A Green Carbon Initiative - Good for the Environment, Good for Jobs

Monday, 26 January 2009

Source: Speech to Young Liberal Convention 24 January
Today, I am going to talk about a climate change strategy that is founded on optimism and confidence, ingenuity and enterprise.
It is a plan that will create new jobs and new enterprises – without exporting our industries and emissions overseas.
It is a plan to invest in the health of our landscape, enhance the productivity of our agriculture, and increase our food and energy security.
It is a plan providing real leadership for effective global action.
Our Green Carbon Initiative will ensure Australia is able to achieve greater reductions in carbon dioxide than those proposed by Mr Rudd, at relatively low cost[1] and with enormous additional benefits to our own country’s environment and productivity.
We will aim to achieve, by 2020, additional annual reductions of at least 150 million tonnes (Mt) of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e)
Our plan captures three gigantic opportunities for CO2 abatement that the Rudd Government has ignored:
·         A Green Carbon Initiative - a comprehensive biocarbon strategy ofinvesting in the health of our landscape, restoring soil carbon by reversing over-grazing and excessive tillage, embedding CO2 in biochar (charcoal fertiliser), tree planting, and revegetation;
·         Dramatically increasing energy efficiency, especially in buildings;
·         Constructing at least two industrial scale carbon capture and storage power stations deploying industrial scale solar energy and geothermal energy and harnessing the energy of the oceans through tidal and wave power.
This policy is different to the Rudd Government’s ineffectual and bureaucratic response which has failed to take advantage of Australia’s unique characteristics and neglected Australia’s vital national interests in climate policy.
But, first, let me say to you straight up that the question of whether or to what extent human activities are causing global warming is not a matter of ideology, or “belief”.
This issue is simply one of risk management.
It is moreover not a question of Left versus Right – indeed it was Margaret Thatcher, nearly twenty years ago, who called for immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Her words on our response to climate change are as wise and as relevant today as they were in 1990:
“Many of the precautionary actions that we need to take would be sensible in any event.”
It is sensible to improve energy efficiency and use energy prudently;   it’s sensible to develop alternative and sustainable energy sources; it’s sensible to replant the forests which we consume……. I understand that the latest vogue is to call them “no regrets” policies. Certainly we should have none in putting them into effect.”[2]
And let us not forget it was Margaret Thatcher who in 1990 committed the United Kingdom to reduce Britain’s emissions by 2005 to a level no greater than those of 1990, and who, as part of her commitment to practical action on climate change, committed £100 million to promote sustainable tropical forestry.
In her footsteps, other conservative leaders including Governor Schwarzenegger of California, Senator John McCain, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper, New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key and British Conservative Leader David Cameron are supporting policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions - just as the Coalition did in Australia in Government.
As David Cameron reminded us only a week ago:
“Our starting point in thinking about the low carbon economy is hope, not despair. We are talking about a technological transformation that will enable us to fulfil the aspirations of our people for a rich, varied and prosperous life with vastly reduced dependence on hydrocarbons.... (this) will pay dividends even if the gloomier predictions about global warming are not fulfilled – dividends in the form of more stable energy costs, improved economic competitiveness and increased energy security.”[3]
Mr Rudd has always tried to frame the climate debate as a theological and political one – focussed on symbols rather than substance. He is endeavouring to frame his emissions trading scheme (“ETS”) as another litmus test of “belief” in climate change.
And yet, an ETS is not an end in itself.  It is only part of the solution, one tool in the climate policy tool box, and, in fact, no solution at all without new energy sources and new low emission technologies.[4]
Whether the ETS is effective will depend on its timing and its design, it will depend on the availability of low-emission technologies and cost effective carbon sinks. In other words, an ETS is no more than a piece of economic plumbing to be assessed objectively and pragmatically for its effectiveness in reducing emissions without destroying Australian jobs.

