Category Archive: Energy

Jun 18 2013

Australia’s Climate Commission does the maths

The-Critical-Decade-Pathways

US climate activist Bill McKibben recently toured Australia as part of his “Do the Maths” campaign advocating divestment from fossil fuels, based on the arithmetic which shows to avoid dangerous climate change we must leave most fossil fuel reserves in the ground. Of course, the Australian government and businesses scoffed. Now, this reality has been …

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May 17 2013

It’s still the climate, stupid

The Australian Labor government has yet again ignored climate change in its latest budget. Treasury’s forecast for the Australian carbon price in 2015 (when it is scheduled to become an internationally-linked emissions trading scheme or ETS) has been revised downward from $29/tonne to $12.10/tonne, a belated implicit admission that its decision to link to the …

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Mar 26 2013

Polluters win in horrific reshuffle

Yesterday Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced her government’s latest cabinet reshuffle. The Department of Climate Change will be merged into the Department of Industry, Innovation, Climate Change, Science, Research, and Tertiary Education – except for energy efficiency, which will be moved into the Department of Resources and Energy. Greg Combet, previously Minister for Climate Change …

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Mar 22 2013

Forget policy certainty, just raise the RET

What a week it’s been in Australian politics! Failed media regulations, a failed leadership spill, mass ministerial resignations, and more… But in today’s post I’ll focus on a piece of news that didn’t make the front page: yesterday Australia’s Climate Change Minister Greg Combet finally announced the Labor government’s response to the recommendations of last …

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Mar 11 2013

Caps Review Part 7: Complementary measures

This is the seventh part in a series about the Caps and Targets Review being conducted by the Australian Government’s independent Climate Change Authority (CCA) this year. Part 1 summarized the global climate crisis, Part 2 explained the importance of the review and how CCA should approach it, Part 3 outlined the role Australia should …

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Mar 07 2013

Caps Review Part 4: Economics

This is the fourth part in a series about the Caps and Targets Review being conducted by the Australian Government’s independent Climate Change Authority (CCA) this year. Part 1 summarized the global climate crisis, Part 2 explained the importance of the review and how CCA should approach it, and Part 3 outlined the role Australia …

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Mar 06 2013

Caps Targets Part 3: Australia’s role

This is the third part in a series about the Caps and Targets Review being conducted by the Australian Government’s independent Climate Change Authority (CCA) this year. Part 1 summarized the global climate crisis, and Part 2 explained the importance of the review and how CCA should approach it. This part outlines the role Australia …

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Mar 04 2013

Caps Review Part 1: The global climate crisis

The Australian Government’s independent Climate Change Authority (CCA) is conducting a Caps and Targets Review this year. In this series I will explain why the review is important, outline what I think its recommendations should be, and attempt to deconstruct everything I believe is wrong with the Government’s climate policies and its underlying flawed beliefs …

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Feb 13 2013

Australia’s Minister for Greenwash

Australian Environment Minister Tony Burke – or as the Greens call him, Minister Against the Environment – on Monday signed conditional approvals for three new coal and coal seam gas (CSG) mines in New South Wales. The three projects are Whitehaven’s Maules Creek coal mine (despite Burke having said last week he would defer that …

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Feb 07 2013

Good news from China (maybe)

coal

Last week China announced what might be a rare bit of good news on climate change – or is it too good to be true? The Chinese government State Council has set a cap on total energy use for 2011-2015, which it claims will cause Chinese coal consumption to peak below 4 billion tonnes per …

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