Be worried when fossil fuel lobbyists support current environmental laws

Chris McGrath, The University of Queensland

The fossil fuel lobby, led by the Minerals Council of Australia, seem pretty happy with the current system of environment laws. In a submission to a review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, it “broadly” supports the existing laws and does not want them replaced.

True, the group says the laws impose unnecessary burdens on industry that hinder post-pandemic economic recovery. It wants delays and duplication in environmental regulation reduced to provide consistency and certainty.

But for the fossil fuel industry to broadly back the current regime of environmental protection is remarkable. It suggests deep problems with the current laws, which have allowed decision-making driven by politics, rather than independent science.

So let’s look at the resources industry’s stance on environment laws, and what it tells us.

Cut duplication

The Minerals Council’s submission calls for “eliminating or reducing duplication” of federal and state laws.

The fossil fuel lobby has long railed against environmental law – the EPBC Act in particular – disparaging it as “green tape” that it claims slows projects unnecessarily and costs the industry money.

On this, the federal government and the mining industry are singing from the same songbook. Announcing the review of the laws last year, the government flagged changes that it claimed would speed up approvals and reduce costs to industry.

Previous governments have tried to reduce duplication of environmental laws. In 2013 the Abbott government proposed a “one-stop shop” in which it claimed projects would be considered under a single environmental assessment and approval process, rather than scrutinised separately by state and federal authorities.

That proposal hit many political and other hurdles and was never enacted. But it appears to remain on the federal government’s policy agenda.

It’s true the federal EPBC Act often duplicates state approvals for mining and other activities. But it still provides a safety net that in theory allows the federal government to stop damaging projects approved by state governments.

The Commonwealth rarely uses this power, but has done so in the past. In the most famous example, the Labor party led by Bob Hawke won the federal election in 1983 and stopped the Tasmanian Liberal government led by Robin Gray building a major hydroelectric dam on the Gordon River below its junction with the Franklin River.

The High Court’s decision in that dispute laid the foundation for the EPBC Act, which was enacted in 1999.

In 2009 Peter Garrett, Labor’s then-federal environment minister, refused the Queensland Labor government’s proposed Traveston Crossing Dam on the Mary River under the EPBC Act due to an unacceptable impact on threatened species.

The Conversation put these arguments to the Minerals Council of Australia, and CEO Tania Constable said:

The MCA’s submission states that Australia’s world-leading minerals sector is committed to the protection of our unique environment, including upholding leading practice environmental protection based on sound science and robust risk-based approaches.

Reforms to the operation of the EPBC Act are needed to address unnecessary duplication and complexity, providing greater certainty for businesses and the community while achieving sound environmental outcomes.

But don’t change the current system much

Generally, the Minerals Council and other resources groups aren’t lobbying for the current system to be changed too much.

The groups support the federal environment minister retaining the role of decision maker under the law. This isn’t surprising, given a succession of ministers has, for the past 20 years, given almost unwavering approval to resource projects.

For example, in 2019 the then-minister Melissa Price approved the Adani coal mine’s groundwater management plan, despite major shortcomings and gaps in knowledge and data about its impacts.

Independent scientific advice against the mine over the last ten years was sidelined in the minister’s final decision.

Countless more examples demonstrate how the current system works in the favour of mining interests – even when the industry itself claims otherwise.

The Minerals Council submission refers to an unnamed “Queensland open-cut coal expansion project” to argue against excessive duplication of federal and state processes around water use.

I believe this is a reference to the New Acland Coal Mine Stage 3 expansion project. I have acted since 2016 as a barrister for a local landholder group in litigation against that project.

When approached by The Conversation, the Minerals Council did not confirm it was referring to the New Acland project. Tania Constable said:

The case studies were submitted from a range of companies, and are representative of the regulatory inefficiency and uncertainty which deters investment and increases costs while greatly limiting job opportunities and economic benefits for regional communities from mining.

The New Acland mine expansion is on prime agricultural land on the Darling Downs, Queensland’s southern food bowl. Nearby farmers strongly opposed the project over fears of damage to groundwater, the creation of noise and dust, and climate change impacts.

But the Minerals Council fails to mention that since 2016, the mine has been building a massive new pit covering 150 hectares.

