Its the future with no polluter

Given the recent news that former Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia Bernie Fraser will be the inaugural chairman of the soon to be established Climate Change Authority (CCA), I proffer the above tag line for the official motto¹.

Bernie Fraser to head climate change authority
SUN 10 JULY 2011
Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency

The Gillard Government is pleased to announce that it intends to appoint the former Reserve Bank Governor and former Treasury Secretary Bernie Fraser as Chairman of the new Climate Change Authority (CCA).

The CCA is to be established by legislation as an independent body to provide expert advice on key aspects of the carbon pricing mechanism.

When the carbon pricing mechanism moves to a flexible price emissions trading scheme, the Government will put annual caps on the amount of carbon pollution that can be released into the atmosphere by entities covered by the carbon price.

The CCA will play an important role in the governance of the carbon pricing mechanism.

One of the CCA’s responsibilities will be to make recommendations to the Government on future pollution caps under the carbon pricing mechanism.

These recommendations will have regard to, among other matters:

• the Government’s announced medium and long-term carbon pollution targets;

• progress towards emissions reductions;

• the impact of its recommendations on the Australian economy, including on specific industries.

The Government will make final decisions on these pollution caps, based on the recommendations of the CCA.

The CCA will also provide advice on the performance of the carbon price and other climate change initiatives and will track progress towards Australia’s pollution reduction targets.

It will conduct regular public reviews and its reports will be made public.

The headline at The Age is,

$15 billion in tax cuts for low and middle income earners under carbon deal
Phillip Coorey
July 10, 2011 - 6:39PM

Low and middle-income families and singles pensioners and other welfare recipients are the biggest winners from the carbon price while those on generous incomes will bear almost the full brunt with next-to-no assistance.

Unveiled at midday today by the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, a package of $15 billion in tax cuts and increased benefits mean 4 million households will receive more in compensation that the carbon tax will add to their cost of living.

A further 2 million households will be no worse off by being fully compensated, while another 2 million will receive something.

Of the nation's 8.8 million households, only 700,000 receive nothing.

The scheme will operate as a fixed carbon price of $23 from July 1 next year, and move to a full emissions trading scheme on July 1, 2015, when the market will set the carbon price.

It excludes petrol and is not revenue neutral as first forecast. It will cost the budget $4.2 billion over four years and will erode the forecast $3.5 billion return to surplus in 2012-13 by $530 million.

It's fairly obvious how the Opposition/News Co. is probably going to play this. It will be some variation of economic doomsday-ism rolled up with "the politics of envy" style rhetoric coupled with a frenetic whisking up of the "green socialist agenda" - when The Greens aren't being compared to Fascists, that is.

As Crikey writes, like all such deals, its a compromise. Maybe not the best compromise but it hopefully breaks the inertia and resistance created by the climate denial spin machine.

Carbon tax: the policy and the politics
by Bernard Keane

This is a better package than the CPRS it is so closely modelled on, but not by a lot.

The key problem with the CPRS was that compensation for emissions intensive industries was so great and went for so long that it neutered the price signal...

The same levels of assistance will apply to big polluters again, but this time the Productivity Commission will be on the case to review whether the assistance is justified and there’s an in-built bias toward reduction in assistance to the levels proposed by Ross Garnaut in his updated report if the PC agrees. But big polluters have a guarantee that their assistance won’t be cut until at least 2018, although the PC can start its 2014-15 review early if it believes there are industries making windfall gains from compensation. Which, of course, they will be.

There will also be an independent body to examine the case for accelerating Australia’s laughably unambitious target of 5% by 2020. The Climate Change Authority could become a potent independent source of advice that will pressure future governments inclined to recalcitrance in the key issue of how quickly we proceed with decarbonising the economy.

So two independent sources of pressure on future governments to improve this scheme in its two critical features: how much the price signal is neutered by compensation, and how fast we should be reducing emissions.

The other key advantage over the CPRS is the use of tax cuts aimed at addressing EMTRs for low-income earners. This isn’t merely sensible policy, it’s actually consistent with the government’s own reform efforts so far under Julia Gillard, aimed at increasing workforce participation.

This tax break for 'working families' my also function as a 'pre-emptive' stimulus - given the direction of oil prices and signs that the US and Europe may be in for another bout of GFC.

The bad news is some of the worst polluters will get even more than they got under the CPRS. The coal industry will get a staggering $1.2 billion in handouts, in an outrageous cave-in to the industry that is responsible, more than any other, for Australia’s contribution to global warming. Compensating the coal industry for a carbon price is like compensating the local drug dealer for a crime crackdown.

So how does it stack up against the criteria Crikey suggested last week? Will it be seen as a serious contribution to the cause of an international agreement on climate change? Yes.

This is about as voter-friendly a package as you can get while still doing something about climate change. With tax cuts for low income earners, generous overcompensation for pensions recipients and handouts to rentseekers to mute claims of job losses, the package minimises the potential for scare campaigns and special pleading.

