The illustration and nursery rhyme above were published in the Illustrated London News of January 1 1829, the height of the Industrial Revolution, a more technologically optimistic time. The last verse of the heavily amended nursery rhyme goes:
"Old King Coal is a merry old soulA Merry old soul is heMay he never fail in the land we loveWho has made us great and freeWhile his miners mine and his engines workThrough all our happy landWe shall flourish fair in the morning lightAnd our name and our fame and our might and our rightIn the front of the world shall stand"
Despite the passing of the Federal Government's long overdue Clean Energy Futures legislation we might be excused for thinking that some in the Gillard government think nothing has changed since then.
One who is wondering is Andrew Revkin at the New York Times environment blog Dot Earth. He has posted Can the US and Australia slake China's Coal Thirst and still claim CO2 Progress? Revkin notes the massive expansion proposed for US coal exports to China and Australia's coal exports almost all of which go to Asia. Australia currently exports about 300 billion tonnes of coal (both thermal and metallurgical). This is predicted to grow at 5% per annum to around 500 billion tonnes by 2020. Revkin's point is a simple one. Given the massive amount of carbon leakage caused by this very damaging export trade can Australia really claim its modest cap and trade scheme is progress on the road to a carbon constrained future?
The issue of whether the exporter or the importer owns the emissions from traded fossil fuels is irrelevant to the atmosphere but important to governments in fossil fuel rich countries seeking an alibi to continue to profit from their environmentally ruinous export practices. In Australia anyone who cares about our future environmental viability is mightily relieved that at last the Federal government has put in place legislation offering the possibility of curtailing our domestic greenhouse gas emissions.
Everyone acknowledges that this is just the first teetering step towards a carbon constrained future but the feeling is abroad that now that we have made a start we can afford to look elsewhere for a while. This is absolutely not the case but, understandably given the epic struggle it has had to pass this legislation, our Federal Government is currently uninterested in the next and any subsequent steps towards an environmentally viable future. The Government which of course describes gas as a 'transition fuel' is counting on a rapid expansion of local gas extraction for both export revenue and domestic consumption. I have been forwarding information on the increasing number of studies highlighting problems with the GHG emissions of gas to my Federal MP Martin Ferguson (Minister for Minerals and Energy). His reply gives a pretty good pointer to the strength of the Gillard Government's commitment to a clean, green, environmentally viable future.
"It is important to note that coal currently provides around three quarters of Australia's grid connected electricity generation and is integral to the provision of secure reliable and low cost electricity supply. As it is not realistic to expect a transition away from coal to occur overnight, solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation must include investment in low emission fossil fuel technologies, such as natural gas-fired generation and carbon capture and storage (CCS). Natural gas-fired electricity generation represents a growing proportion of the sector in Australia and is an important transition phase between a fossil fuel dependent economy and a lower carbon one." (Source: Personal communication from the office of Martin Ferguson 23/11/11)
This quote raises two possibilities: Either that the Minister for Resources and Energy believes in gas-fired power generation and CCS as viable technologies to slow, halt and reverse the growth of domestic GHG emissions or that he knows the truth – that they won't – but wants us to believe they will for obvious political reasons. Ferguson and the Gillard government are wrong but are they dishonestly trying to mislead us?
One respondent to Revkin's post was Guy Pearse a research fellow at the Global Change Institute of the University of Queensland and well known to Australian climate change activists. No-one speaks with more authority on this topic than Pearse. He commented:
"Australia may well treble rather than double its coal exports by 2020. Factor in the “carbon light” CO2 from coal seam gas projects in the East (and other LNG expansion in the north and west) and you’re talking about Australia’s fossil fuel emission exports equating to TWO Saudi Arabias by 2020, not one as I’ve been saying to many disbelieving ears.
This would mean that by 2020 the 159mtpa CO2-e saved by the Gillard CEF (with heavy reliance on imported offsets, many of which I expect to be very dodgy for reasons I won’t get started on here) would be erased more around 10 times over, not 4 times as I said in that speech you quoted.
Such an expansion of this environmentally ruinous trade is unthinkable. Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent for the UK Guardian newspaper in reporting the conclusions of the IEA's recent World Energy Outlook 2011 (WEO 2011) headlined her article as follows:Of course, industry, government, and others can offer lots of arguments why this expansion is an unstoppable force, not Australia’s responsibility, and not so unique in the world. Most of these arguments are self-serving nonsense as I discussed in my August speech. It’s perhaps also worth noting that that the pace of fossil fuel export emission growth in Australia is accelerating rather than contracting, in spite of a carbon tax and a resources tax."
World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns. If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will 'lose for ever' the chance to avoid dangerous climate change.
WEO 2011 warns:
"If current trends continue, and we go on building high-carbon energy generation, then by 2015 at least 90% of the available "carbon budget" will be swallowed up by our energy and industrial infrastructure. By 2017, there will be no room for manoeuvre at all – the whole of the carbon budget will be spoken for, according to the IEA's calculations."
Faced with this prospect the sort of expansion of fossil fuel export predicted by Pearse and apparently sanguinely contemplated by the Gillard Government is the stuff of nightmares and Revkin is right to draw attention to it. Somehow this sleepwalking government must be persuaded to stop teetering on the brink and literally sprint towards the rapidly fading vision of an environmentally sustainable future. What are the chances?
It is a bit of juggling game in the coal industry and coal prices from underground mines to ensure enough electricity and steel capacity worldwide while making sure the impact on the environment and people is minimal. www.coalportal.com
ReplyDeleteHi Coal
ReplyDeleteYour comment highlights both the dependence of global power generation on coal as a source fuel and steel manufacturing on coking coal. It implies both are inevitable and (without naming it) implies that CCS is part of the solution.
If there was any prospect of deploying across the industry commercially effective CCS technology within an environmentally responsible time frame there might be a basis for extending the life of the coal industry. The key phrase here is environmentally responsible time frame.
The latest IEA World Energy Outlook concludes warns that the window of opportunity to halt global warming at or around 2ºC is rapidly closing and the world is headed for irreversible climate change in five years. "If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will ‘lose for ever’ the chance to avoid dangerous climate change."
You and I both know that there is no hope of widespread deployment of commercial scale CCS within five years. To suggest this is a possibility is to participate in a massive and destructive fraud. Accordingly, unless you wish to take issue with the conclusions of the cautious but authoritative IEA the choice is between a rapid wind back of coal combustion and an environmentally sustainable future.
This is a gigantic task and there is no certainty that it can be achieved. But refusing to acknowledge this rapidly worsening problem does not make it go away. The longer we delay, the smaller the chance of preserving our future environmental viability.
Logic suggests we have no choice.