West Pit at the New Acland Coal Mine sprawling amid prime agricultural land in 2018. The right half of this pit is outside the area approved for mining under the EPBC Act in 2017 but no action has been taken by the Commonwealth to stop it.
Oakey Coal Action Alliance Inc, Author provided

When mining of this pit began, the mine’s expansion was still being assessed under state and federal laws. Half of the pit was subsequently approved under the EPBC Act in 2017.

But the Queensland environment department never stopped the work, despite the Land Court of Queensland in 2018 alerting it to the powers it had to act.

Based on my own research using satellite imagery and comparing the publicly available application documents, mining of West Pit started while Stage 3 of the mine was still being assessed under the EPBC Act. And after approval was given, mining was conducted outside the approved footprint.

The extent of West Pit on September 30, 2016 and relevant boundaries of the New Acland Coal Mine Stage 3 expansion, then being assessed under the EPBC Act. At this time, West Pit had extended into the project area still being assessed. Stage 3 was approved in early 2017, and since then West Pit has continued south, outside the area applied for or approved under the EPBC Act.
Adapted from GoogleEarth by author.

Despite these apparent breaches, the federal environment department has taken no enforcement action.

The Conversation contacted New Hope Group, the company that owns New Acland mine, for comment, and they refuted this assertion. Chief Operating Officer Andrew Boyd said:

New Hope Group strongly deny any allegations that New Hope Coal has in any way acted unlawfully.

New Acland Coal had and still has all necessary approvals relating to the development of the pit Dr McGrath refers to. It is also not correct to say that the Land Court alerted the Department of its powers to act with regards to this pit.

The Department is obviously aware of its enforcement powers and was aware of the development of the pit well before 2018. Further, the Land Court in 2018 rejected Dr McGrath’s arguments and accepted New Acland Coal’s position that any issues relating to the lawfulness of the pit were not within the jurisdiction of the Land Court on the rehearing in 2018.

Accordingly, the lawfulness of the pit was irrelevant to the 2018 Land Court hearing.

Dr McGrath also fails to mention that his client had originally accepted in the original Land Court hearing (2015-2017) that the development of the pit was lawful only to completely change its position in the 2018.

State and federal environmental laws work in favour of the fossil fuel industry in other ways. “Regulatory capture” occurs when government regulators essentially stop enforcing the law against industries they are supposed to regulate.

This can occur for many reasons, including agency survival and to avoid confrontation with powerful political groups such as farmers or the mining sector.

In one apparent example of this, the federal environment department decided in 2019 not to recommend two critically endangered Murray-Darling wetlands for protection under the EPBC Act because the minister was unlikely to support the listings following a campaign against them by the National Irrigators Council.

Holes in our green safety net

Recent ecological disasters are proof our laws are failing us catastrophically. And they make the mining industry’s calls to speed-up project approvals particularly audacious.

We need look only to repeated, mass coral bleaching as the Great Barrier Reef collapses in front of us, or a catastrophic summer of bushfires.

Both tragedies are driven by climate change, caused by burning fossil fuels. It’s clear Australia should be looking to fix the glaring holes in our green safety net, not widen them.

Chris McGrath, Associate Professor in Environmental and Planning Regulation and Policy, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia’s electricity grid can easily support electric cars – if we get smart

File 20190411 44790 1myde16.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1 — Smart meters can help share the load of charging electric cars.
Chris Hunkeler/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Marcus Brazil, University of Melbourne

Following opposition leader Bill Shorten’s policy announcement that 50% of new cars will be electric by 2030, questions have been raised about the ability of the electricity grid to cope with the increased demand associated with a substantial increase in the use of electric vehicles.

These concerns are not completely unfounded. Modelling and research at the University of Melbourne, conducted as part of a project led by Professor Iven Mareels, has shown that in Victoria even fairly modest rates of electric vehicle uptake could have a major impact on the electricity distribution grid.

However, these problems would be caused by uncoordinated charging, with battery recharging occurring as soon as the driver returns home and plugs in the car. With some simple coordination – perhaps using smart meters – Australia’s grid can easily support far more electric vehicles for decades to come.

The problems

It’s helpful to first understand the challenges to the grid posed by a high number of electric vehicles. The focus here is on the low voltage electricity distribution network, by which we mean the part of the grid “downstream” from local transformers that directly supply electricity to homes and businesses.

