Energy Efficiency

When the world’s largest mining boss Marius Kloppers warns Australia should look beyond coal and towards other energy sources, you have to wonder whether its spin or otherwise.  According to the BHP Billiton CEO, the Australian economy will suffer if it does not significantly reduce its carbon emissions in anticipation of a global carbon price

BHP – one of the world’s largest producers of thermal coal making almost 10% of its revenue -  have seemingly acknowledged the need for action on climate change, even though the mining industry (the Minerals Council of Australia), was a very vocal opponent of Rudd’s emissions trading scheme.

Although this observation hasn’t received a good reception from politicians, the hung vote and several weeks later a survey indicating if another election were held Labor and the Coalition would lose even more seats just shows how out of touch they are with the people and how beholding they are to the fossil fuel industries. Are both sides of politics  too scared to canvass the end of the coal industry because it would not be welcome by their financial sponsors or because it will highlight to the public how much of what they spend is dependant on what corporations sell off each week.

Both parties back the oxymoron ‘clean coal technology’ and the non-event of carbon capture and storage. Australia’s energy production is particularly carbon intensive and the highest among OECD countries in terms of tonnes of carbon emitted per unit of energy. Coal-fired power stations account for almost half of the country’s emissions and therefore, is a prime example of the need to look beyond just coal.

Minister for Climate Change Greg Combet is charged with developing a policy involving a price on carbon and said ‘my three priority areas are support for renewable energy, greater energy efficiency in industry and households and working towards the introduction of a carbon price; I will be working with other parliamentarians, the business community and the environmental movement to build consensus and to discuss the best way we can achieve a price on carbon’; however, he is reported to have assured the coal industry it had a sound future.

There is a need for revenue generated by any carbon price to be returned to the economy – say – through tax cuts, to offset the cost impact of businesses and individuals.

If Australia did take the lead by implementing a carbon price before a global agreement was struck, Mr Kloppers said ‘it needed to ensure investment did not go offshore to countries without a price on carbon’.

Tony Abbott (who has polarized and alienated many with his hard-man opposition for the sake of opposition) has ruled out allowing Coalition MPs to sit on a cross-party committee to be established by the month’s end to discuss potential responses to climate change.  But is BHP just playing the uranium card ?

BP became the company Beyond Petroleum in 2000, but under new management in 2007 with Tony Hayward, they dropped the green washed label by resuming tar sands operations, winding back wind and solar operations, closing alternative energy headquarters in London and finally, the cream on atop the cake, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

With Peak Coal predicted for Australia in 2040, is BHP more interested in nuclear power for Australia so they can dig more coal to sell elsewhere; is it an announcement to push the South Australian government to OK the Olympic Dam mine expansion; would nuclear reactors reduce our greenhouse emissions ?

Whatever the question and answer, if an honest approach is used, then nuclear power will not be a solution … ever; the simple reason is that an honest approach is one where the embodied energy and GHG emissions emitted in developing the land, building and commission a nuclear power plant and decommissioning the plant and ensuing emissions to do so are added to the emissions of the plant while it is running and being maintained; and then when you have added that in and then considered – rationally – where the nuclear waste is to be stored, that the real cost emerges; and it won’t be a simple Prof Ross Garnaut type solution like dumping tailings at sea either.