pt 1

In Government, while I was Environment Minister, we proposed and began to legislate for an ETS ourselves. We did so after calls from the leaders of the largest emitting industries in Australia for action to put a price on carbon.
While the Rudd ETS has moved closer to our design, it is still inferior and much more complex.
The Coalition’s proposal for an ETS to start in 2011 or 2012  means that in finalising our own design we could take into account the climate policies of the new US President[5], the response to them by the world’s largest emitter, China,   and consequently the outcome of the UNFCCC meeting at Copenhagen in December this year.
In contrast, Mr Rudd’s rush to finalise his ETS this year shows yet again that politics has trumped sound policy.      
We will have a lot more to say about the design of the Rudd ETS, and its impact on jobs, when we have our own independent economic advice on the White Paper and we see the legislation due to be tabled next month.  
Today I wish to focus on three key areas where the sterile and bureaucratic Rudd response has failed Australia.
Firstly, it almost entirely ignores the enormous opportunity for reducing our emissions through bio-sequestration. This includes restoring soil carbon through better land management practices, removing carbon from the atmosphere and fixing it in the soil by the creation of charcoal or bio-char and, of course, tree planting and revegetation.  A biocarbon strategy is the foundation of our Green Carbon Initiative.
Secondly, the Rudd Government has ignored the lowest cost opportunity for reducing emissions - by increasing energy efficiency, especially in buildings. Most energy efficiency measures in the built environment have a “negative net cost” – in other words they more than pay for themselves. But there are many obstacles to them being realised and Government leadership and action is required.
In neglecting these low-cost opportunities, Labor makes the cost to Australian families of cutting our greenhouse gas emissions higher than it ought to be
Thirdly, the Rudd Government fails to recognise that all of the emission trading schemes, all of the carbon permit revenues no matter how high will not, ultimately, result in a meaningful reduction in industrial emissions unless we can achieve a dramatic technological transformation. Mr Rudd has dropped the ball on supporting low- emission technology research and development, most notably in the area of greatest importance to this campaign – carbon capture and storage (CCS), or “clean coal”.
RE-INVESTING IN OUR LAND
Australia’s single greatest comparative advantage in the battle to reduce CO2 emissions is our enormous land mass – 770 million hectares.
Yet the Rudd Government has almost completely ignored the opportunity to dramatically improve agricultural productivity and the sustainability of our landscape,   at the same time removing enormous quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere.
The productivity of both cropping and grazing land is directly related to the level of soil carbon – far from being a pollutant, soil carbon is the key to healthy soils and productive fields. Large quantities of soil carbon have been lost to the atmosphere by conventional cropping methods which have left the soil exposed for long periods. Overgrazing has had a similar effect on pastoral country.
The opportunities for C02 abatement here are gigantic.
We occupy a vast continent with many millions of hectares of degraded country. We know that we need to produce more food for a growing world.
And an increase of only 0.5% in the soil carbon on 2% of Australia’s agricultural land would, according to soil scientist Dr Christine Jones, absorb an amount of CO2 greater than all of Australia’s current annual emissions – over 600 million tonnes.[6]
The Garnaut Review estimated that improved management practices on Australian cropping and high volume grazing land had the potential to remove around 350 million tonnes of CO2e p.a. for 20 to 50 years.[7]
Allan Savory (who in 2003 won Australia’s Banksia Award for global environmentalism) estimates the entire legacy of additional atmospheric carbon resulting from industrialisation (200-250 billion tonnes) “could be absorbed in the world’s croplands, were they properly managed.”[8]
If we were able to demonstrate that this kind of land management could produce benefits of that magnitude we would truly set a global example.
And then there is the opportunity for biochar or charcoal.
In the normal course of events millions of tonnes of crop waste are either burned or allowed to decompose in the field. Most of the carbon embodied in this biomass is lost as CO2 to the atmosphere.
But by heating this material in the absence of oxygen, in a process known as pyrolysis, about half of the carbon content is turned into biochar, or charcoal, and the rest into biofuels that can be used to generate green energy.
Biochar is then returned to the soil, which dramatically increases agricultural productivity – indeed the benefits of adding charcoal to tropical soils was discovered by the Amazonian tribes long before the arrival of European settlers.[9]