This includes most of the grid infrastructure that we see around us every day, such as residential power lines and pole-mounted transformers. Electric vehicle charging can affect this infrastructure in a number of different ways.

Power demand

An electric car with a typical daily commute of 40km requires roughly 6–8 kilowatt hours of energy to recharge, which is equivalent to the daily needs of a small household. In other words, if you purchase an electric vehicle, the impact on the local electricity network is about the same as adding a small house to the neighbourhood.

And in an unregulated environment most electric vehicle owners are likely to plug in and begin charging when they arrive home, around 6 to 7 pm, which is the time residential electricity networks experience peak demand. This can lead to network failures, or component overload where assets such as distribution transformers and the utility lines run beyond their nominal current ratings and capacity limits, substantially shortening their lifetimes.

Voltage drop

Voltage can be thought of as the “electrical pressure” in the network. Each utility line in the distribution network has an associated impedance, meaning that the voltage at each house in the network decreases the further it is from the distribution transformer. As more current is drawn through the lines due to the charging of electric vehicles, this decrease in voltage is exacerbated. If the voltage in some houses falls below regulated limits, household appliances may fail or suffer.

Phase unbalance and power quality

Electricity distribution networks in Australia are generally three-phase, meaning there are three lines carrying the current, each a third of a cycle out of phase with the others. Most houses connect to only one of these phases. If a disproportionate number of households with electric vehicles all happen to be connected to the same phase, then that phase can get out of balance with the others, leading to a significant loss of efficiency in the network. Mass electric vehicle charging could also affect the overall quality of the power in the network, for example by distorting the shape of the 50Hz waveform that carries the current.

Modelling and simulations, based on real Australian data, have shown these negative impacts on the grid can occur at fairly low rates of electric vehicle ownership. For example, in a study based on an area in Melbourne it was shown that an electric vehicle penetration of only 10% can lead to network failures in an unregulated environment.

Getting smart

The good news is that all of these problems can be prevented by implementing a smart charging framework: shifting electric vehicle demand away from peak times.

Electric vehicles are among the most flexible loads in the grid. Unlike showering, cooking and heating our homes, we can shift the demand to other times, such as overnight, when there is more capacity in the network. The trade-off, of course, is that it takes longer until the vehicle is fully charged.

However, most owners are unlikely to notice this, as long as the car is charged and ready to go by the time they need to leave for work. Furthermore a standard commute will generally mean there is enough spare battery capacity to allow the car to be taken out for an emergency late-night run, even if it is not yet fully charged.

Shifting electric vehicle load. If vehicle charging is not controlled, there is a significant increase in peak demand. If the vehicle charging load is shifted to times when there is more capacity, there is no increase in peak load.

Setting up such a charging system would not be particularly difficult or expensive. One suggested scenario is for each residence with an electric vehicle to acquire a home charging terminal that the car plugs into, which receives instructions from the utility operator via the household smart meter. This allows the operator to control vehicle charging across the network based on the current network conditions and demand.

If the charging of electric vehicles can be controlled in this manner, then our existing networks will be able to sustain high uptake rates, without any additional investment into grid infrastructure.

Detailed simulations have shown that the same network that started to fail at a 10% uptake with uncontrolled charging is able to sustain more than an 80% uptake when vehicle charging is shifted, using simple optimisation algorithms. Through this sort of demand management, most of our existing networks should be able to handle electric vehicles for decades to come.

Marcus Brazil, Associate Professor and Reader in Engineering, University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Most recreational fishers in Australia support marine sanctuaries

File 20190305 48444 nubyxx.png?ixlib=rb 1.1 — Recreational fishers adjacent to an established marine park in NSW.
Author provided

Matt Navarro, University of Western Australia; Marit E. Kragt, and Tim Langlois, University of Western Australia

More than 70% of recreational fishers support no-take marine sanctuaries according to our research, published recently in Marine Policy.

This study contradicts the popular perception that fishers are against establishing no-take marine reserves to protect marine life. In fact, the vast majority of fishers we surveyed agreed that no-take sanctuaries improve marine environmental values, and do not impair their fishing.

No-take marine sanctuaries, which ban taking or disturbing any marine life, are widely recognised as vital for conservation. However, recent media coverage and policy decisions in Australia suggest recreational fishers are opposed to no-take sanctuary zones created within marine parks.