As we all know, this government is so inept it’s likely to botch the selling of the package and leave people convinced they’ll be ruined by it.

Still, by targeting assistance at the steel industry, the coal industry and the coal-reliant electricity sector, Labor is keeping one eye on its heartland, even if it will have trouble with the road transport industry (which is still getting a good deal under road pricing arrangements). The government wants to extend a carbon price to heavy vehicles in 2014 but this has not been agreed by the Multi-Party Committee on Climate Change (read, the independents).

And the package relies far more heavily than the CPRS did on tax cuts to deliver compensation, giving the government a potent selling point — two, actually, because the lift in the tax-free threshold will be over two years.

There are some very generous concessions.

Big polluters get $9.2b assistance
Business Age, 10th July

The federal government will provide $9.2 billion in assistance to support jobs and industries affected by the introduction of a carbon price.

The government released its long-awaited carbon price package on today, announcing an initial $23 carbon price that will be paid by around 500 big top polluters.

Over the first three years $9.2 billion of the revenue raised will be used for assistance by way of free carbon permits to manufacturers that generate over 80 per cent of emissions.

For manufacturing industries like aluminium smelting, steel making, flat glass making, zinc smelting, and most pulp and paper manufacturers, they will receive 94.5 per cent of industry average carbon costs.

Lower polluters, such as plastics and chemical manufacturing, tissue paper manufacturing and ethanol production will be eligible for permits to cover 66 per cent of carbon costs.

Liquefied natural gas projects will receive 50 per cent assistance. The steel industry will receive $300 million in assistance to encourage investment and innovation to assist in the transformation to a low-carbon economy.

The coal sector will receive a $1.3 billion package to support jobs during the move to clean energy.

The government said most small businesses will not be materially affected by the carbon price, but will benefit from an extension in the small business instant asset write-off threshold to $6500.

And landholders will also see some financial benefits.

Farmers to reap $1bn windfall
The Australian, July 10.

FARMERS who plant trees and store carbon in their soil will share in $1 billion in carbon tax receipts under the package to be unveiled tomorrow.

Canberra will recruit country Australia to its cause by buying credits from landholders who make carbon savings or allowing them to sell those credits to polluters to cover their carbon bills.

It will also reinvest carbon tax revenue in land research and management programs, including funding for outreach officers and training for farmers who want to take part in the scheme.

Greens deputy leader Christine Milne yesterday said the deal struck by her party would end the "political interference" at cabinet and ministerial level in renewable energy funding programs.

"We're going to see now real support, consistent secure support for research and development, and demonstration and commercialisation projects," she said.

Mr Oakeshott said the latest bargain with the government offered landholders "significantly more" than was on the table under Labor's earlier carbon pollution reduction scheme.

Which should help prevent some farmers from joining or voting for silly front groups like The Climate Skeptics², who also seem to want to revive the "Tilt Australia" campaign.

[UPDATE]
It only took a few hours.

Tony Abbott slams 'veiled socialism'
TONY Abbott has accused Julia Gillard of using her carbon tax plan as a cover for a redistribution of wealth, savaging the new policy as "socialism masquerading as environmentalism".

The Opposition Leader also insisted the package would cost jobs, demanding the Prime Minister visit factory floors and mines to face workers whose jobs he said she had put at risk.

"We're against this," Mr Abbott said. "This is a bad tax. It can't be fixed. It has to be fought."

SURELY Tony Abbott didn't mean to let his Climate Change Denial Disorder (CCDD)come to the fore, again ... he needs to be prescribed some Realityne^TM.

Mr Abbott said. "This is a bad tax based on a lie."

Meanwhile, elsewhere in The Australian, others are looking to the business upside.

Biggest single investment ever made in renewable energy
The Australian, July 11, 2011

The Clean Energy Finance Corporation will start operating in 2013-14 with more than double the seed capital of its overseas counterpart, Britain's $4.5bn Green Investment Bank.

And green power projects -- excluding nuclear, biofuels from native forest woodwaste, and carbon capture and storage -- will take up at least half the fund's capital, after lobbying by the Greens.

Greens deputy leader Christine Milne said the dedicated funding represented the biggest single investment in renewable energy Australia has ever made.

"With a legislatively guaranteed stream of funding outside the budget, no future government will be able to undermine it without changing the legislation," she said.

The fund, which will be independent of government and run by a board of banking, investment management, clean energy and technology experts, aims to partner with business to maximise investment in the sector.

The government believes $20bn will be spent on renewable energy projects in Australia in the next decade and $100bn by 2050. "Treasury modelling shows that with a carbon price, energy from the renewables sector is projected to account for around 40 per cent of our electricity generation by 2050, a significant increase from its current level of around 10 per cent," it said yesterday.

