Category Archives: Greening Australia

Water in Australia

Posted on
Reply

From the blog of the Australian Tea Party:

This is the most rational argument I have ever heard about Water in Australia. I always believed that it was silly to talk about water restrictions in a country like Australia which has only 21 million people. I think the Australian Tea Party needs to improve its website but I think the ideals they talk about are something which I connect to.

So yes Australia does have meager water supplies compared to the other continents, but these figures lack relevance unless we consider two other vital factors. Australia is the smallest continent on earth and much more importantly we have a miniscule population in comparison to other continents and countries.

If we look at a comparison of precipitation per head of population, which is much more relevant, we get a dramatically different picture.

Water per person from annual precipitation from various countries:
Australia: 122 megalitres
Brazil: 121 megalitres
United States 29 megalitres
China: 11 megalitres
Japan: 5.9 megalitres.
United Kingdom: 2.6 megalitres.

Leaving aside ground water for now, Australia has another source of water.
Because most of our cities and towns were originally built on river estuaries, for obvious reasons and because no thought was given to the collection of runoff from roofing and pavement, most of our storm water runs into the sea unrecorded in run-off figures. While the quantum of this is not known, estimates of around 40 million megalitres annually are considered reasonable. Most of this run-off occurs on the eastern seaboard.

So, how much water do we need?
For each Australia household to have all the water we need to live what we consider to be the Australian lifestyle. That is, have a garden with lawn on which we wash the car when we feel like it, have a pool for the kids and generally not have to be concerned about water use or shortage.

We need 110,000, litres per person per year.
This figure includes all domestic use, Council and industrial use, but does not include Agriculture and Mining. Therefore for every 9 people in Australia we need 1 megalitre of water per year.

Let us assume that with some rational planning we did the following:
1. Collected and recycled just 5% of urban runoff = 2M megalitres
2. New dams to collect just 5% of river runoff = 14 M megalitres.
Total 16 million megalitres; that is sufficient for 144 million extra people.

The Aussie climate change Beaurocracy

Posted on
Reply

THE Australian delegation to the Copenhagen climate change conference could number 114, official documents reveal.That number dwarfs the 71-strong British delegation. Such is the size of the delegation, it includes a dedicated “baggage liaison officer”.The carbon footprint for 114 people travelling to Copenhagen and back business class amounts to 1817 tonnes of emissions — the equivalent to the annual output of 2500 people in Malawi. The list appears to contradict assurances from Kevin Rudds office last weekend that fewer than 50 federal officials would attend.

via Aussie footprint 1817 tonnes, and counting | The Australian.

Carbon emissions and basic algebra

Posted on
Reply

When the countries around the world announced emission reductions, cuts, plans the media cheered. However, if we all did some basic algebra it would be different.

For example, the US announced its plans based on 2005 rather than the 1990 conventional numbers used in Kyoto. Why? Because US emissions grew a lot from 1990 to 2005 and reductions from a large base is easier. Australia is using 2000.  China uses 2005 and India another number. So every country is talking a different benchmark. So, we cannot actually compare.

May be we should GDP per capita as a benchmark.

On the second set of numbers.  US announced reduction in carbon emissions and China, India announced carbon intensity reductions. Both are as different as apples to oranges. But the press misses this. For an example check out the Ny Times. Just to clarify, I support the carbon intensity focus of the developing countries. My gripe is with media reporting.

Some good analysis from Matthew Khan,

I am happy to hear that China has pledged to reduce its carbon intensity by 40% by 2020 but does this guarantee a smaller global carbon footprint? Recall that carbon intensity = tons of CO2/GNP. China’s economy has been growing by 8% per year. Make the big assumption that this average growth rate will continue until 2020 and ignore compounding. So, in ten years their economy will be 80% bigger and their carbon intensity will be 40% lower than it is now. So, according to my logic relative to today, China’s total carbon emissions will be .6*80% or 48% higher. From Al Gore’s standpoint, is that progress? At the same time that President Obama is pledging a 20% reducing in CO2 emissions (under these growth assumptions), China’s government is pledging that their emissions will be 48% higher.

Do we need to change behaviour at all?

Posted on
Reply

I have been writing about how Kevin Rudd’s plan to introduce carbon trading included payments to millions of households on the increase in expenses. I suggested that was the wrong thing to do and that we need to change behaviour of consumers to solve this.

What about the other side? What if the emissions reductions are possible through large systemic changes in electricity production, energy efficiency at the business level etc and leave the consumers out of it directly. Consumers will still pay for the increased business costs through increases in product costs however, that is dependent on the market (which is somewhat free in Australia).