This perceived opposition has been reinforced by recreational fishing interest groups who aim to represent fishers’ opinions in policy decisions. However, it was unclear whether the opinions expressed by these groups matches those of fishers on-the-ground in established marine parks.

To answer this, we visited ten state-managed marine parks across Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland and New South Wales. We spoke to 778 fishers at boat ramps that were launching or retrieving their boats to investigate their attitudes towards no-take sanctuary zones.

Our findings debunk the myth that recreational fishers oppose marine sanctuaries. We found 72% of active recreational fishers in established marine parks (more than 10 years old) support their no-take marine sanctuaries. Only 9% were opposed, and the remainder were neutral.

We also found that support rapidly increases (and opposition rapidly decreases) after no-take marine sanctuaries are established, suggesting that once fishers have a chance to experience sanctuaries, they come to support them.

Recreational fishers support for marine sanctuaries increases with marine park age.

Fishers in established marine parks were also overwhelmingly positive towards marine sanctuaries. Most thought no-take marine sanctuaries benefited the marine environment (78%) and have no negative impacts on their fishing (73%).

We argue that recreational fishers, much like other Australians, support no-take marine sanctuaries because of the perceived environmental benefits they provide. This is perhaps not surprising, considering that appreciating nature is one of the primary reasons many people go fishing in the first place.

Exploring marine life within an established marine park.
Tim Langlois

In the past opposition from recreational fishing groups has been cited in the decision to scrap proposed no-take sanctuaries around Sydney, to open up established no-take sanctuaries to fishing and to reduce sanctuaries within the Australia Marine Parks (formerly the Commonwealth Marine Reserve network).

Our findings suggest that these policy decisions do not reflect the beliefs of the wider recreational fishing community, but instead represent the loud voices of a minority.

We suggest that recreational fishing groups and policy makers should survey grass roots recreational fishing communities (and other people who use marine parks) to gauge the true level of support for no-take marine sanctuaries, before any decisions are made.

Despite what headlines may say, no-take marine sanctuaries are unlikely to face long lasting opposition from recreational fishers. Instead, our research suggests no-take marine sanctuaries provide a win-win: protecting marine life whilst fostering long term support within the recreational fishing community.

Matt Navarro, Post-doctoral Fellow, University of Western Australia; Marit E. Kragt, Senior Lecture in Agricultural and Resource Economics, and Tim Langlois, Research Fellow, University of Western Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Lowy Institute Poll shows Australians’ support for climate action at its highest level in a decade

Matt McDonald, The University of Queensland

The annual Lowy Institute Poll on Australian attitudes to the world and global issues for 2018 has been released. Among a series of interesting findings, one thing is clear: support for climate action and renewable energy continue to grow.

In response to the survey’s questions on climate and energy, 59% of respondents agreed with the statement: “climate change is a serious and pressing problem. We should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs.”

This represents an increase of 5 percentage points from 2017, and a consistent increase in support for this statement over the past six years. It suggests that support for climate action in Australia is bouncing back towards its high point of 68% in the first set of Lowy Polls in 2006.

What’s more, while the federal government doggedly pursues a “technology-neutral” energy policy, Australians don’t seem to be buying it. Public support for a large-scale energy transition in Australia is even more emphatic than support for climate action.

According to the Lowy poll, which involved a nationally representative sample of 1,200 adults, 84% of Australians support the statement that “the government should focus on renewables, even if this means we may need to invest more in infrastructure to make the system more reliable”.

This is a staggering verdict, one that casts a shadow over Australia’s rising greenhouse emissions and the looming Commonwealth-state negotiations over the National Energy Guarantee.

Both figures suggest that most Australians are genuinely concerned about climate change, a finding consistent with the ever-growing scientific consensus.

The big question is: will Australia’s political leaders respond to this support for climate action and energy transition by putting legitimate policy in place?

It’s political

Two key impediments present themselves here, both political.

The first is Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s own party. Most governments around the world that have instituted legitimate climate and energy policies have at some stage faced down their political opponents. But the biggest political opponents to Australian climate action are the government’s own internal pro-coal cabal, featuring former prime minister Tony Abbott and backbench energy committee chair Craig Kelly.