Professor McKibbin was concerned by the scale of the package's subsidies for renewables.

"We know from the Productivity Comission report that that is a very high cost way of reducing carbon per unit . . . it has to be done in a way that is very carefully managed," he said.

"I would prefer that the carbon price system itself generates enough incentives."

1. Bernie Fraser achieved some celebrity in Australia for his role in promoting superannuation funds with the tag line "It's the super of the future", uttered in a distinctive monotone.
2. I've already linked to The Australian, I refuse to have links to two sites from the dark side in one post ;-).

Climate for Corruption

No this is not a post about those fiendishly clever climate change conspirators pulling a fast one on Claude or Ligna Coal Magnate.

The small Maldivan Newspaper Haveeru caught my eye, or rather my Google news feed, with the following interesting article about the potential for corruption in carbon markets and climate mitigation schemes.

Transparency Maldives launches Global Corruption Report on climate change

Haveeru Online, June 26.

MALE, June 28 (HNS) – Transparency Maldives Sunday launched the Global Corruption Report: Climate Change compiled by Transparency International.

Transparency International officially inaugurated the report, first of its kind to comprehensively explore major climate-related corruption risks, in April of this year at Dhaka, Bangladesh.

International watchdogs identify that improper or poor governance paves the way to corruption especially in the area of climate change governance, as huge amounts of money flow through new and untested financial markets and mechanisms.
The Global Corruption Report: Climate Change focuses on this issue along with making climate governance work, strategies for reducing carbon emissions, building effective adaptation to climate change, actions for sustainable climate governance and recommended actions for governments, businesses and civil societies.
The report stresses the importance of protecting from corruption the estimated US$700 billion budget allocated for mitigation efforts by 2020. It also highlights the inequality of the current processes for individuals and groups most directly affected by climate change.

Well not nearly as much as the US spends on oil wars but more than the ADF wastes (ie a lot).

“The quality of climate governance – the degree to which policy development and decisions are participatory, accountable, transparent, inclusive and responsive, and respect the rule of law – will determine how well it addresses inherent corruption risks,”

However, it is noted that organisations and personnel in developing countries most affected by climate change lack the skills and expertise needed to observe and track the projects undertaken.

By 2009, the registered number of observer organisations to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States reached more than 400 while from the developing countries, India, China and Brazil were only able to recruit just more than 10 organisations.

“According to a recent study in the North Africa region, however, almost 70 percent of the potential investors interviewed considered regulatory risk, including corruption, to be likely – and a serious impediment to investment,” it says.
“As a critical mechanism for mitigation, carbon markets need safeguards to reduce the risk of corruption, as well as to ensure their sustainability and capacity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Transparency International notes that adaptation to climate change requires large-scale infrastructure development like flood control systems in Bangladesh, which received a 2.4 score on the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) of 2010.
“None of the 20 countries most affected by climate change scored higher than 3.6 on the Corruption Perception Index,” the report stresses.

From the introductory page at Transparency International

Carbon markets: Managing public assets transparently In international carbon trading schemes, individual governments can sell carbon credits when a country’s emissions are below their pollution targets. In an opaque market, the government mismanagement of credits can go unnoticed. Media investigations in Slovakia revealed that the government sold carbon credits at half their value to a company with links to officials in the ministry that made the sale. They made neither the contract nor the price public. The sale represented an estimated €75 million in lost revenue for the people of Slovakia.

What needs to be done

If climate governance is not prepared for corruption, corruption will undermine climate governance. The GCR does not just raise the alarm, it provides a risk map of ways to make climate change measures more effective.

Recommendations include:

• All conferences and meetings where climate change targets are set should be open to the people they impact and transparent at the international and local levels
• Experts monitoring and verifying projects must be independent and not paid from the budget of the project they are overseeing
• All climate measures should have strong, well-resourced oversight bodies
• Civil society must monitor government commitments to reduce emissions and be involved in development and oversight of national plans for mitigation and adaptation.

Downloads

Global Corruption Report: Climate Change (full download)

Parts 2 & 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

This report appears to have been released earlier and may be having regional releases.

Green schemes are 'wide open to major corruption'

The Independent, Sunday, 1 May 2011

Corruption is threatening global steps to combat climate change, a new report from Transparency International (TI) warned yesterday. Billions of pounds will be plundered and wasted, it says, unless stronger measures are introduced against embezzlement and misappropriation.

The organisation warns that 20 nations most vulnerable to climate change – where millions in grants and aid will be targeted – are judged to be among the most corrupt in the world – and stronger oversight is needed to ensure the funds are properly spent.

"Corruption holds nothing sacred, not even our planet's future," said Huguette Labelle

Although you don’t have to be corrupt to perceive the world through a cash register – greed will suffice.

"Failure to properly govern climate change measures now will not only lead to misallocated resources and fraudulent projects today, but also hurts future generations," …

"Where huge amounts of money flow through new and untested financial markets and mechanisms, there is a risk of corruption," [the report] says.

