Acid test shows real threat to coral reefs

Posted on March 3, 2016 by groundswellbasscoast

While our Minister proclaims no need to panic, waiting for breakthrough from R&D:

The scientists measured the acidity of seawater that flowed over a reef off Australia’s One Tree Island in the southern Great Barrier Reef. At low tide, the reef encloses a lagoon isolated from the rest of the ocean. They then added sodium hydroxide to bring the pH closer to what it would have been two centuries ago, based on estimates of what carbon dioxide levels must have been at the time…The altered water was then they pumped onto the reef, and measurements were taken of the rate at which the corals took up calcium from the water to make their skeletons…“Our work provides the first strong evidence from experiments on a natural ecosystem that ocean acidification is already slowing coral reef growth,” says the study’s leader, Rebecca Albright, a marine biologist in the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science, California.

>more> ClimateNewsNetwork

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AEMO and electricity pricing

Posted on March 2, 2016 by groundswellbasscoast

UntitledAEMOFor those who don’t know how our electricity grid work, this post is just a starting point, introducing how  the mix of generators bid, to satisfy demand projected by AEMO. Price is low when demand is low, satisfied by wind and/or brown coal. Price is high when demand is high. Here the peak is $240 per MWh which corresponds with 24cents/kWh, wholesale, which means your retailer doesn’t make much money at peak time but, obviously, you’re paying a big premium when demand is low. There’s a ceiling price for bids, a cool $13,100/MWh. All generators receive the same price as the last high bid accepted to fulfil demand.

>more> AEMO

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Electric vehicle numbers hit 1.3M as costs predicted to beat petrol cars

Posted on March 1, 2016 by groundswellbasscoast

rsz_evs_charging_310_239Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg, published report on Friday, shows number of electrically powered cars increased worldwide by almost 750,000 to around 1.3 million over the 12 month period…BNEF study’s calculations on total cost of ownership show BEVs becoming cheaper on an unsubsidised basis than internal combustion engine cars by mid-2020s …research assumes that BEV with a 60kWh battery will travel 200 miles between charges. The first generation of these long-range, mid-priced BEVs is set to hit the market in the next 18 months with the launch of the Chevy Bolt and Tesla Model

>more> RenewEconomy

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20 Australia’s biggest polluters increase emissions on Coalition watch

Posted on March 1, 2016 by groundswellbasscoast

New government data<National Greenhouse and Energy Report released late on Friday> has confirmed what has been widely suspected – the nation’s top polluters are actually increasing emissions, and will likely continue to do so despite Australia’s recent pledge to join the ambitious climate agreement sealed in Paris..“As a result, Australia’s emissions intensity from generating power is higher than China’s and twice the emissions intensity of other OECD countries.”said ACF President Geoff Cousins in a statement on Monday…Cousins closes his comments by urging the federal government to commit to a phased closure of Australia’s coal-fired power stations, starting with the dirtiest and least efficient stations – as you can see in the chart above, this would be the Victorian brown coal plant Hazelwood owned by GDF Suez (Engie), which also owns Loy Yang A and B.

>more> RenewEconomy

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Renewables agency stripped of members and run by bureaucrat

Posted on February 29, 2016 by groundswellbasscoast

5760All appointed board members of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency have had their terms expire and have not been replaced, leaving it governed by the secretary o
f the Department of the Environment, Guardian Australia has learned. ..The same thing happened in 2014 while Tony Abbott was prime minister, and the move has now been criticised as an attempt by the Turnbull government to remove the i
ndependence of the agency…According to legislation, the board must consist of the secretary of Dept of Environment and up to six others appointed by the minister. The agency can operate with the secretary being the only board member, since it reaches quorum when a majority of the board members are present, which now occurs with one…Parliament sits for the first time in 2016 on Tuesday, with bills abolishing both the renewable energy agency (Arena) and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation still before parliament, despite having been rejected by the Senate. Signs indicate the Turnbull government intends to keep them…Arena is tasked with investing in emerging renewable energy technologies, while the CEFC invests in commercially viable renewable energy technologies. Disruption in the government’s handling of renewables has been blamed for a huge drop in clean energy investment in Australia.

