Can the World be Saved?

The green movement at 50: Can the world be saved?

Population growth and climate change are the big problems facing the earth in the next 50 years. But are there any solutions?

The Independent,

15 June, 2012

Many of the issues the Environment Movement has faced over the last 50 years have been difficult, but none has been as formidable as the two challenges confronting it over the next half century, confronting the earth: population growth and climate change.

These two colossal problems, it is clear now, cannot be "solved"; they can only be coped with, and the coping will have to be by governments. The task of the Green Movement will be to keep the pressure on governments, and companies, and individuals, to do what is necessary, however difficult that is.

Both issues are controversial. Some believe the rise in human numbers, from a world population of 7 billion to perhaps 9.3 billion in 2050 – that's the UN's medium estimate – will not be a problem, and certainly there is no plan to bring the estimated 2050 figure down.

But finding food for an extra two billion mouths in a mere 38 years, on top of those who are hungry today, is clearly going to be a Herculean task, and if we disaggregate the world figure into the projections for individual nations, the task seems more daunting still, especially with some of the "high growth" countries in Asia and Africa.

Bangladesh, with an estimated 148 million people at 2010, goes, according to the UN medium estimate, to 194 million in 2050; Pakistan goes from 189 million to 274 million. In some of the poorer parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the projections are quite remarkable, with doublings and even treblings expected in four decades: Kenya goes from 40 million people in 2010 to 96 million in 2050, while Niger, a country in the Sahel semi-desert belt where agriculture is difficult at best, will see its population go from 15 million to 55 million.

Yet the concern for the environment movement will be, can these extra billions be not only fed, but brought out of poverty through economic growth, without the planet being trashed? Can it be done without rainforest being torn down for agriculture, without the fish stocks of the oceans being exploited, without the atmosphere being swamped with climate-changing carbon from thousands of new power stations?

The idea that grapples with this is sustainable development and next week the world community meets in Rio de Janeiro to try to shape the first global sustainable development goals, which would probably concern food, water and energy, and run from 2015.

But even if they are agreed, they can be destabilised by a changing climate. A great fear of far-sighted environmental thinkers is that global warming and its effects will combine with population growth, in interactions which will make things much worse. For example, Bangladesh will find it much harder to accommodate its extra 46 million people by 2050 if, as is expected, it begins to be affected by climate-change-induced sea level rise, with much of the nation below sea level already.

Yet climate change has slipped down the pubic agenda. There are three reasons for this, one being the recession, which affects us now, while global warming is a concern mainly of the future.

The second is that climate change sceptics, hardly any of whom are climate scientists, and many of whom are funded by the fossil fuel industry, have induced a certain amount of uncertainty in the public mind about the issue. And this has been able to take root over the last few years because – and this is the third reason – the warming process appears to have paused.

No-one really knows why. A good guess is the gigantic cloud of sulphur emissions from Chinese power stations, which doubled their output of waste gases between 1996 and 2006: the sulphur particles have the opposite effect of the carbon emissions, and reflect back the sun's heat. But unless the laws of physics are altered, those global carbon emissions, now 33 billion tons annually and rising at six per cent a year, are going to make world temperatures rise considerably in the coming decades with potentially disastrous consequences.

What can the Green Movement do about this? Quite a lot, really, as was evinced by Friends of the Earth's (FoE) "Big Ask" campaign for a climate change law, which would commit the UK Government to make legally-binding annual cuts in its carbon emissions. It succeeded, and in the Climate Change Act, 2008, Britain now has the toughest climate legislation in the world.

Tony Juniper, the FoE director who oversaw the campaign, is aware that climate change is the most difficult of all environmental problems. "It's bloody huge," he says. "It's about everything – aviation policy, transport, energy, nuclear power, agriculture, recycling. With the other issues we can get a tactical victory without all that baggage, but climate is different, and so is the timetable."

So he doesn't think the Green Movement has failed?

"No," he says. "It's work in progress."

There's going to be an awful lot of that work needed by the greens over the next half century.

Rio plus 20: Another talking shop?

The UN sustainable development conference in Rio de Janeiro next week is called "Rio Plus 20" as it marks the 20th anniversary of the celebrated Earth Summit, held in the Brazilian city in June 1992.

The earlier gathering, which brought together more than 100 heads of state and government, created two major institutions to help the world deal with its growing environmental crisis: the UN Convention on Climate Change, to tackle global warming, and the UN Convention on Biodiversity, to tackle the increasing assault on wildlife and the natural world.