Carbon markets, the main financial tool for combating climate change, have already been hit by fraud, the report points out. In January, the European Union's carbon market was shut down after it was attacked by cyber-hackers. More than three million carbon credits were stolen from government and private company accounts.

The system has also been hit by repeated tax frauds. One scheme to meet all of Europe's power needs from concentrated solar power plants covering 1 per cent of the Sahara desert was undermined after experts said bureaucratic complexity and corruption in north Africa raised the risks and costs of investment there. After an investigation by Spanish officials, it was discovered that more than one in 10 of its solar parks was falsely registered as operational, despite making no contribution to the energy grid.

Illegal logging, an industry estimated to be worth more than $10bn a year, is fuelled by corrupted customs and other officials, the report says. Some countries have already claimed carbon credits for fictitious forest plantation projects. In Kenya, deforestation is exacerbated by corruption among under-resourced forest guards. TI estimates that in 1963 Kenya had about 10 per cent forest cover; by 2006, it was less than 2 per cent.

But its not just developing nations.

All countries are vulnerable: Britain is criticised for its failure to deal with so-called "greenwashing" marketing techniques used by companies to misrepresent how environmentally friendly their products are.

Also highlighted is America's failure to curb the influence of the "brown lobby" – the 2,000 registered oil, gas, coal and electricity lobbyists who spent an estimated $400m in 2009 compared with the green lobby's $22m.

And from Reuters – Africa,

Corruption must be cut to protect climate –report

Reuters, April 30 2011

MARKETS

Carbon markets, the main financial tool for combating climate change, continue to be shaken by fraudulent activity.

Over the past couple of years, the European Union's $134 billion emissions trading scheme has been blighted by the re-sale of used carbon offsets, hacking, theft and continuing value-added tax fraud. [ID:nLDE70J1KT]

The integrity of the U.N.'s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which encourages emissions cutting schemes in poor nations, was dented after some project developers were accused of exploiting the system. [ID:nLDE6AI1A3]

"Creative accounting can lead to the double counting of emissions by companies of their own reported mitigation efforts, (...), thus nullifying the environmental integrity of the emissions reductions," the report said.

Corruption risks also exist in political decision-making and climate financing and through the mismanagement of public funds, the report said.

We need only remember this fiasco…

                                                            … in a supposedly well regulated economy to see what flies are attracted to a shit load of money.

[UPDATE]

In a good move to avoid political interference in clean energy decisions in Australia,

New body to control clean energy grants

The Age, July 5, 2011

RESPONSIBILITY for handing out about $1 billion in clean energy grants will be taken out of government hands under a compromise with the Greens as part of a carbon price deal to be announced on Sunday.

The Age has learned that clean energy programs such as the $1.5 billion solar flagships program - designed to help build Australia's first large solar plants - will be removed from Energy Minister Martin Ferguson's control and run by an independent statutory body.

The new statutory body running clean energy grants is expected to take over responsibility for some of the $5 billion clean energy initiative announced in 2009, including the remaining $730 million in solar flagship funding.

And the West Australian also reports,

Rules to rein in carbon cowboys

July 2, 2011

Trade in international pollution permits will be strictly limited under the Gillard Government's climate change package to prevent so-called "carbon cowboys" from scamming the multibillion-dollar scheme.

In a significant departure from Labor's abandoned carbon pollution reduction scheme, international permit purchases are likely to be restricted to high quality sellers such as the European Union and the US State of California. The concern under the CPRS was that low-quality carbon abatement could be bought by Australian polluters from places such as equatorial Africa and South-East Asia through hard-to-verify and dubious projects such as tree plantations.

It is understood the Government agreed to "qualitative and quantitative controls" under its emissions trading scheme at the insistence of the Greens who opposed unlimited access to international permits under the CPRS.

Although Tony Abbott sounds increasingly like he is running for the Republican nomination in the US rather than as opposition leader of Australia, viz;

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, who yesterday blasted the Government's planned carbon tax as "socialism masquerading as environmentalism"…

Dear Vice-Chancellor

Academic enrollments are falling, placing some universities and departments under some stress. If you want to focus your displeasure at continued deliberate obfuscation (there can be no other term) then a letter to the VC of Charles Cook or Adelaide Uni might have a small influence. Target the bottom line – enrolments. Draft letters and contact details are provided below.

There are two prominent academic “skeptics” in Australia,  Dr Ian Plimer and Dr Bob Carter. Interestingly both from the fields of geology, both highly praised and both at the ends of their respective careers. Dr Plimer is not a disinterested party personally when it comes to climate change as he is in fact on the boards of several mining companies.

Both are also members or affiliates of that well known defender of the public good the IPA (Plimer, Carter).

Dr Carter recently had another opinion piece in The Age. It’s a sadly amusing read.

