The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, is often practical. In the following speech, which he gave today at the launch of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate’s ‘Partnership for Action 2006’, he made a few good points including:
* More than any other developed nation, Australia’s economy is dependent on fossil fuels,
* It makes sense to invest in technologies what will ‘cleanup’ this source of energy including by capturing carbon emissions, and
* Signing a piece of paper, i.e. Kyoto, won’t stop global warming.
Here’s the speech:
“Thank you very much Alexander, Ian Macfarlane, Geoff Garrett, the Chief Executive of CSIRO, your excellencies representing our five partner countries in AP6, ladies and gentlemen. The first and indeed probably the most important thing to say about AP6 is that together it represents approximately 50 per cent of global energy use, emissions, GDP and world population. So it’s not a bad practical foundation for a collaborative approach that will produce a lot of practical outcomes.
There is a lot of debate about climate change, you’d have to be sort of on another planet to pretend otherwise, and there will continue to be a lot of talk, and there’ll be a lot of rhetoric and there will be a lot of well-meaning injunctions to people to sign things and to negotiate things. But side by side with all of that meritorious endeavour, there needs to be practical applications of technology. And although there is debate about how you approach climate change, and that’s legitimate, and none of us should be mesmerised by any one particular theory, I don’t think there’s any doubt that in order to make progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions we need to make progress in cleaning up the use of fossil fuels.
And I think the other thing we ought to remember as Australians, if I may be permitted in the presence of our guests to sound a little inward looking for a moment, I think we ought to bear in mind that two interrelated factors, the one I’ve just mentioned, and that is to make progress we have to reduce emissions from fossil fuel use. And the other thing to bear in mind is that there’s probably no developed country in the world that depends more on fossil fuel use for its wealth generation and its power generation than does Australia. And we have to be very careful, we Australians, as we move forward, that we don’t end up imposing a disproportionate share of the burden of adjustment on our own country.
Now that is a legitimate plea from the Prime Minister of Australia but it’s not in any way discordant with the goals and objectives of this Partnership because what makes me enthusiastic about this Partnership is that it’s about practical achievement, not talk. If we’d have sat down at the beginning in January and said we can’t do anything until we agree on a bit of paper, until we agree on some targets or some sanctions or some penalties, nothing would’ve happened. Instead of that we set about trying to build, through a series of task forces some action plans, and in a remarkably short period of time; and Alexander is absolutely right; it’s only taken nine months, and we now have and I’m launching today, Australian contributions of $60 million out of the $100 million we committed at the beginning of this exercise nine months ago, and that’s going to fund 42 projects covering all of the activities of the task groups. The two in the areas for which Australia is particularly responsible are magnificently displayed outside and both of them are immensely practical. What could be more practical in the climate, dare I say, of the current debate, what could be more practical than to find a way of capturing carbon emissions from existing power stations, separating them out and burying the carbon? What could be more practical than that? And that is exactly what $8 million out of the $60 million which is being contributed to this particular development of CSIRO, that magnificent Australian organisation, and it comes out of its flagship climate change program.
And the other $5 million is for the projects that are particularly relevant to Australia, which is, of course, going to help the Solar Systems projects. Solar Systems were the partner that we, along with the Victorian Government, funded last week in that major announcement made by the Minister and Treasurer and the Victorian Government. And the development we’re funding is an application of that technology which we hope will be exported and used enthusiastically in both China and South Korea.
Now this is the essence of what this Partnership is about. By all means let us continue the process of discussion, and I’ve made it clear that Australia will be part of future discussions which are designed to get total international agreement involving all of the major polluters, involving all the nations of the world and if we can do that you can then start talking about an effective world-wide emissions trading system. But that’s going to take a lot of time. But in the meantime we are getting on with the job of practical investment in technologies which are going to, in a sensible way, bring about a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. And that magnificent combustion capture technology, which is displayed outside, has the potential to capture between 85 and 95 per cent of the CO2 content of the emissions from a basic coal-based power station. And they can, of course, be retrofitted, it’s a prototype, and what the CSIRO will be doing, I understand, is going around applying this, plugging it into power stations, testing the consequences and that will lay the foundation, the research coming out of that, will lay the foundations for the custom building of these capture technologies for the needs of individual power stations.