In a way the business guys are better at doing this than each individual consumer. Let them sit back and have fun and pay a bit more in product expenses.

What say?

Let Australia’s carbon reform begin

Posted on
Reply

Given that if the Americans go for an emissions trading scheme then Abbott is on board, these are sums that are going to dominate any serious carbon debate in Australia.

To illustrate what we are talking about I want to take you through the existing ’5 per cent from 2000′ cut that the government is talking about and show that if we become serious instead of political and get down to the task there are some big decisions ahead on our use of fuels.

Australia’s 2000 emissions were 553 million tonnes – note the difference to the US level.

Now to cut that by 5 per cent does not look that hard. We merely go down to around 525 million tonnes. The trouble is that we are growing and by 2020 the ball park estimates are that our emissions will rise to around 664 million tonnes even after counting the renewable energy program.

So we have to cut emissions by 139 million tonnes to 525 million tonnes by 2020 on our criteria and much more than that if the American criteria are used.

The most straight forward way of quickly cutting emissions is to shut down Victorian brown coal generation and close the high-emitting South Australian station Playford B. The ill-conceived Rudd/Turnbull scheme has Australia possibly guaranteeing the brown coal power stations’ $7 billion debt. If we replace that with a sensible policy it would cost about $5 billion to eliminate and replace two Latrobe Valley generators with gas. Yallourn and Hazelwood are the two obvious ones. If we replace them with gas fired turbines we save about 26 million tonnes of carbon or about 19 per cent of the 2020 target. Remember that Rudd and Turnbull were going to raise $114 billion by selling permits so that looks good value and it could be funded by a 1.6 per cent lift in power prices over 10 years.

So why not do it again and spend another $5 billion shutting the other two brown coal generators? We would reach 40 per cent of our target by spending less than 10 per cent of the Rudd/Turnbull money.

via Let Australia’s carbon reform begin – Robert Gottliebsen – News – Business Spectator.

Kevin Rudd pledges to repay ETS costs to consumers

Posted on
Reply

How will you change behaviour if the costs do not increase? Most absurd. If you look at the numbers million of people are going to get more than the increased costs. Income distribution.

FAMILIES will pay little or nothing for Labors emissions trading scheme, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd pledged yesterday. Full or partial compensation for rising costs would be available for couples with children on an income up to $160,000, as well as for singles on $30,000 a year or less.

via Kevin Rudd pledges to repay ETS rise | News.com.au.

For the record, once again, the Australian ETS is about redistributing wealth and win votes

Posted on
Reply

Well, it fails completely. As I set out yesterday, the Rudd/Turnbull ETS is about redistributing wealth rather than erecting new plants. You can see this by following the money.

Rudd and Turnbull estimate that on the basis of a $26 per tonne carbon price (it could be closer to $35) the government will raise around $114 billion between 2011 and 2020. That’s money that Rudd and Turnbull plan to extract from the business community which will give businesses less cash flow to erect carbon reduction plants.

Rudd and Turnbull will give about 47 per cent of that $114 million or $54 billion, to 4.3 million Australian households who are on low or middle incomes. This huge proportion of the population will therefore have no incentive to reduce carbon because they are fully protected. Indeed 2.6 million of the households will receive assistance equal to around 120 per cent of their overall cost increases so they are better off. In other words Rudd and Turnbull are using the ETS legislation as a massive income redistribution exercise to boost the income of lower income people. Many in the community would say that boosting lower income levels is a good thing and that’s fair enough. But to make that a central part of the carbon legislation is just plain stupid.

The rest of the money is sprayed around industry in accordance with their lobbying influence over Rudd and Turnbull. Clearly the amount to be distributed is less than that which has been raised, so we have lots of losers. Exporters must buy permits, so making their products less competitive. Importers do not have to buy permits so it makes sense to make goods in countries that have no ETS laws.

via Turnbull fell for Rudd’s ETS con – Robert Gottliebsen – News – Business Spectator.

Power giants crying foul? What a joke!

Posted on
Reply

The threat to close them is empty. If the generators failed to maintain the stations during the transitional period to cleaner electricity supply, the State Government has emergency powers that allow it to take over and run the assets.

But it wouldn't come to that. The politicians in Canberra have put together a CPRS that will give free pollution permits worth anything between $7 billion and $20 billion over 10 years, depending on whether the cap is reduced 5 per cent or somewhere up to 25 per cent following the eventual Kyoto Mark II agreement. Only a mug would give up the chance to get their hands on this cash flow.