While both are free to express “their” opinion as they wish, so to are you. Should you need an avenue to do so I suggest the Vice Chancellors of the venerable institutes at whose publicly funded teat they are still attached – kind of hypocritical given the views of IPA.

Neither of these gentlemen need necessarily be “muzzled” from voicing their opinion, but on every such occasion that they do speak a disclaimer should be attached. They should be required to state publicly that their opinions are not supported by the universities that they represent nor the overwhelming majority of research on the issue. My thinking follows from Milgrams classic experiment on the acceptance of “authorities”.

Carters views were rebuffed later in the same paper.

Mythonium

Easier to create than Unobtainium, and with a longer half life than any of the transactinides, it is a powerful and necessary element in any public relations effort.

Myth creation is common during a crisis. Some of them are deconstructed below.

The first major myth concerns Japanese technological prowess. As a nation the Japanese have a strong technological history, but they are not alone in  having a long cultural history of avoiding (or outright denying) uncomfortable “truths”.

The first article below is an extensive cut and paste from the New York Times (follow the link for the complete story). I have edited out more from the start of the original piece and highlighted some of the more boring technical or “factual” statements that normally get relegated to the bottom of the journalists pyramid.

‘Safety Myth’ Left Japan Ripe for Nuclear Crisis

Norimitsu Onishi, NYTime, 24 June

SHIKA, Japan — Near a nuclear power plant facing the Sea of Japan, a series of exhibitions in a large public relations building here extols the virtues of the energy source with some help from “Alice in Wonderland.”

“It’s terrible, just terrible,” the White Rabbit says in the first exhibit. “We’re running out of energy, Alice.”

A Dodo robot figure, swiveling to address Alice and the visitors to the building, declares that there is an “ace” form of energy called nuclear power. It is clean, safe and renewable if you reprocess uranium and plutonium, the Dodo says.

“Wow, you can even do that!” Alice says of nuclear power.

See more images at Building Japan’s Nuclear ‘Safety Myth’ also from the NY Times

Over several decades, Japan’s nuclear establishment has devoted vast resources to persuade the Japanese public of the safety and necessity of nuclear power. Plant operators built lavish, fantasy-filled public relations buildings that became tourist attractions. Bureaucrats spun elaborate advertising campaigns through a multitude of organizations established solely to advertise the safety of nuclear plants. Politicians pushed through the adoption of government-mandated school textbooks with friendly views of nuclear power.

The result was the widespread adoption of the belief — called the “safety myth” — that Japan’s nuclear power plants were absolutely safe. Japan single-mindedly pursued nuclear power even as Western nations distanced themselves from it.

As the Japanese continue to search for answers to the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, some are digging deep into the national psyche and examining a national propensity to embrace a belief now widely seen as irrational.

Because of this widespread belief in Japanese plants’ absolute safety, plant operators and nuclear regulators failed to adopt proper safety measures and advances in technology, like emergency robots, experts and government officials acknowledge.]

Banri Kaieda, who runs the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which oversees the nuclear industry, said at a news conference at an International Atomic Energy Agency meeting in Vienna on Monday. “It’s a fact that there was an unreasonable overconfidence in the technology of Japan’s nuclear power generation.”

With radiation levels too high for workers to approach the reactors, the Japanese authorities floundered. They sent police trucks mounted with water cannons — equipment designed to disperse rioters — to spray water into the reactor buildings. Military helicopters flew over the buildings, dropping water that was scattered off course by strong winds, in a “performance, a kind of circus” that was aimed more at reassuring an increasingly alarmed Japanese population and American government, said Kenichi Matsumoto, an aide to Prime Minister Naoto Kan.

Japan lacked some of the basic hardware to respond to a nuclear crisis and, after initial resistance, had to look abroad for help. For a country proud of its technology, the low point occurred on March 31 when it had to use a 203-foot-long water pump — shipped from China…

But perhaps more than anything else, the absence of one particular technology was deeply puzzling: emergency robots.

Japan, after all, is the world’s leader in robotics. It has the world’s largest force of mechanized workers. Its humanoid robots can walk and run on two feet, sing and dance, and even play the violin. But where were the emergency robots at Fukushima?

The answer is that the operators and nuclear regulators, believing that accidents would never occur, steadfastly opposed the introduction of what they regarded as unnecessary technology.

“The plant operators said that robots, which would premise an accident, were not needed,” said Hiroyuki Yoshikawa, 77, an engineer and a former president of the University of Tokyo, Japan’s most prestigious academic institution. “Instead, introducing them would inspire fear, they said. That’s why they said that robots couldn’t be introduced.”

The rejection of robots, Mr. Yoshikawa said, was part of the industry’s overall reluctance to improve maintenance and invest in new technologies.

“That’s why the safety myth wasn’t just an empty slogan,” said Mr. Yoshikawa, now the director general of the Center for Research and Development Strategy at the Japan Science and Technology Agency. “It was a kind of mind-set that rejected progress through the introduction of new technology.”