Now that is my necessarily inadequate technological understanding, I do not claim to be a scientist on this matter, on these matters, but I’m furiously learning and trying very, very hard to understand some of these concepts. But it’s a very commonsense concept that we should focus on practical responses. And one of the practical responses is to make it possible for us to go on using fossil fuel in a way that generates fewer CO2 emissions. There could be no argument about that. There’s no debate about that. That makes commonsense that we do it. But in the process we have to as a nation, and as a world, understand there is a cost involved in this process. And, you know, a little bit of this debate over the past few weeks has given the impression that all you’ve got to do is put a signature on a bit of paper, and hey presto, the world stops getting warm. It’s not quite as simple as that, I wish it were, it’s not, and we have to find practical ways of addressing these issues. And one of these practical ways is the sort of technology that’s been demonstrated out there. But internationally, what is magnificent about the Partnership is that it brings together the commitment of half of the world’s population, half of the world’s GDP, the countries that contribute 50 per cent of the emissions and 50 per cent of the world’s global energy use. Now we’ve actually agreed in nine months on a practical plan of action. Now that beats all the debate. And I’m not objecting the debate and I’m all in favour of debate, it’s the stuff of international engagement and the stuff of democracy. But while that debate goes on, isn’t it incredibly sensible and important that we invest in technology because there can be no argument.
And may I remind you that when the Government released its White Paper on energy more than two years ago, we pointed Australia down this path. We said the future lay in developing better technology to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions coming out of the use of fossil fuel. And that was more than two years ago. There’s nothing that’s, sort of, suddenly come in the last 24 hours on that and of course last week the Minister, with the Treasurer, made a major announcement and earlier this week he made some major announcements in his native state of Queensland.
So there is a lot happening on this front but I particularly welcome again the representatives of our friends in the Partnership and I’ll be meeting the heads of all of their governments, with the exception of India, at the APEC Meeting in Vietnam later this month and I’m quite sure that the issue of climate change will come up at that meeting. But the Partnership is a vivid reminder of the value of practical responses to practical challenges and it’s in that spirit and with that enthusiasm I launch it. I know that Australia’s contribution of $100 million towards projects under the Partnership is the first, and I know that that contribution will be followed very rapidly by contributions from other countries that are part of the Partnership, so that together we can fund these very exciting projects that I’m announcing today. Thank you very much.”
A colleague has suggested to me that this ‘carbon capture’ technology will make coal about twice as expensive as nuclear energy. Is he correct? How practical is ‘carbon capture’ really, and how expensive is it likely to be?
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Ziggy recently said nuclear too expensive to be viable or compete with coal. I can’t imagine he’d overlook the likely costs of geosequestration.
Now the govt is planning subsidies to partly compensate for the subsidies that already exist. They could start by reducing the subsidies to activities that use and facilitate the use of fossil fuels in Aust – usage, infrastructural and institutional subsidies.
As expected, govt is just backing policies in which the usual big companies see $$ opportunities. Who decides, and how, which projects get funded?
In addition to the question on cost, what would the impact be? A reason for rejecting Kyoto is that it wouldn’t have sufficient impact. Would this proposal have sufficient impact on the climate change problem that we don’t know if we can affect? Doesn’t add up, not that the average Joe notices or cares. And what of other GHG sources?
We are about to find out how practical carbon capture and storage (CCS) is. We already know that solar and wind are not practical for baseload power (unless one wants an economy where industry and commerce shuts down at sunset and whenever there isn’t a nice breeze). There is a lot of work going on preparing various demonstration projects. Carbon dioxide is stripped chemically from the mixed exhaust gas stream (by amines), recovered into a pure CO2 stream and pumped under pressure to suitable host rocks underground. One needs rocks that act as a gas reservoir (uneconomic coal seams are good candidates) and one doesn’t want to have to pump too far (because of cost). The cost estimates I’ve seen are from overseas and are not based on the results of demonstration projects. They suggest a doubling of the electicity price compared to the same coal fired power station without CCS but with a reduction in differential over time as technology improves. Coal-fired power currently in Australia beats the pants off gas and nuclear (and renewables)price-wise because readily winnable good quality coal is abundant. (And the coal industry has massvely subsidised infrastructure for others (road, rail, ports, water supply, let alone the huge royalties government reap. Certainly nuclear power and coal power plus CCS become more competitive under a carbon tax or carbon trading scheme. But such cost impositions on fossil fuels have to be global or else its just an open invitation for industry to move to India, China, Brazil Mexico or any of the other fast growing economies who (sensibly) wouldn’t sign up to cuts under Old Kyoto. Old Kyoyo, spawned out of Old Europe, is a dead failure. Any future in non-token CO2 emmission reductions lies with an all-inclusive New Kyoto.Tokenism like promising to stop droughts by ratifying Old Kyoto is not going to fool other countries into joining an all-inclusive New Kyoto.
