Energy Efficiency

When you make someone do something they don’t feel is necesary, the chances that they will perform the function efficiently is poor, and this is where Tony Abbot’s policy comes in.

While polls may indicate an improvement in the LNP (Coalition) appreciation, its more what Kevin Rudd – now also a proved non-performer with other failures like Wong and Garrett – has lost; so is the marginal percentage swing the more astute voter or more likely the donkey vote ?

Abbots climate change policy has received a lukewarm reception from scientists picking through the detail and finding not very much. Many raise doubts that the policy could achieve its stated aim of reducing emissions by 5% on 1990 levels over the next decade when companies would be entitled to continue to release greenhouse gases at business as usual levels.

Previous deregulation of every industry in Australia has seen excesses rather than trimming back, so a policy that does not penailise growth and does not have a cap on emissions is very unlikely to achieve a 5% cut by 2020, but by then Tony Abbot and every other politician in parliament at the moment will have retired on a fat pension while the rest of Australians suffer not just in harsher conditions, but in poor economic positions.  And it is about money; the absence of a clear and consistent price signals a serious flaw in the policy.

Professor John Foster (school of economics at the University of Queensland) said ‘sSome of the incentives to encourage carbon reduction in power generation, land use and other areas are laudable, but given that complex tendering processes are involved, the bureaucracy and associated costs of managing schemes in such a wide range of areas will be difficult and more expensive than suggested; this is a policy that pivots around the palatable business as usual and why it’s so cheap’.

The policy document suggests that sequestering carbon in the soil would be the main way of achieving the 5% cut, restraining annual national emissions of greenhouse gases to 525 million tonnes by 2020. How this soil carbon sequestration is supposed to work is by enriching soils with organic matter, often in the form of charcoal-like biochar, which locks up carbon for long periods. [The CSIRO is co-ordinating the trial of several techniques for sequestration and monitoring, but at this stage the process involves
only broad estimates of the amount of carbon locked up underground]. However, biochar itself has a high embodied energy (transportation, drying and burning and spreading).

The opposition’s policy is that an emissions reduction fund would be established and pay for the capture of 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in the soil by various projects in the first year. By 2020, the capture of 85 million tonnes would be funded, but questions have been raised about whether soil carbon sequestration will work on the enormous scale required and over the fact that it is not internationally recognised as a legitimate method of storing carbon.

Frank Jotzo (a senior lecturer at the Crawford School of Economics and Government at the Australian National University) said ‘soil carbon improvements and research on bio-sequestration are worthwhile investments if implemented well, but they are not the answer to Australia’s rising emissions from energy use; what is needed is a strong and pervasive price signal to emitters through  an emissions trading system, perhaps starting with a fixed price to provide certainty in the start-up phase’.

Kevin Rudd looked happy to see Tony Abbot when they each appeared at church together (got to get all them votes); having a fellow light-weight with even less charisma was a real godsend ….