After Chernobyl, the nuclear establishment made sure that Japanese kept believing in safety.

The plant operators built or renovated the public relations buildings — called “P.R. buildings” — attached to their plants. Before Chernobyl, the buildings were simple facilities intended to appeal to “adult men interested in technical matters,” said Noriya Sumihara, an anthropologist at Tenri University who has researched the facilities. Male guides wearing industrial uniforms took visitors around exhibits consisting mostly of wall panels.

But after Chernobyl, the facilities were transformed into elaborate theme parks geared toward young mothers, the group that research showed was most worried about nuclear plants and radiation, Mr. Sumihara said. Women of childbearing age, whose presence alone was meant to reassure the visitors, were hired as guides.

In Higashidori, a town in northern Japan, one of the country’s newest P.R. buildings is built on the theme of Tonttu, a forest with resident dwarfs. The buildings also holds events with anime characters to attract children and young parents…

Here in Shika, more than 100,000 guests last year visited the P.R. building where Alice discovers the wonders of nuclear power. The Caterpillar reassures Alice about radiation and the Cheshire Cat helps her learn about the energy source.

The nuclear establishment also made sure that government-mandated school textbooks underemphasized information that could cast doubt on the safety of nuclear power. In Parliament, the campaign was led by Tokio Kano, a Tepco vice president who became a lawmaker in 1998.

In 2004, under the influence of Mr. Kano and other proponents of nuclear power, education officials ordered revisions to textbooks before endorsing them. In one junior high school social studies textbook, a reference to the growing antinuclear movement in Europe was deleted. In another, a reference to Chernobyl was relegated to a footnote.

The nuclear establishment itself came to believe its own safety myth and “became entangled in its own net,” said Hitoshi Yoshioka, an author of a book on the history of Japan’s nuclear power and a member of a panel established by the prime minister to investigate the causes of the Fukushima disaster.

Will these events mark a transition to more questioning approach by the public to the otherwise supine acceptance of authoritarian opinion?

Survey shows disappointment, anger among Fukushima evacuees

Asahi Shimbun (Asahi.com), 25 June.

Disappointment toward Tokyo Electric Power Co. for its failure to guard the safety of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant and anger at the central government's inept handling of the accident.

Those are the two major themes that emerge from the results of an interview survey of 407 evacuees from the Fukushima nuclear accident.

About 90,000 Fukushima residents have evacuated because of the nuclear accident, with about a third of that number moving outside of the prefecture entirely.

While TEPCO may have provided many Fukushima residents with jobs, the nuclear accident has turned many evacuees against nuclear energy.When asked their opinion on the use of nuclear energy, 70 percent of respondents said they were opposed while 26 percent said they were in favor of nuclear energy.While the survey methods and sample sizes are different, those results are much more anti-nuclear than a nationwide poll conducted by The Asahi Shimbun in June in which 37 percent favored the use of nuclear energy and 42 percent opposed it.

Having young children was an obvious reason for not wanting to return to Fukushima.

A 37-year-old woman left her home in Minami-Soma with her husband and one-year-old son even before the region was designated as a potential emergency evacuation zone.

Whenever her son has health problems because of the unaccustomed evacuation life, the woman blames herself for giving birth at such a difficult time.

"No matter how much they say it is safe, there is no way we can believe them ever again," the woman said.The deep disappointment felt by many of the respondents is due to the fact that many believed TEPCO and other experts who repeatedly said Japan's nuclear power plants were safe and that no accident would ever occur.

Anger at the central government was due in major part to the confusion over evacuation instructions in the immediate aftermath of the accident.

A number of evacuees said they were given conflicting or incomplete instructions that made it difficult to understand where they should flee to.

A 72-year-old woman said, "Information that radioactive materials had spewed from the plant was only transmitted later. If I had known about it earlier, I would have evacuated much farther away."

A woman in her 60s from Namie said, "Not being informed about radiation, I was told to go to a location that had dangerously high levels of radiation."

As a result of such experiences, a total of 80 percent of respondents said the government's response was either totally inappropriate or somewhat inappropriate.

With life in evacuation centers now exceeding three months, close to half of the respondents said their health had worsened as a result.

When workers are put at risk they must be hailed as heros, whether they had a choice or not or new the risks.

Japan's 'throwaway' nuclear workers

Reuters, 24 June.

A decade and a half before it blew apart in a hydrogen blast that punctuated the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, the No. 3 reactor at the Fukushima nuclear power plant was the scene of an earlier safety crisis.

Then, as now, a small army of transient workers was put to work to try to stem the damage at the oldest nuclear reactor run by Japan's largest utility.

At the time, workers were racing to finish an unprecedented repair to address a dangerous defect: cracks in the drum-like steel assembly known as the "shroud" surrounding the radioactive core of the reactor.