This group has fought their more moderate colleagues tooth and nail on climate and energy policy. In the process they have painted even relatively timid policies – such as the National Energy Guarantee – as extreme or fiscally irresponsible. Abbott even recently claimed he had been misled on whether the Paris targets he announced as a “definite commitment” – a 26-28% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 relative to 2005 – were actual targets.

The second impediment to climate leadership is trepidation on the opposition benches after a bruising decade of climate policy wars. Previously, Kevin Rudd’s Labor had a field day with John Howard’s climate inaction in 2006-07, which coincided with the high point of public concern in Lowy polls.

But the party’s current leadership is all too aware that turning public concern into sustained public consensus is tricky. In the face of Abbott’s scare campaign on carbon pricing and an associated collapse in public support for climate action, Rudd infamously walked away from acting on the “greatest moral challenge”. When Rudd’s successor Julia Gillard finally legislated a carbon price, Abbott promised that the 2013 election, which he duly won, would be a “referendum on the carbon tax”.

The new Lowy poll continues the trend of an inverse relationship between climate action and public concern. When the federal government is perceived as doing little (such as from 2013 to now), support for strong climate action has grown. But when the government announces or pursues genuine climate action (2007-13), support has waned.

Aligning policy with politics won’t be easy, and will take real leadership. Will we see it from Bill Shorten’s Labor if he wins office?

Security and economics: grounds for hope?

If we can’t rely on our leaders to lead – or even to respond faithfully to public opinion and scientific consensus – is there any hope for strong climate policy in Australia? There is, and it’s in some strange places.

When we think of concerns that might stymie action on issues like climate change, we might think of factors such as national security or economic growth. But in Australia and elsewhere, these concerns are arguably beginning to drive calls for climate action.

In May, a Senate inquiry into the national security implications of climate change concluded that it represents a clear and present danger to Australian security. The Lowy poll suggests that the public endorses this sentiment – Australians ranked climate change as a more pressing threat than cyber attacks, foreign interference, or the rise of China.

While some Australian politicians are steadfast in their support for coal, despite the questionable economics, mainstream financial institutions and even energy companies like AGL are shifting away from fossil fuels. Far from economic considerations preventing climate action, as they seemed to in the 1990s, the economy might just be starting to drive that action.

The climate message, in short, seems to be reaching the Australian people. But will it get to those we’ve elected to represent us?

Matt McDonald, Associate Professor of International Relations, The University of Queensland

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Nationals should support carbon farming, not coal

Andrew Hopkins, Australian National University

National Party MP George Christensen has invited other Nationals to join the recently formed pro-coal “Monash Forum”. But is coal in the best interests of their rural constituents, particularly farmers?

Farmers stand to lose from any weakening of the government’s climate change policies. That is why farmers and their political representatives should be concerned about a current review of the government’s greenhouse gas reduction policy.

What is at stake here is the strange-sounding idea of carbon farming. To explain this idea takes several steps, so bear with me.

The policy under review is a legacy of the Abbott era. As prime minister, Tony Abbott abolished the carbon tax and replaced it with an Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF). The ERF was to be used to pay businesses to reduce their carbon emissions, or to capture and sequester (store) carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere.

As it turns out, most of the funding has gone to rural enterprises that have developed various farming projects that qualify for funding – hence the term, carbon farming.

For example, these projects include:

regenerating native forest on previously cleared land
changed farming practices to allow for crop stubble retention
capturing and destroying the methane from effluent waste at piggeries.

How does carbon farming work?

To make it all work, the government first created the system of Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs). This system commodifies the outputs of carbon farming, so these can be traded.

In this system, a carbon farmer must show either a reduction in emissions, or carbon sequestration (or ideally both), according to clearly specified criteria. The government will then issue (free of charge) one credit for every tonne of carbon dioxide (CO₂) – or CO₂ equivalent – abated in this way. Farmers can then sell these credits, thus receiving a direct financial return for their efforts.

The primary buyer of ACCUs at the moment is the government, via its Emissions Reduction Fund. Farmers (individually or as collectives) who want to embark on carbon farming projects are asked to nominate a price they would need to make it profitable for them to go ahead with the project. Through a reverse auction, the fund selects the lowest-price proposals.