Siltstone: It occurred to me a long time ago that we have a lot to loose besides our industry. We have more coastline and dispersed low level development than many care to consider. No one here is talking about these costs yet. A sinking world is far more of an issue for us than an industrial world we can’t control anyway.
A few manufacturing industries will continue to move overseas because we can’t compete on other fronts like cheap labour and proximity to emerging markets. Technology could partly plug that gap if we had it but for years there has been another kind of drain. We are now in the insidious position of buying almost everything we need off shore. We had a real sell-out when we became dependent on raw export.
The sea will rise while our government and remaining industry procrastinates. There is no sign in the PM’s speech of a whole sale reduction in anything to do with the world’s or our own consumerism so get ready for a salty wash.
By all means, let’s find out if CCS works, we need baseload from somewhere. But how about also investing a whole lot more in renewables. Solar and wind are set to play a much greater role in our future energy mix. Methinks the opinions of our ‘practical’ prime minister have been purchased by donations and favors by those in the industry. But of course, this is unethical and would never happen, right Jen?
Trev
I reckon that between Al Gore and The Stern Report such global hysteria has been created, that the PM is throwing money around in the hope that he can do something about our carbon dioxide emissions. He is convinced signing Kyoto won’t help – just put us at a competitive disadvantage – so he is trying with lots of money. I’m not sure that this investment in carbon sequestration it is my taxes well spent. But hey, you ony get electricity for 45,000 homes from the world’s biggest sun farm!
Carbon capture. Yeah? And? Look, fossil fuels give up the most energy when they oxidize completely. CO2 at best and miscellaneous byproducts when things aren’t perfect. Anything less than CO2 is less efficient. Anything sequestering CO2 or the byproducts is even less efficient.
I don’t know how more simply to put this but efficient OR less polluting, Pick one. That said, sulfur and clean coal are technology not chemistry. Low sulfur is easy and positive. The historical parallel is that of asbestos.
Hi Jen, I just read this in today’s SMH…
“AUSTRALIA is exporting at least $61.5 billion worth of climate change every year in the form of coal shipments, a figure that is set to rise as federal and state governments push ahead with new mines and bigger coal loaders.”
and from the same article…..
“But compared with the $60 million in spending announced yesterday on carbon-lowering projects, the Government spends $790 million every year on aviation fuel concessions, and $1 billion on fringe benefit tax concessions for company cars, according to research by the green group the Australian Conservation Foundation”
“The coal industry, which receives hefty help from taxpayers through measures such as diesel fuel subsidies, last year shipped out 233 million tonnes (about 30 per cent of the world total) of coal worth $24.5 billion and employed 25,000 people, says the Australian Coal Association”
The money John Howard is putting into solar doesn’t appear to be much at all really. And clearly if the world’s biggest solar power station only provides power for 45 000 homes then it’s time to build a bigger one, or better still, get those photovoltaics on rooftops! Glad to see Mel and Kochie (who’d have thought) working to get the PV rebate back
We need to review baseload:
“First, much of our ‘base load’ demand has been artificially created over many decades by deliberate policies to price overnight electricity at artificially low prices in order to keep our inflexible coal-fired power stations operating. Off peak electric hot water services, inefficient street lighting and widespread waste of energy in industry and business drive the base load power demand. These loads can be dramatically reduced.
Second, much of our ‘base load’ industry demand can be satisfied by cogeneration (from renewable energy or gas). Like Queensland’s sugar mills, overseas pulp and paper mills are net exporters of base load renewable electricity (essentially through gasifying biomass and black liquor, then burning it in gas turbines).”
Ric Brazzale, Executive Director of the Australian Business Council for Sustainable Energy (in Crikey).