The summit's success marked a huge step in integrating environmental concern into world politics. But 20 years on, this summit looks like being a pale shadow of its predecessor, and the most positive outcome is likely to be merely an agreement to talk about sustainable development goals. The lack of excitement is reflected in the guest list.

The heads of state of Brazil, Russia, India and China will be there, But President Obama and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, will not, nor for that matter will David Cameron. He is sending the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.

And if there is anything to indicate how little hope there is, it is this article...

'We will save the planet, but only if we can maintain Business-as-usual' “

Australia: Climate strategy up in smoke

IT WAS the technology that was going to help underpin the nation's climate change strategy. In 2009, the then prime minister, Kevin Rudd, pledged to ''lead the world'' in carbon capture and storage technology, which traps carbon dioxide emissions, permanently storing them deep underground.

The Age,

26 April, 2012

The Rudd and Gillard governments allocated almost $2.5 billion to push the idea, which would be used to ''clean up'' coal-fired power stations in Australia and in the countries to which we will export $44 billion worth of coal this year. But so far there is almost nothing to show for their effort.

Instead, the fledgling technology is struggling. Critical assumptions about when it will be available could be wrong, with dire consequences for efforts to slow climate change and for Australia's revenue base as the world's largest coal exporter.

So far, not one industrial carbon capture and storage project is running in Australia, and even the technology's most enthusiastic backers say that without big changes to government subsidies and policy there won't be one for many decades.

The only operating project in Australia is at Western Australia's Gorgon gas fields, where carbon dioxide is injected directly back underground. It is the world's largest CCS project, generating much international interest. But it is a long way from proving the capture, piping and storage of carbon dioxide from a power station.

Meanwhile, everyone appears to be blaming everyone else for the failure.

The government says coalminers should be investing more in the technology crucial to the future of their industry. The industry blames the influence of the Greens for blocking crucial subsidies for CCS. The Greens say CCS is a dud, and was only ever advanced as a ''fig leaf'' to justify the ridiculous ''obscenity'' of the ALP's policy to reduce greenhouse emissions at home while approving a massive expansion in coal exports. Whatever the reason, the lack of progress means Australia's climate change policy - and the future of its second largest export industry - is based on an assumption that may prove incorrect.

''It's the big problem at the centre of the policy, which no one wants to acknowledge,'' says Tony Wood, energy program director at the Grattan Institute and a former executive at Origin Energy.

Treasury modelling assumes power plants fitted with carbon capture and storage will provide one-third of Australia's power by 2050. It says if CCS is not used, we will not be able to reduce domestic emissions reductions as much as we have pledged, or only at significantly higher cost.

The International Energy Agency has said carbon capture and storage should account for 25 per cent of global emission reductions by 2050, and that without it, the cost will be 70 per cent higher. But most of the $1.7 billion allocated to kick-start the technology in Australia through the government's carbon capture and storage flagships program is unspent. The fund was supposed to ensure Australia had at least one large working CCS plant by 2015.

Dick Wells, the chairman of the government's expert advisory council on the technology, says that goal was never realistic. Ultimately, he says, no amount of upfront government assistance can make up for the fact that carbon capture and storage is excluded from the renewable energy subsidies without which the business case for any power source in Australia other than cheap coal simply does not add up. A deeply frustrated Wells wrote to Prime Minister Julia Gillard late last year warning bluntly that the government would fail to meet its goals for CCS without some policy to ''bridge the gap'' between Australia's $23-a-tonne carbon price and the $80 or so needed for CCS, in the same way that the renewable energy target and the new $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation give a ''leg up'' to wind power and other renewables. CCS is excluded from both.

Wells has no doubt the reason operational subsidies for carbon capture and storage have not been forthcoming is because of the influence of the Greens. ''I presume they have put pressure on the Prime Minister to exclude CCS … I wrote to the Prime Minister expressing concern and disappointment that it was excluded [from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation].''

Dr Peter Cook, former head of the CO2CRC and now professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne, says progress is being made, particularly in understanding how carbon dioxide can be sequestered.

But he agrees with Wells that ''a $23 carbon price will not drive this investment - you need $100 a tonne or something of that sort to drive it. Other low-emissions technologies get effective support of that order.''

And Brad Page, the new chief executive of the government's ''global carbon capture and storage institute'' says the lack of operational subsidy is hobbling the technology worldwide.

''There has been very substantial sums made available by governments, around $25 billion globally, for first-of-a-kind deployment, usually though capital subsidies,'' Page says. ''But usually there is no assistance when the plants are operating in the market … it costs them more to compete in the market, but the operating costs are almost never recognised, and that's the great gap. Wind has a renewable energy target delivering the equivalent of $90 a tonne. Therein lies the problem.''

