Martin Ferguson is Energy Minister in the Julia Gillard led Australian Federal Labor government. A competent administrator (Ferguson is proud of the fact that none of the stuff-ups that have dogged this government can be attributed to him) a canny political operator and a hard working local member, Ferguson sits on a solid majority in his safe Labor seat of Batman. Irrespective of Labor's fate at the 2013 election and despite inroads made by the Greens in the last couple of elections it would be a miracle if he was not re-elected. Unfortunately for the world Ferguson is an energy minister completely out of step with the times.
Under his stewardship the Federal Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism produced just before Christmas, a Draft Energy White Paper (DEWP). A Highlights package summarizing the main features of the DEWP can be found here. Logically this document would reflect the frequently repeated claims that this government recognizes the message of the climate scientists that greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion must be urgently and radically decreased if we are to avoid dangerous, possibly catastrophic, climate change. Unfortunately this is not the case.
The DEWP pays lip service to the now discredited view that an atmospheric concentration of 450ppm (CO2e) of greenhouse gas can be equated with global warming of 2ºC as the threshold of dangerous climate change, and acknowledges the IEAs contention 'that around 80 per cent of the world’s allowable carbon dioxide emissions budget under a 450 parts per million (or 2°C global warming) scenario is already locked in through existing capital stock (such as power plants, factories and buildings)' (IEA World Energy Outlook 2011).
Inexplicably it ignores the IEAs warning that the world is headed for irreversible climate change in five years. and that "if fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will ‘lose for ever’ the chance to avoid dangerous climate change." Instead the DEWP envisages decades of continued use of gas and coal as source fuels for large scale centralized power generation and is positively excited about the prospects of continued and greatly expanded coal and gas exports to Asia. It acknowledges 'the nature and timeframe of the international response to climate change' (Executive Summary p24) as a risk to be managed, but has nothing to say of the massive health, environmental and economic risks posed by a failure to take urgent action to reduce GHG emissions.
Giles Parkinson notes that the DEWP acknowledges the potential for energy efficiencies to reduce demand for fossil fuel generated power.
"Energy efficiency: The easiest and cheapest response to peak demand increases. The white paper says measures such as energy efficiency regulation on appliances will save 19.5 million tonnes of Co2e at a negative cost to the community of $56/tonne (That is, it saves money). It also speaks of the importance of incorporating distributed generation and direct load management, and forcing networks to seek demand-side alternatives, rather than just erecting more poles and wires."
However the main hope of avoiding climate catastrophe lies in the rapid growth of the renewable energy sector and the DEWP presents a misleading picture of the rate of progress of renewable energy technologies towards grid parity via its reliance on outdated, discredited energy modelling data.
The big achievement of the Gillard government in respect of climate change so far has been the passage of its Clean Energy Future legislation package. Attitudes to this legislation generally reflected heavily qualified approval. For anyone wishing to refresh their memory of this, readily understandable summaries of the key features of the package and its expected effects can be found here, here and here.
The DEWP is inexplicably profoundly at odds with the underlying intent of the Clean Energy Future (CEF) legislation. The intent of the CEF (repeatedly stated by government ministers) although weakened by caveats and exemptions, is to drive down greenhouse gas emissions on a time scale consistent with the warnings of the scientists. This is acknowledged in the executive summary of the DEWP.
"We have undertaken further key reforms in our domestic energy markets and have now legislated a carbon pricing mechanism that will drive a long term transformation to cleaner sources of energy."
Fair enough but the very next sentence reads:
"Technological advances and strong international gas prices have unlocked major new coal seam gas reserves on Australia's east coast and new offshore gas developments in Western Australia – this has broadened our energy possibilities and will significantly alter our east coast gas and electricity markets."
The DEWP summary continues:
"Over the next two decades, we expect to see significant growth in gas‐fired electricity generation in response to carbon pricing signals along with a continued expansion in wind energy and other renewable energy technologies as they become increasingly commercially viable."
These statements show that, for the Gillard government, gas fired power generation is 'clean energy' and that the growing body of research demonstrating that large scale gas-fired power generation is at best only marginally less GHG intensive than the coal-fired alternative will be ignored in their policy settings. Despite repeated claims that they recognize the urgency of the climate scientists' message, the weakness of GHG mitigation targets underpinning the Gillard government's Clean Energy Future legislation and the expectation of significant growth in gas-fired power generation way beyond the Critical Decade identified by the government's own Climate Commission show that they either don't understand the nature of the problem confronting us or they haven't the faintest idea how to address it. Probably both.
Robert Merkel at Larvatus Prodeo is spot on with his summary of the DEWP. Merkel is sharply critical and Labor voters should note that his critique is from the political left not the right. He says:
"It reads with the same subtext he manages to pack into just about every sentence – that you greenies have had your fun with the carbon price, now let us get back to digging up coal, drilling up gas, and we’ll ship in oil to run it all.
It’s the kind of document you’d expect a Turnbull-led conservative government to put out – finish the process of privatizing the energy sector, remove remaining price controls (and introduce smart meters to enable time-of-day pricing), phase out all green energy schemes other than the carbon price that aren’t clearly “complementary”, and trust the market to match supply with demand.
And the assumption dripping through the document is that changes to Australia’s energy mix will be glacially slow. Both stationary energy and transport will continue to run on coal, gas and oil for decades to come, with a mode shift from coal to gas and ultimately to renewables. Large-scale ones, mind you – the short shrift given to small-scale solar systems would be amusing if it wasn’t serious."
I have placed the emphases on the passages that I see as key to understanding the Labor Government's attitude-to/understanding-of the proximity and capacity for economic and environmental destruction of the ballooning climate crisis. This paper makes it crystal clear that either they still 'don't get it' or for some weird reason they just don't care. Political realities have required Ferguson to join the chorus with his colleagues that he accepts the science on climate change but this document for which he is responsible suggests that in his heart he doesn't believe it is happening or at least he doesn't believe it is happening as fast, or that it will be as devastating as the scientists predict. Whatever the truth, the DEWP is not, as Merkel terms it, merely 'an overconfident document', but is in fact, despite the soberly temperate language it employs, a devastatingly destructive document.
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