The generators say they don't get the money unless the price of electricity rises. True. Macindoe said after the Government/Opposition deal was announced that the price of electricity would double in the next four to five years if the CPRS went ahead as planned. If that happens then the value of the free permits will more than double to $15 billion to $20 billion and the generators might then be worth $8 billion or more expressed as the present value of the stream of future earnings.

There are a number of scenarios that could bring this massive bonanza about, including bullying the Government into generous long-term fixed contracts and converting the brown-coal generators to natural gas, which would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 75 per cent and allow the generators to sell all their free permits. Under the CPRS rules, they can buy unlimited supplies of cheap, dodgy carbon offsets from Indonesia and PNG to avoid using any of their free permits to actually produce electricity. In other words they will be able to sell their free permits by simply replicating, with minor variations, the multibillion-dollar rort by EU generators of the EU carbon trading system since its establishment.

The flawed CPRS should be replaced with a broad-based carbon tax. If it was set initially at $10 a tonne it would be hardly noticed, it would raise $5 billion a year and all the money could be spent on green infrastructure instead of the financial bubble if the CPRS goes ahead.

via Power giants crying foul? What a joke!.

Australian ETS = Carbon Tax + Consumer Welfare

Posted on
1

I have been rooting for the ETS for a while now but with better understanding of the legislation (thanks a lot to the commentary on BusinessSpectator.com.au) I have learned that the ETS in its current form is not going to solve Australia’s problems at all. With ability to pacify any group that the government seems fit and the issue of carbon offsets there are not guarantees on how on the scheme will work.

The latest comes from Robert Gottliebsen who explains how the money from the ETS will be used as a welfare card by the labour government to stay in power.

Over the period from 2011 to 2020 the government expects to raise a staggering $114 billion from industry based on a carbon price of above $20 a tonne.

Where will that money go? John Howard retained office via the so called ‘Howard battlers’. Rudd learned from Howard so that’s where the money goes.

About $54 billion, or just under half, goes to lower and middle income people. Around 90 per cent of all low income households – or some 2.6 million households – will receive assistance equal to around 120 per cent of the overall cost increases they face.

Around 50 per cent of middle income households – about 1.7 million – will be fully compensated for overall cost increases flowing from the carbon trading legislation. And it gets better. Once the scheme starts, assistance will continue in perpetuity because these assistance payments are indexed to CPI and upfront assistance will automatically increase in line with the increasing carbon price as it affects household cost.

Think about it, if we provide people with 120% of the increase in costs; so more than what the costs have increased; then there is no hope in changing behaviour which is the goal.

Earlier I quoted Greg Mankiw on the fundamental theorem of the ETS:

Cap-and-trade = Carbon tax + Corporate welfare.

Well Greg, we have changed that in Australia. It should now read,


Cap-and-trade = Carbon tax + Consumer welfare + Corporate welfare.

Urban density, public transport and the environment

Posted on
1

Some sane words from Paul Mees; a senior lecturer in transport planning at RMIT. His book Transport for Suburbia: Beyond the Automobile Age will be released in December.

So it is possible to compare population densities and use of ”sustainable” transport (public transport, walking and cycling) across the three countries’ urban areas. Nobody has done this before, because the data did not become fully available until last year, but it can now be assembled. I have done this, using the most recent census (2006 for us and Canada; 2000 for the US).

The results are not what might have been expected. Far from being the paradigm of sprawl, Los Angeles is actually the most densely populated urban area of all. High-rise centres are not much of a guide to overall urban densities. The 8 million residents of New York City live at high densities, but the 13 million residents of the surrounding suburbs live in more spacious surroundings than their counterparts in Los Angeles, producing a lower overall figure.

The real reason Los Angeles is such an environmental disaster is not low density, but high density – combined with a huge population that depends on cars. This concentrates traffic and pollution, maximising the environmental impacts.

Melbourne, with nearly 16 people per hectare (not five), is a medium-density city, closer to the top of the table than the bottom. We are denser than Chicago, Boston and Portland, the American poster-city for ”smart growth”.

But relatively high densities have little to do with the use of sustainable transport. The best performer is the Canadian capital, Ottawa, which is much less dense than Los Angeles and about the same as Melbourne. Brisbane has barely half Melbourne’s density and a third that of Los Angeles, but use of sustainable transport is similar to Melbourne and more than twice the level in LA.

Sustainable transport use has more to do with transport policy than density, which is excellent news for anyone concerned about the environment. It would take many decades and vast expense to substantially change the density of a city of 4 million people, and we don’t have that much time. Climate change and insecure oil supplies are urgent problems, and we need solutions now. Fortunately, transport policies can be changed more quickly and with less disruption than urban form, so we might be able to keep our leafy suburbs and still save the planet.