pt2

In Australia, Alumina Ltd, which owns 40% of Alcoa of Australia Ltd, is indirectly responsible for over 5 million tonnes of CO2 emissions from its investment in the alumina refining and aluminium smelting operations. Alumina has sought to find a cost effective means of offsetting its emissions for a cost of less than $20 per tonne of CO2e and they have been sponsoring a biochar project using crop wastes and mallee in the wheat belt of Western Australia. Their project is aimed at:
·         Higher yields  for the farmers whose land will benefit from the biochar being turned back into their soil
·         Development of potential permanent carbon offsets for Alumina, and-          
·         The production of renewable energy.
In other words – a win, win, win.
Alumina believes that they can scale their existing project to offset 6 million tonnes of CO2 each year (equal to 1% of Australia’s total emissions). They estimate the total biochar potential of the WA wheat belt is 25 million tonnes each year and the national potential is conservatively 100 million tonnes each year – or around 15% of our current emissions.[10] To realise this opportunity biochar needs to become an eligible offset both for our own ETS and for the successor agreement to Kyoto and I commit a Coalition Government to supporting it becoming so.
On a global scale some biochar advocates, including Tim Flannery,[11] contend that the widespread use of this very basic technology could remove from the atmosphere, over 20 years, all of the 200 to 250 billion tonnes of carbon added since the beginning of the industrial age.
Biochar has the distinct advantage over other forms of bio-sequestration of being stable and very long lived.  Indeed the most recent research by global expert Professor Johannes Lehmann of Cornell University indicates that biochar will last in soils for several  thousand years before decaying[12].
Having discussed organic soil carbon and biochar, I now wish to turn to a third means of removing CO2 from the atmosphere and that is by revegetation, reduced deforestation and tree planting.
Deforestation globally contributes 20% of all human greenhouse gas emissions. This is most dramatically seen in the tropical rain forests of the world – truly the lungs of the earth - where continued deforestation is causing environmental devastation on every front – rivers polluted, habitats destroyed, soil productivity ruined.
That is why in 2007, as Environment Minister, I established the Global Initiative on Forests and Climate, a $200 million programme to promote sustainable forestry practices in tropical, developing countries and in particular our close neighbours Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.
Tree planting is a well recognised means of offsetting emissions. Indeed the main reason Australia will meet its Kyoto Protocol target[13] is because of the reduction in land clearing since 1990 and the growth of managed forests and plantations.
Whereas the use of biochar and land management practices to promote the growth of organic soil carbon promote agricultural productivity and hence increase the capacity to produce food and fibre, the planting of trees potentially competes with other crops.[14]
In many cases, however, tree planting actually complements agricultural production. Every windbreak, treelot or hedge planted by farmers to protect pastures, crops and livestock is both sequestering CO2 and increasing agricultural production – as Lucy and I know very well from our own experience over 26 years of farming in the Hunter Valley.
In a recent study of the potential for environmental carbon plantings in Australia, the CSIRO’s Dr Phil Polglase and other authors concluded that with a carbon price of $20 per tonne, plantings would be profitable over at least 9.1 million hectares of economically marginal low rainfall country with the potential to remove 143 Mt of CO2e per annum from the atmosphere – the equivalent of about 25% of our  2005 emissions.[15]
That is only one example of the potential for CO2 abatement from revegetation. As the Garnaut Review notes 70% of Australia consists of arid and semi-arid rangelands which have been degraded by marginal grazing operations. It is estimated that about half of Australia’s annual emissions could be absorbed by improved land management practices that enabled revegetation.[16]
Just as importantly, all these measures, if well managed, offer considerable collateral benefits to the environment, to agricultural productivity, to biological diversity as well as assisting in the global battle against climate change. They also mean new, reliable sources of income for farmers and country towns.
This natural dimension in the battle against climate change has been largely neglected both by the international Kyoto process and by the Rudd Government. Soil carbon and biochar are for all practical purposes ignored as legitimate carbon sinks. While forestry is recognised as a carbon sink, the rules are complex, contradictory and often counterproductive.