But in 1997, the effort to save the 21-year-old reactor from being scrapped at a large loss to its operator, Tokyo Electric, also included a quiet effort to skirt Japan's safety rules: foreign workers were brought in for the most dangerous jobs, a manager of the project said.

"It's not well known, but I know what happened," Kazunori Fujii, who managed part of the shroud replacement in 1997, told Reuters. "What we did would not have been allowed under Japanese safety standards."

The previously undisclosed hiring of welders from the United States and Southeast Asia underscores the way Tokyo Electric, a powerful monopoly with deep political connections in Japan, outsourced its riskiest work and developed a lax safety culture in the years leading to the Fukushima disaster, experts say.

The repeated failures that have dogged Tokyo Electric in the three months the Fukushima plant has been in crisis have undercut confidence in the response to the disaster and dismayed outside experts, given corporate Japan's reputation for relentless organization.

Hastily hired workers were sent into the plant without radiation meters. Two splashed into radioactive water wearing street shoes because rubber boots were not available. Even now, few have been given training on radiation risks that meets international standards, according to their accounts and the evaluation of experts.

The workers who stayed on to try to stabilize the plant in the darkest hours after March 11 were lauded as the "Fukushima 50" for their selflessness. But behind the heroism is a legacy of Japanese nuclear workers facing hazards with little oversight, according to interviews with more than two dozen current and former nuclear workers, doctors and others.

And finally,

Report From Tokyo: No News Is Good News?

Huffington Post, 23 June

Controlling information flow in a crisis is crucial to its outcome. So it should come as no surprise that much information received about how the crisis at Fukushima unfolded has been kept away from traditional and social media as long as possible. In the end, however, the truth does come out.

One of my favorite truths this week was the acknowledgment by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) that 69 workers who worked at reactor #1 at the Daiichi Fukushima nuclear power plant in March "cannot be found." This means that these individuals, who may have been exposed to high doses of radiation, cannot be located for testing. Was this a case of "sloppy paperwork" or something else? Either way, one wonders how long and why this was kept from the public eye.

While many are no longer surprised to see this sort of thing occurring in Japan, it becomes even less palatable when it happens on the global stage. Take the case of International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) recent decision to hold talks about the Fukushima disaster behind closed doors.

But the picture emerging after three months of radiation release is nothing to laugh about. The June 17th edition of Science magazine reports that radioactive cesium (both 134 and 137) has spread over 100 miles from the plant and now affects an area southwest of the reactors with a large pocket of contamination further south to the outskirts of Tokyo.Not telling the truth gives traditional and social media pundits much to write about and makes the pain last longer when it is revealed. Let us hope that more of those with inside knowledge prioritize the people more than they do their entrenched interests.

For an amusing expat view from Japan of the events try Spike Japan. Read the article about Pluto kun (Plutonium Child) and the bizarre world of TEPCO PR aimed specifically at children  After the earthquake: So farewell then, Plutonium kun.

“I’m hardly absorbed by your stomach or intestines and I’m expelled by your body, so in fact I can’t kill people at all”.

A stroll in the mist – Side B

The photo essay Singapore - sustainability in the mist is still attracting some admirers. Below are some further photos and light commentary about my impression of Singapore with an eye to the environment and sustainability.

The first photo shows a different angle of the misty walk illustrating the large expanse of heat retaining concrete in this area. As mentioned in the previous photo essay, the cooling ability of the misting pipe is limited – especially given its height – and the amount of wind. Unfortunately, to work as hoped this sculpture needs to take the risk of actually inconveniencing the public with the possibility of actual dampness. On the opposite side of the bay is a purpose built stadium for the events planned for this area. 

New Zealand ETS did not produce cave dwelling hair shirt economy

The New Zealand PM is in Australia to talk about many things, of therapeutic goods and US ships and emission trading schemes.

New Zealand introduced its ETS three years ago, and despite what opinion writers in The Australian newspaper (pointedly not linked to) would have us believe, the NZ economy did not fall over in a heap, the populace reduced to cave dwelling hair shirted free lovin single parent pot smoking nihilistic godless hippies.

NZ leads on carbon pricing - Gillard

The Age, June 20.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has used a visit by New Zealand Prime Minister John Key to praise his country for outdoing Australia by having "the guts" to price carbon.

Ms Gillard said she was determined Australia would catch up to New Zealand, which introduced an emissions trading scheme (ETS) in 2008.

Mr Key declined to comment on specifics of the Gillard government's plan to price carbon. "But what I can tell you about the ETS in New Zealand is, it's worked," he said. The ETS had driven growth in the renewable energy sector and slowed deforestation, he said.

The leaders agreed to establish a senior officials group to work on ways to link the two countries' schemes in the future.