Further, we already have the technology to produce smart appliances and plant that can make use of varying base load. It’s pretty simple to run a realtime auction using programmes with preset criteria so they can purchase electricity at the cheapest and most plentiful times. This approach goes hand-in-hand with increased efficiency efforts. Critical uses could arrange surity of supply, so no need for doomsday predictions, while more flexible uses can select supply in a more flexible market approach.
An energy market with these characteristics would stimulate new levels of innovation, efficiency and distributed supply (ie less loss through long-distance transmission, and more varying sources of energy supply which makes a more robust system). The only barrier is the current rigidity of the system, defended by the incumbents and those fearful of change.
Pinxi – Agreed. Review baseload. Good point
It is worth noting that the Kyoto Protocol is primarily being driven by the Europeans. But if you look at a map of the distribution of nuclear power stations, they are concentrated in Europe. They are in a good position to reduce carbon dioxide emissions because their base load electrical capacity is provided by nuclear energy.
Similarly, while the environmental lobby was trumpeting the decision by Japan to sign the Kyoto Accord, there was no comment about the corresponding announcement to commission 13 new nuclear power plants. And Japan has almost the most unstable geology in the planet.
While Australia has a non nuclear policy, we are stuffed.
PP
Jennifer was correct in saying John Howard is practical. He’s a clever politician. He bows to public pressure and is always policy-backflip-ready to keep his voters happy. Want to get his attention?
Sat Nov 4
Walk against Warming
Sydney – 11am Martin Place (walk to Tarpeian Way next to Botanic Gardens)
Melbourne – 1pm Town Hall (walk to Birrarung Marr)
Brisbane – 2pm Queens Park (cnr George & Elizabeth St)
Canberra – 12pm Civic Square, Legislative Assembly (walk to Glebe Park)
Perth – 12:30pm Russel Square, Northbridge
Adelaide – 10am Adelaide Airport (walk to West Beach)
Hobart – 12pm Franklin Square (walk to Princes Park Battery Point)
Darwin – 5pm Jetty at Nightcliff Foreshore
Cairns (QLD) – 10:30am City Place (walk to Foggerty Park) Bring a brolly!
Byron Bay (NSW) – 9:30am Peace Pole (by the beach)
Parramatta (NSW) – 9:30am Amphitheatre (near the Town Hall)
Ballarat (VIC) – 11am Windmill Drive, Lake Wendouree
Newcastle (NSW) – 1pm Nobby’s Beach (near the Surf Life Saving Club)
Maitland (NSW) – 10am Maitland Post Office (walk to Maitland Park)
Bunbury (WA) – 11am Big Swamp Wildlife Park
Port Macquarie (NSW) – 10am Town Green (walk to Town Beach)
Grafton (NSW) – 4:30pm Jacaranda Park (Prince St)
Pambula (NSW) – 10am Tennis Courts (Toalla St)
Wollongong (NSW) – 10:30am Crown St Mall Amphitheatre
Robertson (NSW) – 9am Calong St Bridge (tree planting & walk to CTC)
Bowral (NSW) – 2pm CWA Hall (Wingecarribee St)
Townsville (QLD) – 3pm ANZAC Park (walk to Strand Park)
Bellingen (NSW) – 11am Council Chambers (walk along Church St)
Armidale (NSW) – 12pm Civic Park
Atherton (QLD) – 10am Atherton Market
Forster (NSW) – FRI 3RD NOV – 10am Main Beach
Maldon (VIC) – 9:30am Central Servo
http://www.walkagainstwarming.org/
I apologise that I couldn’t find a Walk FOR Warming. If you want such a walk, you might have to arrange your own event. I’m sure you’ll have no problem getting the sceptics out of bed.
It is interesting to observe that the Europeans are the primary drivers of the Kyoto Protocol.
This is supposed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
However, this past week, European governments sent in their proposed emissions permit allocations to the European Commission for the 2007 round. It turns out that they have allocated permits allowing emissions 15 percent higher than actual emissions.
So much for Kyoto reducing emissions – it is increasing them.
PP
“But if you look at a map of the distribution of nuclear power stations, they are concentrated in Europe. They are in a good position to reduce carbon dioxide emissions because their base load electrical capacity is provided by nuclear energy.”
This makes no sense at all. The easiest way to reduce greenhouse gases would be if you had a lot of coal fired power stations (such as Australia) and replaced them with either gas or nuclear power plants. Already having nuclear power plants makes the job harder as you don’t have the option of simply replacing your electricity generators with lower emitting substitutes.