He says governments are going to have to face up to the problem some time. The world, he says, cannot meet its ambition for limiting global warming to 2 degrees without CCS. ''There is so much coal and gas that will be burnt,'' he says. ''There is no point saying the world should go renewable - in the medium run that won't happen. So at some point many countries, including Australia, are going to have to come to grips with this serious policy question. You can't roll these things out without serious policy intervention … it can't work.''

But the Greens say carbon capture and storage does not deserve funding because it does not work. They say renewable energy has ''won the race''.

''It was never going to be viable,'' Greens leader Senator Christine Milne tells The Saturday Age. ''You are never going to be able to find the areas to store it at scale, nor are you going to be able to afford the pipes to take it from one end of the country to another. So the fact is it is not going to work … it's too expensive, it's last century and we don't need it because we have got renewables … Why would you stick with the horse and buggy era when you can move on?''

Asked about the assumptions made in the carbon pricing scheme that carbon capture and storage would be available, Milne says that is Labor's problem. ''It's a problem for the government because it is all about legitimising ongoing coalmining and expansion and coal exports overseas … If you admitted in Australia that CCS is a complete failure and is not going to continue, then how can you justify a position which says I am serious about addressing climate change, however, I am digging up coal and I am exporting it in larger and larger amounts to other countries to keep polluting the atmosphere?

''Carbon capture and storage is the fig leaf that covers for the government the complete obscenity of saying, on the one hand, we want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and … on the other, we want to ratchet up coal exports, have them burnt overseas and make the situation worse.''

But some climate advocates agree carbon capture and storage has to be part of the climate change fight. ''It has to be one of the clean energy options available,'' says Climate Institute chief executive John Connor. ''All the modelling says that to avoid temperature rises of more than 2 degrees Celsius we have to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere … and for CCS that might mean some kind of subsidy is necessary.''

Climate Change Minister Greg Combet says it is coalminers themselves who should ''quite significantly lift their game'' in investing in the technology.

''I would hope companies in the fossil fuel sector see the commercial desirability of it. If you are sitting there investing in a coalmine that might have a life of 40 or 50 years, and you are not taking into account the development of carbon pricing internationally, the development of legally binding [greenhouse gas reduction] obligations on all countries, including China and the US, from 2020, and not recognising that has implications for the fossil fuel sector … then you are not being a very sensible business person,'' he says.

''I think it would be wise for them to do so. Coal is their product. If they are thinking about the future market of their product … I think they could lift their game quite significantly.''

The coal industry imposed a 20¢-a-tonne levy on miners in 2006 to establish what it said would be a $1 billion fund over 10 years to help develop the technology. So far $289 million has been committed.

Australia is not alone in its lack of progress. The British government recently relaunched a £1 billion competition to try to revive its carbon capture and storage industry, after its first try failed to find a successful bidder. The US has some operating projects that inject CO2 in order to retrieve more oil reserves, but US Energy Secretary Stephen Chu said recently that without a carbon price, US companies were unlikely to invest in regular CCS projects.

In Australia, Tony Wood agrees it is fair for the industry to demand government policies to underpin carbon capture and storage, as they do for other low-emission technologies, but he also says the industry should be doing more.

''If you accept the science of climate change, there is no future for coal without CCS … If the industry took this seriously they would be out there clamouring for carbon pricing and for support for carbon capture and storage, but instead they take the short-term position of not supporting a carbon price at all,'' he says.

The experience of the $1.7 billion CCS flagships program - one of Labor's biggest funding allocations for carbon capture and storage - suggests something needs to change. The program, begun in 2009 with $2 billion (it was cut by $250 million after the Queensland floods) initially selected four domestic projects, Queensland's ZeroGen (which went into liquidation in 2011), the Wandoan power plant (now deferred), the Collie Hub south-west of Perth (still in the early stages) and a Victorian project called CarbonNet (also still at ''feasibility stage'').

Experts hold out little hope the two remaining projects will do much more over the next few years than try to ''prove up'' the underground storage sites for CO2 injection. Another Queensland demonstration project, Callide Oxyfuel, is expected to be operational next year.

But without big changes in policy, Australia will not be able to use carbon capture and storage as planned. That means it will need to rework the assumptions underpinning its crucial carbon tax reform - among them the role of coal-fired electricity generation in Australia, the cost of emission reductions, and the idea that we can be part of a global effort to limit global warming while continuing to export billions of dollars worth of coal.