With the American presidential election now just two months away, it remains to be seen whether the States will be able to catch up in the race to lead the post-fossil fuels global economy. See the full dataset here.
Storage for renewable energy racing ahead in USA, with costs plummeting
Year over year, energy storage deployments were up just 1%. What the market lacked in annual growth, however, it made up for in geographic and market-segment diversification. Continue reading
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 