Germany, which has the dirtiest coal power plants in the EU, has ruled that their coal industry is exempt from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol.
Coal fired means less dependancy on the only credible alternative, nuclear fuel, which has become unpopular with German electors. France, which has the most nuclear power in the world, has relatively fewer problems and enjoys wide political support for nuclear power generation.
http://www.euractiv.com/en/energy/german-coal-fired-power-stations-europe-dirtiest/article-145434
“So much for Kyoto reducing emissions – it is increasing them”:
“The latest projections from pre-2004 EU Member States (EU-15) show that greenhouse gas emissions could be brought down to 8.0 % below 1990 levels by 2010. If all existing and planned domestic policy measures are implemented and Kyoto mechanisms as well as carbon sinks are used, the EU-15 will reach its Kyoto Protocol target. This projection relies on figures from several Member States which suggest that they will cut emissions by more than is required to meet their national targets. Existing domestic policies and measures will reduce total EU-15 greenhouse gas emissions by a net effect of 0.6 % from 1990 levels. When additional domestic policies and measures (planned but not yet implemented) are taken into account, the EU-15 could reduce emissions by 4.6 %. The projected use of Kyoto mechanisms by ten of the EU-15 will reduce emissions by a further 2.6 % at a cost of EUR 2 830 million. The use of carbon sinks, such as planting of forests to remove CO2, would contribute an additional 0.8 %. All ten new EU Member States are on track to achieve their individual Kyoto targets, despite rising emissions. This is largely due to economic restructuring in the 1990s.”
Are they having a Warming Walk down at Lakemba? – you could kill two birds with….
Rog:
That’s incorrect Germany’s power plants are counted(even their dirtest ones) in Kyoto calculations. This has been discussed here before.
From the article you linked:
“In the next 20 years, many of the worst polluting coal power plants will be decommissioned, clearing the way for newer and cleaner technologies, a point that the power industry is also eager to stress. “Since 2002, we have initiated a modernisation programme, shutting down the oldest power facilities and upgrading the technical and environmental performance of the newest power plants. The goal is to limit sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and dust emissions,” said a representative from EDF. ”
Signing Kyoto is a beloved gesture.
Carbon trading is an artificial market bubble.
At what cost can we get the Greenies off our backs?
As much as we have, of course.
Germany also figured out that their subsidies were so large that it was cheaper to pay their miners not to work. Explain that to me rog.
Pinxi,
Germany will eventually discover that it is cheaper to pay everyone to do nothing at all, and at that point they will find there is no-one left standing who’s capable of paying taxes.
Well, actually, it won’t come to that. They’ll bomb each other to crap before then, with explosives or finances, and hope for another Marshall plan.
They may find that Europe’s rediscovered xenophobia has driven off a lot of former friends who are no longer kindly disposed.
Europe has a learning disability.
how’s my memory?
“Germany to reduce carbon curbs
By Judy Dempsey International Herald Tribune
Published: June 28, 2006
BERLIN Germany, one of the big European countries that has taken the lead in trying to control climate change but that is also one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, announced changes Wednesday that would allow increases in its emissions.
The move, which weakens the European Union’s carbon trading program for the 2008 to 2012 period and could persuade some other countries to slacken their controls, could pit Germany against the European Commission.
The commission, a strong advocate in supporting the Kyoto Protocol on climate warming, has tried to make Europe the champion in curbing greenhouse gases through the establishment of a carbon trading system, which aimed at giving incentives to companies to curb greenhouse gases.
Climate change will also be one of the topics raised during the Group of 8 summit meeting of industrial countries next month in St. Petersburg.
Germany, however, has tried to limit the discussion on climate change, while Britain is still fighting hard to put the issue high on an agenda that is expected to be dominated by energy security.
The conservative leader, Chancellor Angela Merkel, and her Social Democratic coalition partners agreed to cut the emissions limit by nearly 3.4 percent, but at the same time the cabinet has given an exemption to all new power plants, including coal, one of the worst industrial pollutants…”
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/28/business/green.php
Rog – that’s for the European carbon trading program. It still gets counted as part of Germany’s emmissions. The German were seeking a ‘carbon trading’ holiday of ~10 years for their new coal fired power stations. And that was for their new cleaner power stations not the older dirty ones that you mentioned.