In this way, the government gets the greatest carbon abatement for the least money. Successful bidders embark on their projects knowing that they have a guaranteed price for their carbon abatement outcomes. There is nothing magical or mystical about it. It is simply the price at which the buyer and sellers of carbon credits find it mutually advantageous to do business.

The average price paid at the last auction round was A$12 per tonne of CO₂ abated. This is the current carbon price in this particular market.

The Safeguard Mechanism

A second potential set of buyers of carbon credits was created by the Safeguard Mechanism, introduced by the Abbott government. This caps emissions from big industrial emitters in order to to ensure that abatement achieved by the ERF is not offset or cancelled out.

The cap is set at whatever the maximum emission rate from the emitter has been. So it is not designed to reduce emissions from these big emitters, but simply to hold them to current levels.

The scheme covers just over 150 facilities, which are responsible for about half of Australia’s emissions. Emitters that go over their limit can remain in compliance by buying enough carbon credits to compensate for their “excess” emissions and surrendering these to government.

This policy is now beginning to bite. The government has just announced that in the first period for which the policy has been in effect, some 16 large emitters were in excess and had to buy 448,000 carbon credits to remain in compliance. Among the biggest buyers were:

Anglo Coal’s Capcoal mining operations
Glencore’s Tahmoor Coal
Rio Tinto’s Alcan Gove aluminium operations
BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Coal/BM Alliance.

These companies bought their credits from carbon farmers who abated more carbon then they had calculated, and so had a surplus left over for sale.

But what is most interesting is the price that excess emitters were willing to pay for the surplus credits. Most of the sales were in the region of $14-15 per tonne (T), but the price rose to $17-18/T as the deadline approached.

This means that the price spiked at 50% higher than the most recent ERF auction price of $12/T.

Commentators describe this as a secondary market, and the price in this market is exciting news for carbon farmers. According to Australian Carbon Market Institute CEO Peter Castellas, “Australia now has a functioning carbon market.” Carbon farmers – who make up an increasing proportion of the Nationals’ constituency – will do well if this market expands.

One way to develop the market would be to slowly lower the caps on big emitters so they must either buy more carbon credits or find ways to reduce their own emissions.

From this point of view, there is good reason to progressively and predictably reduce the emissions allowed under the Safeguard Mechanism.

The current review

Here’s where we get to the current review. As already noted, the Safeguard Mechanism does not seek to reduce emissions from big emitters. In fact, it allows for an increase in emissions to accommodate business growth. Nevertheless, big emitters are still unhappy.

The government’s review is a response to business concerns. An initial consultation paper has proposed making it easier to raise the cap on a company’s emissions as its activity grows.

If the rules are altered in this way, the demand for carbon credits may stall, and even decline, bringing to an end to this promising new source of revenue for farmers.

That is why members of parliament with rural constituencies should take note. Rural MPs should not sit by and allow the government to respond to the interests of the coal industry and other lobby groups.

Carbon farming depends on reducing the caps under the Safeguard Mechanism, not raising them. This would also be a step in the direction of achieving the emissions reduction target to which Australia agreed at the Paris meetings in 2015.

Andrew Hopkins, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Australian National University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

How trade policies can support global efforts to curb climate change

File 20170726 23211 sgmupo — Eliminating trade barriers on green technologies could help countries to shift away from fossil fuels.
from www.shutterstock.com, CC BY-ND

Adrian Henry Macey, Victoria University of Wellington

Climate change will have a big impact on the global economy as nations seek to adapt to a warmer world and adopt policies to keep global warming below two degrees. In the wake of the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, it is important that policies around trade and investment support national efforts to adapt to global warming while trying to curb it. Four issues stand out:

1. Border tax adjustments

Border tax adjustments, or BTAs, refer to import taxes on goods from countries where companies do not have to pay for their emissions.

This is highly controversial and problematic for practical reasons and difficult to reconcile with World Trade Organisation (WTO) compliance requirements. The arguments in favour rest on punishing free riders and protecting the competitiveness of national firms subject to climate change costs in their home country. Such taxes are also held up as a way of avoiding “carbon leakage” caused by production shifting to countries with more lax climate change policies.

The latter two arguments are similar to those that have been applied in the past to environmental protection regulations. The problem with them is that there is very poor empirical evidence for either competitiveness risk or for carbon leakage.
They also rest on the assumption that combating climate change is always a net cost. This is being increasingly challenged.