 

> more> TheGuardian

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Coalition subsidies increase for fossil fuels – new “growth centre”

Posted on February 29, 2016 by groundswellbasscoast

National Energy Resources Australia, or NERA – will work closely with researchers from universities and the newly streamlined CSIRO, the irony of which was not lost on critics of the scheme…“Pouring millions of dollars into research for the fossil fuel industry adds insult to injury for the CSIRO climate scientists who are set to lose their jobs under Malcolm Turnbull and his government’s watch,” said Greens energy spokesman Adam Bandt on Thursday…“Not only is the Liberal government allowing the CSIRO to cut climate science, it’s making the scientists who don’t lose their job try to breathe life into the dying fossil fuel industries…“(It) is pouring millions of dollars into a big hole in the ground, which is directly at odds with what the science tells us we must do,” Bandt said.

>more> RenewEconomy

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French owners facing court over Hazelwood mine fire

Posted on February 29, 2016 by groundswellbasscoast

1456452215694Now court proceedings, say no more

>more>TheAge

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An independent inquiry into the Bureau of Meteorology? Bring it on

Posted on February 29, 2016 by groundswellbasscoast

Maurice Newman, chair of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council, has called for an independent review of the Bureau of Meteorology’s climate data, following a stream of recent articles in The Australian newspaper attacking the Bureau’s methods…I support his call for an open and public inquiry into the Bureau’s climate data and the techniques that the Bureau’s scientists have used to reduce the influence of changes in instrumentation, exposure, and weather station location on its climate records…I support it because I don’t think the Bureau gets enough opportunities to demonstrate to the public its scientific integrity, hard work, and valuable results.

NOTE: now that attacks are made on all kinds of research, item linked here is re-published by The Conversation from 2014, a worthy re-publish

>more> TheConversation

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Climate risks could wreak havoc on financial markets, EU watchdog warns

Posted on February 25, 2016 by groundswellbasscoast

EU’s financial watchdog has called for governments to consider imposing asset disclosures on industry and stress tests on banks as a guard against economic crisis that could be caused by emergency switchover to clean energy…The European Systemic Risk Board – set up by the EU in the wake of the 2008 crash to monitor risks to financial markets – has warned in a new report of economic “contagion” if moves to a low carbon economy happen too late and abruptly…A warning last December by the governor of the Bank of England that investors face huge losses from climate change was quickly followed by the creation of a new global taskforce…Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York is leading the task force which aims to produce a voluntary industry-led code for disclosures under the rubric of the G20’s Financial Stability Board.

But the new ESRB report appears to go further, by advocating new forms of regulation…Companies already have a legal duty to disclose the principal risks… “We expect to see carbon intensive companies reporting on these risks in annual reports this year so investors can make informed decisions about where to invest money,” she said.

>more> TheGuardian

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No Bill Gates, we don’t need ‘Energy Miracles’ to solve climate change

Posted on February 25, 2016 by groundswellbasscoast

shutterstock_155863772What is particularly unfortunate about Gates’ mistaken rhetoric is that it can disempower people and policymakers and pundits into thinking that individual or even government action is not the central weapon needed to win the climate fight and that our only hope is some long-term deus ex machina strategy to avoid catastrophic warming. Nothing could be worse than leaving people with the impression that humanity’s only hope is future miracles — especially since a quarter-century of largely ignoring the warnings of climate scientists has left us with quite literally no time left to dawdle in exponentially ramping up deployment….while a boost in cleantech R&D funding is always welcome, what is most needed now is money for accelerated deployment and project financing of technologies that are now market-ready. Low or zero-interest loans and loan guarantees can leverage money 50-to-1 (since default rates are 2 percent or less). With $2 billion, you could create a $100 billion revolving fund for backing clean tech projects — which is getting to the scale of investment we need… key points are:

  • The world needs about 100 times as much money for deployment of carbon-free energy as it does for R&D right now;
  • Key developing countries like India are making decisions about building coal vs. carbon-free power right now that could lock in carbon pollution for decades; and
  • Genuine technology breakthroughs are exceedingly rare in the energy arena and generally take decades and vast resources to deploy once they do make it to market.

..of Gates: “The man built his career on shipping ‘what we have now’ and then improving it, using programmers paid out of the revenues gained from shipping not-quite-yet-ready product…. His business strategy for his entire life was antithetical to the [Bjorn] Lomborg nonsense ‘don’t do anything until the Big Research Lab In The Sky Makes It Perfect’.”..We simply don’t have the time to wait for Energy Miracles, and Gates simply hasn’t proposed the best strategy to achieve his wish — dramatic improvement in performance and a sharp drop in price….The time to act — to deploy — is now.

>more> ThinkProgress

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