So Germany isn’t excluding their coal industry or their dirty power stations from Kyoto, they’re asking for their new cleaner power stations to be exempt for set time from the European carbon trading program. The emmissions from the new power stations will still be counted as part of Germany’s and Europe’s total greenhouse emmissions.
Previous discussion here:
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/001689.html#comments
OK, Germany has exempted coal from the EU ETS not Kyoto.
But the EU ETS exists because of Kyoto, it is the model on which the Kyoto world will operate on from 2008.
And the European Environment Agency (EEA) is advising that only the UK and Sweden are on track to meet targets and that “existing policies will have slashed greenhouse-gas emissions in the EU-15 by only 0.6% in 2010 – a far cry from the 8% it committed to achieve by 2012.”
By fiddling the books EU members have devalued the market value of carbon.
Rog – Germany has not exempted coal – Germany has submitted a plan to the EU that allows only it’s new coal power stations an opt out of the ETS for 14 years. I hope the EU reject it but if you read the rest of the submission you’ll see that the new German carbon dioxide (CO2) quota is 482 million tonnes per year, down from 499 million tonnes in the first phase of the trading scheme, 2005-07, and includes 12 million tonnes to be handed out to new power plants.
The ETS is part of the EU response to Kyoto – it covers large industry and emmittors but the EU countries have over mechanisms to reduce green house gas emmissions.
From the EEA:
Looking ahead to 2010, the report says that existing domestic policies and measures will reduce EU-15 greenhouse gas emissions by a net effect of 0.6 % from 1990 levels. When additional domestic policies and measures (i.e. those planned but not yet implemented) are taken into account, the EU-15 could reduce emissions by an additional 4.0 %.
The projected use of Kyoto mechanisms by ten of the EU-15 will reduce emissions by a further 2.6 % at a cost of EUR 2 830 million. The use of carbon sinks, such as planting forests to remove CO2, would reduce emissions by an additional 0.8 %.
I’m glad that the UK has been brought up – they are projected to have cut emissions by 12.5% by 2010 and they economy is doing well – no mass unemployment, no massive inflation, economy is growing. So why can we cut emissions?
PS I just noticed that Germany has a target of a 21% emission cut by 2010 and according to the Greenhouse gas emission trends and projections in Europe 2006 report is projected to meet it. (I know that reunification helped but still)
Howard’s not getting much praise for his supposedly new found conversion and consequent investments.
One could almost assume that simply signing Kyoto and ignoring investment in alternatives would be preferable given that we’ll probably meet our Kyoto targets anyway.
Is it possible that attacking a hated conservative is actually more important than acknowledging real policy changes?
I’m not so sure about the accounting going on with emisssions and carbon – there seems to be some dispute over real progress made;
“Although the overall emissions by industrialized countries dropped 3.3 per cent in the 1990–2004 period, this was mostly due to a 36.8 percent decrease by economies in transition of eastern and central Europe”
36.8% decrease is a big “help”
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2006/2006-10-31-02.asp
Several years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the very energy-inefficient smokestack industries of the former Soviet client states in Eastern Europe either shut down or were made more energy efficient once a more market-based approach to life came into being. This is the reason why the EU lobbied so hard for 1990 to be chosen as the base year for Kyoto targets. That is, start with a high base, and claim credit for things that happened anyway! Germany in particular has used this approach. However, it is statistical move that they can only use once. Germany is now increasingly dependent on gas from Russia and is going to get into a very vulnerable geo-political position of dependency on an increasingly assertive Russia.
“Although the overall emissions by industrialized countries dropped 3.3 per cent in the 1990–2004 period, this was mostly due to a 36.8 percent decrease by economies in transition of eastern and central Europe”
36.8% decrease is a big “help””
We were talking about the EU-15 – the original 15 members which doesn’t include the central and eastern European countries. Your quote is for the expanded Europe while my comments have been restricted to the original 15 member states. The EU-15 countries have a target of an 8% reduction and any reductions by newer members of the EU aren’t included. The only country in the 15 to ‘benefit’ from the transistion was the reunified Germany but this was taken into account when the individual countries targets were set, which is why Germany’s target was so large compared to France and UK.
Siltstone as above – the EU targets didn’t include the newer EU states.
clean coal
ha, what a furphy
there no such thing yet, and unlikely to be for at least a decade, even if itss possible. i keep hearing how ‘ new technologies’ are going to provide a solution to GW, when technologies such as solar and wind are already here and capable.
