Tuesday, November 4, 2014
The government has cut almost half a billion dollars from research into carbon capture and storage – which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) deems crucial for continued use of coal – despite the prime minister insisting coal is the “foundation of our prosperity”.
Tony Abbott said on Tuesday: “For now and for the foreseeable future, the foundation of Australia’s energy needs will be coal. The foundation of the world’s energy needs will be coal.”
The IPCC synthesis report, released on Monday, found that to limit global warming to 2C “the share of low‐carbon electricity supply (comprising renewable energy, nuclear and carbon capture and storage) needs to increase from its current share of approximately 30% to more than 80% by 2050 and 90% by 2100, and fossil fuel power generation without CCS [carbon capture and storage] is phased out almost entirely by 2100”.
In the budget the government cut $459.3m over three years from its carbon capture and storage flagship program, leaving $191.7m to continue existing projects for the next seven years. The program had already been cut by the previous Labor government and much of the funding remained unallocated.
The coal industry has “paused” a levy on black coal producers, which was supposed to build a $1bn industry fund to also finance research and demonstration into clean coal technology. It cited low coal prices for the halt. $250m has been spent from the fund on demonstration plants and another $46m worth of grants are under assessment.
The objectives of Coal21, set up in 2006, have also been changed to allow the industry to use funding already collected to promote the use of coal. Its constitution now allows money to be spent on “promoting the use of coal both within Australia and overseas and promoting the economic and social benefits of the coal industry”. It is unclear whether any has been spent in this way.
Tony Wood, the energy program director at the Grattan Institute, said: “CCS is the only way Australia, and the world, can keep using coal and also do what it needs to do about climate change, but neither industry nor government seem to be serious about doing anything about it.”
Peter Cook, the former head of the CO2 co-operative research centre, and now the head of the Peter Cook centre for CCS research at the University of Melbourne, said Australia was not doing as much as we could or we should. “The research effort is fractured, the government has cut funding … the coal industry announced their Coal21 fund with great flourish but now they seem to have gone very quiet,” he said.
“Australia has lost momentum, lost impetus … even though we have a greater interest than most countries in this technology working.”
The Greens, and many in the conservation movement, have argued that carbon capture and storage does not work and is never going to be viable, and that renewable energy has “won the race”.
But John Connor, the chief executive of the Climate Institute, said CCS “has to be one of the clean energy options available because all the modelling says that to avoid temperature rises of more than two degrees, we have to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere”.
He was also critical of the efforts of Australian governments and industry. “Apart from a brief flutter of responsibility in the 2000s the industry has gone for the fast bucks and the fancy words rather than actually doing anything,” he said.
The G8 summit in Japan in 2008 pledged to build “20 large-scale CCS demonstration projects”. The first full-scale CCS power plant, the Boundary Dam Carbon Capture and Storage Project in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, opened last month.
The excerpts are from The Guardian
Monday, November 3, 2014
Protect the Pacific Northwest from oil exports!
The Pacific Northwest is on the front lines in the fight against dirty fossil fuel projects. In Washington State, communities and waterways face increased risks from oil accidents and spills every day.
Right now, on the outer coast of Washington, three new proposed terminals to receive and export crude oil in Grays Harbor would increase large vessel traffic in the area by nearly 400 percent. The three projects together would mean 163,000 barrels of oil coming into Grays Harbor every day, and up to 358 tankers carrying oil out of the harbor every year.
It’s simple math: more oil trains and oil tankers mean a greater risk of oil spills. Such a disaster would endanger the fishing, shellfish and tourism industries, putting at risk the livelihoods of local residents. And it would mean almost 60 million barrels of oil heading to Grays Harbor and traveling through Northwest communities and waterways.
The proposed storage and export terminals bring serious risks to Washington’s communities, economy and environment. They would bring in some of the dirtiest and most dangerous fossil fuels: Bakken crude oil is highly volatile, and tar sands are incredibly toxic and corrosive. What’s more, the train cars being used are old and unsafe -- as many recent oil train accidents have shown.
Submit your comments: Say NO to more oil in Grays Harbor.
Subject:
Your Letter: Dear Department of Ecology and City of Hoquiam, I strongly oppose the construction of crude oil terminals in Grays Harbor. The U.S. Development Grays Harbor Rail Terminal proposal in Grays Harbor will have significant impacts on the community, environment, waterways, and the future of Washington State and the region and I urge you to reject the proposal. Any environmental review conducted must fully assess the environmental and cultural threats from the proposed project. The Environmental Impact Statement for the project should include an evaluation of: -Cumulative impacts. Cumulative impacts of all three proposed projects in Grays Harbor, and other similar oil and fossil fuel transport projects across the region. The evaluation should include the increased risks related to all these projects and the impacts they would have, cumulatively, on the region. -Risks of oil spills in our marine environment. Increased vessel traffic and associated increased amounts of oil traveling through waterways mean a higher risk of oil spills, especially given the lack of tug escorts available to tankers. The EIS should also consider what the economic impacts of a spill, including to the shellfish, fishing, and tourism industries, would have on Grays Harbor and the entire region. -Risks from crude oil. Putting in place this infrastructure would allow Bakken crude oil and oil from the Canadian tar sands to come to Grays Harbor. The EIS should include an evaluation of the risks, resources needed to prevent spills, and response required related to these different oils. Bakken shale crude oil has been shown to be more explosive, putting our communities and first responders at greater risks. Tar sands sink and make cleanup of any spills much more difficult and expensive. -Impacts to Grays Harbor communities. Community impacts, particularly impacts to tribes and tribal treaty rights in the region as well as the impacts of more trains causing traffic backups that will impact accessibility between homes, businesses, emergency resources, and communities on both sides of the rail tracks from Spokane to Grays Harbor. -Public health impacts. The EIS should include the health risks to communities from Spokane to Grays Harbor from increased train traffic, air emissions from the diesel used in the trains, and the emissions from storage tanks and transfer of the oil to oil tankers. Evaluation should include a separate Health Impact Assessment, an objective evaluation of the potential health impacts of the project. -Environmental impacts, including threats to streams, wetlands, fishing areas, shellfish beds, and migratory bird habitats. In particular, the threats to the adjacent Grays Harbor National Wildlife Refuge, which supports hundreds of species of birds. These threats should be evaluated along the entire transport route of the crude oil -- from possible areas where the crude oil is sourced to Grays Harbor to where the crude oil goes from Grays Harbor. This includes threat of oil spills, air emissions, accidents, and the infrastructure updates required to transport the crude oil on the environmental resources. -Climate impacts related to the greenhouse gas emissions from the fracking, tar sands extraction, transporting -- both by rail and marine vessel -- as well as the refining and burning of this crude oil. Of particular importance is the threat of oil spills and other accidents and the impact based on the type of crude oil -- Bakken shale or Canadian tar sands -- and how, based on the type of crude oil, a spills and accident would be prevented, and, in the case of an accident, cleaned up. Based on the far-reaching impacts of this project, I urge you to reject the unprecedented application for the U.S. Development Grays Harbor Oil Terminal. Thank you for your consideration of these comments.
Washington Department of Ecology
Email:spillsrulemaking@ecy.wa.gov
City of Hoquiam
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Friday, October 17, 2014
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