The argument against BTAs centres on the potential of unilateral measures being used to coerce developing countries. The sensitivity of such measures is shown by the fact that, until very late in the negotiations of the Paris Agreement, developing countries insisted on including the following clause.

“Developed country parties shall not resort to any form of unilateral measures against goods and services from developing country parties on any grounds related to climate change.”

2. Trade liberalisation in climate-friendly goods and services

Eliminating trade barriers on solar panels and other green technologies could help countries to shift away from fossil fuels. This is fully within the scope of the WTO and indeed the mandate of the current Doha trade round. There are several work streams within the WTO covering this area, though progress is slow.

3.International carbon trading and offsets

The Kyoto Protocol includes several mechanisms (Clean Development Mechanism, Joint Implementation and Emissions Trading) that can be used by countries that have tabled a 2020 target (European countries and Australia).

International market mechanisms beyond 2020 have not yet been created under the Paris Agreement but its Article 6 foresees them. Such mechanisms are being developed bottom-up by groups of countries, which can make much faster progress than is possible within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

However, any new mechanisms are likely to be linked in some way to the UNFCCC. There is no coverage of carbon trading under the WTO at present and there appears to be no appetite for bringing it within WTO disciplines.

4. Compatibility of climate measures and trade rules

One fear is that WTO rules will have a chilling effect on climate change measures such as subsidies, technical regulations or bans on certain products. However, Article 3.5 of the UNFCCC (which applies to the Paris Agreement as it does to the earlier Kyoto Protocol) is clear.

It uses WTO language to state that “measures taken to combat climate change, including unilateral ones, should not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade”. The UNFCCC, like the WTO, acknowledges the legitimate purpose of climate measures, including that they may involve restrictions on trade.

There is ample and growing WTO jurisprudence on measures taken for environmental purposes which confirms their legitimacy in WTO law. The jurisprudence is not static; it evolves with international thinking as expressed in treaties and less formal agreements.

Helpfully the WTO Treaty (1994) included an objective relating to protection and preservation of the environment that went further than the earlier General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). This provision has already been used in interpretation by the highest WTO jurisdiction, the Appellate Body.

Conclusions

I expect that some carbon markets will develop amongst carbon clubs. Trading rules will be determined by those countries involved and will rest on the environmental integrity of the units traded.

Border tax adjustments (BTAs) are problematic. Some commentators have predicted a climate change trade war, arguing that countries are vulnerable if their climate measures are seen as inadequate.

This is now an improbable scenario. Any attempt to impose BTAs against countries which have signed up to the Paris Agreement would face enormous practical difficulties. It would also risk undoing the international consensus.

Transparency, peer review and naming and shaming of countries with inadequate pledges (Nationally Determined Contribution or NDCs), or countries that fail to implement an adequate one, may prove more effective than any of these unilateral measures. Evidence from the climate change negotiations is that countries do care about their reputation.

A further resource to encourage countries to act would be carbon clubs, where countries wanting to accelerate their transition to a low-carbon economy would link their climate measures through a common carbon price via their emissions trading schemes.

The threat of BTAs – clearly foreseen by major American companies after the Trump Administration’s decision to leave the Paris Agreement – may be a useful political lever to gain cooperation. But there are other ways of achieving similar ends.

One example is to require all goods, domestic or imported, to meet sustainability standards. This is potentially allowable under the WTO Technical Barriers to Trade agreement (TBT) as a type of processing and production method. But even if not, the existence of the Paris Agreement – a universal agreement with clear objectives and requirements on all parties to act on climate change – would be a useful reference in any dispute settlement proceedings.

Adrian Henry Macey, Senior Associate, Institute for Governance and Policy Studies; Adjunct Professor, New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute. , Victoria University of Wellington

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Public support for climate action on the up after dark days: Climate Institute survey

James Whitmore, The Conversation

Public support for action on climate change is rebounding despite political uncertainty, according to survey results released today by The Climate Institute.

According to the poll, 65% of Australians think the nation should take a leadership position and 77% agree that climate change is happening, up from 70% in 2015.

The Climate Institute’s chief executive, John Connor, said that “public support on renewable energy and climate change is the strongest it’s been since 2008”.