German CO2 emissions from all fossil fuel sources:
1990 = 980.01 Mt;
1994 = 867.16 Mt (following changes to Soviet-style Eastern German industry)(-11.52% from base year);
2004 = 862.23 (-12.02% from base year).
Eleven and a half percent in the first four years, half a percent in the next decade. The Germans are going gangbusters in reducing fossil fuel dependency by use of propellers and solar panels!
From 1st year nuclear physics, I recall that 5 half lives is the time it takes for an unstable isotope to decay to negligible levels and 10 half lives to effectively disappear.
So let’s say that if we built no more coal fired power stations as from this weekend, and the economic half life of the world’s coal fired power stations is 20 years, emissions from coal fired power will take until about AD 2100 to almost reach zero.
Given that in reality China and India alone are building c-f power stations in large numbers, and that come next Monday they will continue to do so, and these countries are probably the economic superpowers of the 21st century, the half life of the world’s c-f power stations is probably more like 50 years. We are stuck with coal for some time, even if we try hard from here on to close down the coal industry as quickly as we can.
I personally like the concept of renewables, and professionally I would benefit from expansion of renewables. We should refine them as fast as is economically feasible. But the fact is that to correct CO2 emissions by abruptly closing down coal would knock the world economy on its ear (Nick Stern seems to have said as much) because renewables are not yet base-load capable. We must sequester coal’s CO2 to buy us some time. Even switching to all-nuclear (if that were possible) as quickly as possible would take so long we would still need CO2 sequestration.
If you take 3 cents per kWhr as the cost to generate Victorian coal electricity and double it to cover the cost of sequestration, you have 6 cents per kWhr. The cheapest (unstable) wind power is about 6 cents, biomass baseload electricity is about 6 cents, and solar power is about 30 cents. Carbon-neutral coal, biomass and solar will all become cheaper as the technologies are refined. Wind is like an animal species that has stopped breeding; you see them around, but in a few decades they’ll only be seen in photos from the early 21st century.
Siltstone:
Total greenhouse emissions:
1990 = 1244 Mt;
1994 = 1108 Mt (drop of ~11% from base year);
2003 = 1018 Mt (-18.2% from base year).
There’s more to GHG emissions than CO2 from fossil fuels.
http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/indicator_detail.cfm?Country=DE&IndicatorID=196#row
So siltstone you acknowledge that you were incorrect about the EU wanting 1990 for the base year so they could get credit for the ex-soviet states. As I said Germany was given a target of -21% because the benefits from restructing of the east were already taken into account.
Sinmon C, thanks for adding to the proof of my point.
1990-1994 – German total emission reduction from base year 136 Mt over 4 years (2.73% p.a. arithmetic average); 1994-2003 German total emission reduction from base year 90 Mt (0.80% p.a., arithmetic average). Germans were so keen to get 1990 as the base year they would have invaded Poland again if they could have (joke). But they didn’t. In the future they will be done in by the Russians (again) when gas supply is cut off (unfortunately for them, not a joke).
Siltstone the orginal reduction of around 11% between 1990 and 1994 was due to reunification and restructing of the east. Since then they have recorded more than a 7% drop. I don’t see how this adds to the proof of your point (which was what exactly?).
You originally said “the very energy-inefficient smokestack industries of the former Soviet client states in Eastern Europe either shut down or were made more energy efficient once a more market-based approach to life came into being. This is the reason why the EU lobbied so hard for 1990 to be chosen as the base year for Kyoto targets. That is, start with a high base, and claim credit for things that happened anyway!” which isn’t true and nothing I’ve written supports it. Since then you’ve started on Germany – firstly implying that they haven’t made too much in the way of reductions since 1994, then when I pointed that their total GHG emissions have dropped from a 11% reduction in 1994 to a 17.2% reduction to 2003 and that Germany is on track to deliver a 21% reduction by ~2010 you say this proves your point?
“Signing a piece of paper, i.e. Kyoto, won’t stop global warming.”
“The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, is often practical.”
Governments sign various pieces of paper that are held in quite high regard. In themselves, they don’t stop the people trafficking, torture, etc. that they are design to prevent either, but they are a damn good start. Howard wont back down on the Kyoto protocol for political reasons, not practical ones.
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