pt3

A Coalition Government will ensure that Australia achieves very substantial reductions in CO2 emissions by 2020.
We will establish as part of our Green Carbon Initiative a co-ordinated biocarbon strategy which will ensure that we harness our best scientists and our most innovative and dedicated farmers into a great national objective of improving the health of our croplands, pastures and rangelands.
This Green Carbon Initiative will aim for additional emission reductions (net offsets) of at least 150 Mt p.a by 2020.
We will invest in our own land and at the same time offer the world an example of how real, practical action can be taken in the battle against global warming in the here and now.
The reductions in emissions will be well beyond those proposed by the unimaginative bureaucratic white paper of Mr Rudd.
They will bring greater environmental benefits and they will be more cost effective.
And those Australians who are quite convinced that by 2020 the global warming thesis will have been disproved, will nonetheless be pleased to live in a country with a healthier, more sustainable, more productive and greener landscape.
In the meantime, if Mr Rudd is looking for something useful to do on his extensive travels overseas he should focus on climate policies which are practical and effective and join the growing list of nations that are arguing for biochar and soil carbon to be included in the Kyoto framework as eligible offsets and that the existing Kyoto rules on forestry are rationalised so that they discourage deforestation and promote sustainable forestry practices.
MAKING OUR BUILDINGS MORE ENERGY EFFICIENT
I will now turn to energy efficiency, specifically in buildings, and then to the development of low emission technologies.
It is widely accepted that almost 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions from buildings can be avoided at no net cost through a wide range of technologies and design improvements. However the price signal contained in the Rudd Government’s CPRS will deliver less than one fifth of this amount.[17]
This should be a high priority for any Government. Not only do most of the measures pay for themselves, but once again improving energy efficiency is a classic “no regrets” policy with many benefits over and above emission reduction.
Yet the Rudd Government’s CPRS drops the ball on this opportunity as well. The White Paper itself recognises that it has missed a massive opportunity for low-cost abatement, by acknowledging that “(e)nergy efficiency represents a significant opportunity to achieve low-cost abatement and could help to cut future energy demand growth buy as much as half”.[18]
There is no strategy to realise those opportunities. No new policies on energy efficiency have been developed or deployed since the election of the Rudd Government.
Recognising that an ETS will never be sufficient to deliver rapid improvements in energy efficiency in buildings, the Green Building Council has called for a number of measures to address this policy gap, including accelerated depreciation for retrofitting green technology to existing buildings. Wherever regulations can encourage energy efficiency at either low or negative cost, they should do so.
One of the most effective energy efficiency measures is insulation and yet nearly eighteen months after it was promised the Rudd Government has not started to provide a $500 rebate for the installation of insulation in rental properties.[19]
In Government I was the first Environment Minister to announce a ban on inefficient incandescent lighting, and I have seen first-hand the enthusiasm in the architecture and design communities for sustainable development. The only missing element is imaginative leadership and encouragement from Government to enable Australian ingenuity and idealism to ensure our buildings are clean and green.
McKinsey has estimated the building sector can achieve, by 2020, emission reductions close to 50 Mt of CO2e - nearly 10% of our current level.[20] The Centre for International Economics has estimated that annual cuts of 39 to 45 Mt CO2e can be achieved by the building sector at a low cost or a net gain thereby reducing the overall cost to the economy of cuts in emissions.[21]
INNOVATION AND ENTERPRISE
A third area where the Rudd Government’s CPRS has let down Australia is in the area of technology.
Right now we depend on burning fossil fuels for over 90% of our stationary energy – with 80% or so coming from coal. Indeed that dependence on coal is why Australia’s per capita emissions are almost the highest in the world.
It is widely acknowledged that the single most important technology to enable the world to move to a low emission energy future is carbon capture and storage – or clean coal[22]. To quote the International Energy Agency: “CCS is… essential to the achievement of deep emission cuts.”[23]
However it is also widely acknowledged that current investment and development of CCS is woefully inadequate.. Indeed there is nowhere in the world a large coal fired power station whose CO2 is being captured, compressed and pumped underground.
Now, there is no country in the world – not one – to whom the successful deployment of CCS is of more importance than Australia.
We are the world’s largest coal exporter and coal represents our largest export – nearly $60 billion a year.