Before then, a combination of drought, international action and bipartisan support for emissions trading had driven climate support to its highest level.

But the end of the drought, the global financial crisis and a disappointing outcome from the 2009 Copenhagen climate talks sent support crashing.

In Australia, the replacement of former opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull with Tony Abbott ended bipartisan climate ambition. This was soon followed by concerns about electricity prices under Labor’s carbon “tax”.

Connor attributed the recent upswing to people realising that “there’s no way Australia is out there by itself”. While only 50% of those surveyed knew about the Paris climate agreement, other issues such as renewable energy and electric vehicles are increasingly affecting people’s day-to-day lives.

When it comes to government performance, only 19% think the federal government is doing a good job on climate policy, while 90% believe the Commonwealth should play some role in climate mitigation.

When asked for their top three preferred energy sources, 86% included solar, while 70% included wind, 20% gas and only 12% chose coal. Support for solar and wind is growing, and support for coal and gas is declining.

Bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef this year seems to have increased concern over climate change’s impact on the reef, up from 75% in 2014 to 82% in the new survey.

Of the 77% who agree climate change is happening, some 90% agree that people are at least partly to blame, although only 39% think humans are the main cause.

The survey featured 2,000 participants and focus groups in major cities.

Will Grant, a science communications expert at the Australian National University, said the report “seems to show we’ve perhaps come out the dark days of climate politicisation”.

From a climate science communications perspective, everything was going in a good direction, he said. More people were supporting the consensus scientific position of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and more were calling for further action.

However, while government is a significant player in climate action, Grant said there needs to be a shift in focus towards new business leaders. People need to realise that “futures can be made in climate resolutions”, he said.

Matt McDonald, an international relations expert at the University of Queensland, said the report continues a trend of an “inverse relationship between public concern about climate change and government action”.

“Essentially, when they perceive that their government is doing little, Australians increasingly support strong action. When governments indicate an intention to commit Australia to substantive climate action, as the Rudd and Gillard governments experienced, public support seems less robust,” he said.

The difficult position Malcolm Turnbull is in with his own party would make it hard to make big changes, McDonald added. “Increasing public support for strong climate action that this report confirms may change those calculations, but after the last election we’re probably not there yet.”

James Whitmore, Editor, Environment & Energy, The Conversation

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

USA Pledges Support to Combat Illegal Wildlife Trafficking

The link below is to an article reporting on a pledge by the USA to support efforts to combat illegal wildlife trafficking in Africa.

For more visit:
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/2743/20130701/obama-makes-10m-pledge-combat-illegal-wildlife-trafficking.htm

Mount Everest to be Given a Clean Up

The world’s highest mountain, Mount Everest, is to be given a clean up. Everest, which was first climbed by Edmund Hillary in 1953, has become something of a garbage tip. Everything from climbers rubbish to dead bodies has been left on the mountain. Now a Nepalese expedition made up of twenty Sherpa mountaineers and eleven support crew is seeking to remove some of the garbage left behind since that first ascent.

The government of Nepal wants to clean up the popular tourist attraction, bringing down rubbish that includes old tents, climbing equipment and the odd body. Global warming has led to much of the rubbish (and several bodies) no longer being covered by snow and ice.

Over 300 people have been killed attempting the climb to the top of the world, the Mount Everest summit.

For more on this story, see the Reuters article at:

http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFTRE63I0XE20100419

Earth Day: April 22

Earth Day is about the earth and the people who live on it. The Earth Day Network believes that all people, no matter who they are, have a right to a healthy and sustainable environment. Those who support Earth Day are a veritable who’s who of environmentalism. The network not only educates and increases awareness of environmental issues, it also actively seeks to bring about change in order to achieve a healthy and sustainable environment.

Earth Day is celebrated on the 22nd April each year, with supporters getting involved in all manner of environmentally responsible activities.

Find out more about Earth Day and the Earth Day Network at:

http://www.earthday.org/

Kevin's Walk on the Wild Side

Environment, Wildlife and Wilderness – Articles and News

Tag Archives for support

Be worried when fossil fuel lobbyists support current environmental laws

Cut duplication

But don’t change the current system much

Holes in our green safety net

Australia’s electricity grid can easily support electric cars – if we get smart