pt4

China despite its dramatic increase in nuclear power capacity will need CCS technology on a massive scale if it is to make a meaningful dent in its rapidly growing emissions.
All in all, CCS is the hope of the side – but it is yet to run on the field. Under the previous Government we committed nearly half a billion dollars to developing clean coal technologies through a range of projects. We established joint ventures both in Australia and China with leading Chinese energy companies.
Yet, despite the Rudd Government’s professed commitment to clean coal, it has done nothing in its first year of office except cut the ribbon on projects established by its predecessor.
Just this week we have seen the Rudd Government deny vital support to ZeroGen, which should be the world’s first commercial scale Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle power station which includes carbon capture and storage.
This is a project of international significance. Yet far from the Rudd CPRS supporting the project, the Rudd Government refuses to allocate free carbon permits to the project. In other words, where the dirtiest power stations are getting free permits, our cleanest coal fired power station will have to buy them.
Carbon capture and storage is a vital technology for our nation. I commit that a Coalition Government will ensure that at least two industrial scale CCS power station projects will be built. We will ensure the financial support is there to make this happen.
While CCS is the most important single technology, Australia, and indeed the world, also have vital interests in a number of other low emission energy technologies.
As the latest World Energy Outlook from the International Energy Agency, released in November, states bluntly:  “The world’s energy system is at a crossroads. Current global trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable.”
As the IEA goes on to point out, rising global demand for energy is running up against dwindling supplies of oil and gas. But the world is not going to lose its appetite for reliable, affordable energy, the indispensable tool for powering economic development and raising living standards.
In Government we provided substantial financial support to the development of geothermal power, potentially an enormous zero emission source of base-load power. We also supported the world’s largest solar photovoltaic concentrator, in Mildura.
Since the election, we have seen no new projects, no new investments to support zero emission technologies.
Australia is slipping behind in low emission technology.
We must do more, and a Coalition Government will do more.
In addition to our commitment to clean coal, it will be a key objective of the Coalition Government I will lead that that Australia successfully deploys industrial scale demonstration projects in solar energy, in geothermal energy and harnessing the energy of the ocean through tidal and wave power.
We cannot afford to blunder on with Mr Rudd’s miserable, bureaucratic approach. Mr Rudd had his grand symbolic moment when he signed the Kyoto Protocol. But the applause died away a long time ago.
Australia should lead the world in clean coal. We should lead the world in solar energy. We should lead the world in geothermal power.
Australia should show the world how we can capture millions of tonnes of CO2 through imaginative biocarbon policies and at the same time improve the health and productivity of our own landscape.
We can do all these things in a way that will make Australia stronger, richer and more resilient.
But we need imagination, we need passion, we need courage and above all we need real leadership.
A  Coalition Government’s Green Carbon Initiative can deliver greater cuts in CO2 emissions than Labor, and can do so by being smarter and more imaginative, by investing in the health of our own countryside, by making our society more efficient in its use of energy and by ensuring we become world leaders in the vital low emission technologies such as clean coal.
And, I say to you my friends, on the eve of Australia Day, that we will do these things because we are determined   to ensure that enterprise and innovation deliver to  Australians in the 21st century all the benefits of  a clean, green and productive country.

end

Quote:

Thirdly, the Rudd Government fails to recognise that all of the emission trading schemes, all of the carbon permit revenues no matter how high will not, ultimately, result in a meaningful reduction in industrial emissions unless we can achieve a dramatic technological transformation.

This is a bit of a furphy. It is the pricing emchanism that drives the techological changes. New technology may help, but is certainly not necessary. It's like saying that throwing a baited hook in the water won't catch you anything unless a fish bites it - duh.

Realistically, i'd think your belief is more of a furphy.
you seem to think the more expensive the fishing license, the more fish you catch.

What makes you think that? Is it because I promote the cheapest mechanism for reducing emissions, despite it's lack of popularity?

freediver wrote on Feb 2^nd, 2009 at 2:10pm:

What makes you think that? Is it because I promote the cheapest mechanism for reducing emissions, despite it's lack of popularity?

It's an unproven mechanism - FD is confusing a theory with reality (rather like the way he does with marine parks).  

What is unproven?

freediver wrote on Feb 2^nd, 2009 at 2:33pm:

What is unproven?

That an ETS will reduce emissions.

;D

By the way, what makes you think I was talking about an ETS when I said:


Quote:

Is it because I promote the cheapest mechanism for reducing emissions, despite it's lack of popularity?

freediver wrote on Feb 2^nd, 2009 at 2:03pm:

Quote: Thirdly, the Rudd Government fails to recognise that all of the emission trading schemes, all of the carbon permit revenues no matter how high will not, ultimately, result in a meaningful reduction in industrial emissions unless we can achieve a dramatic technological transformation. This is a bit of a furphy. It is the pricing emchanism that drives the techological changes. New technology may help, but is certainly not necessary. It's like saying that throwing a baited hook in the water won't catch you anything unless a fish bites it - duh.

Well, this. The pricing mechanism must be either carbon taxes and/ or an ETS.

I see. You two seem to be confusing my simple statement of the facts about an ETS with support for it as the best option. Perhaps you should stop thinking of everthing in terms of Labor vs Liberal.

I haven't confused anything.  in fact i've hardly said anything...  
go for it fd...  prove something for once.