Earlier, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott used a welcoming statement for Mr Key to take a pot-shot at Labor's plan to introduce an ETS.  Mr Abbott congratulated Mr Key for "watering down" the ETS his conservative government inherited.

But he said if the coalition in Australia inherited a trading scheme from the Gillard government it would be "rescinded" altogether.

"In this country your sister party will go further and do better," Mr Abbott told parliament.  "Should we inherit any carbon tax we won’t just reduce it - we will rescind it."

Tony is so tuff. And so is Julia.  Everything is such a tuff choice – in fact if it isn’t a tuff decision then it’s not worth taking that’s how tuff’n tough they both are.  I am so tired of relatively mundane decisions having to be framed in this ridiculous way.

Australia to follow NZ's carbon tax example

NZ Herald, June 20.

New Zealand is set to help Australia in its fraught bid to introduce a controversial carbon tax.

At a joint press conference with Prime Minister John Key this afternoon, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced her officials would work with their New Zealand counterparts to link the countries' emissions trading schemes.

Mr Key said New Zealand and Australia had to work together to tackle climate change.

A scheme allowing carbon credits to be traded across the Tasman "makes sense", he said.

"Our economies are very closely linked and if we can work together on this problem of climate change that's a good thing."

New Zealand's ETS had been implemented effectively and was running in line with its estimated cost of $150 per household, he said.

The scheme was originally introduced by the Labour Government in 2008 and was substantially amended by National in 2009.

Reuters has a more in depth look at the scheme as it stands.

Analysis: NZ carbon scheme faces first challenge

Reuters, June 15.

From moribund to modestly active, New Zealand's carbon trading scheme has picked up since the entry of big polluters a year ago but faces a major challenge in how to ramp up pressure on firms to take more steps to cut emissions.

The emissions trading scheme, or ETS, remains the first national scheme outside Europe's $120 billion a year program.

Industry is questioning whether New Zealand should toughen its scheme given the glacial pace of U.N. negotiations on a new climate pact and slow progress in other competitors in bringing in a national price on carbon. Neighboring Australia is struggling to win support for its carbon pricing plan.

A toughening could boost trading of pollution permits in the ETS, deepening the market, which is currently limited by availability of tradable New Zealand Units, a price cap of NZ$25 for NZUs, lack of national emissions reduction target and a series of sweeteners for industry during the first phase to end-2012.

Each NZU represents a tonne of greenhouse gases.

The three-year old ETS was expanded on July 1, 2010, when the transport, industry and energy sectors, which account for about half of the country's emissions, were included.

Since then, average weekly trade of NZUs in the over-the-counter market has averaged about 300,000, according to data from Thomson Reuters Point Carbon. Forestry was the first sector in the ETS, which started in 2008.

Polluters such as coal-fired power generators, refiners and cement plants have to buy NZUs to meet government-set emissions obligations, while foresters are given NZUs for the carbon locked away in their trees. Exporters are given a large number of NZUs for free to equalize carbon costs with competitors.

SWEETENERS

[Climate Change Minister Nick] Smith declined to comment on changes the government will look at. But it is expected to include the possible extension of sweeteners, such as surrendering only one NZU for every two tonnes of emissions, beyond the current expiry date of 2013.

Agriculture, a major export earner and which accounts for almost half of emissions, enters the ETS in 2015. Dairy exporter Fonterra is New Zealand's largest company, and is still liable through its milk processing operations.

New Zealand was exposed to greater emissions costs than other agricultural producers, so it was imperative transition measures remain until competitors move to similar schemes…

State-owned Genesis Energy, which operates New Zealand's largest power station, said it also wants the transitional measures to continue, and it also want to see greater depth and liquidity in the market.

"What companies like ours need is certainty of policy and liquid markets in which to function," Genesis Public Affairs Manager Richard Gordon said. "We can cope with the ETS, we can live with it, but we need certainty."

Both Genesis and Fonterra said they have been active in the market since July last year, however both companies said there were issues with market liquidity, with too few credits coming to market.

Obviously, any thoughtful insight from a NZ contributor would be most appreciated. My perspective is as an expat Aussie current living in Asia.

In addition to the overlooked link pointed to below, there is a video and some notes at Robin Johnsons Economics Web Page.

Solar Dawn: Australian “Solar Flagships" winners announced

The Climate Spectator has a series of articles by Giles Parkinson on the announcement of the winners of the Australian Government’s “solar flagships" competition - Pride and prejudice.

Surely it wasn’t deliberate! But if the Labor government had wanted to further distinguish its clean energy policy from its predecessor's, then it would have got a fair bit of traction from the choices made in the first round of the $1.5 billion Solar Flagships program.

The two consortia chosen to lead Australia into the era of large-scale solar energy facilities both contain technologies or business plans that had been forced to emigrate under the Coalition government because of a lack of support and incentive.

Dr David Mills developed his unique solar thermal technology at the UNSW, but was forced to pack up and go to California to seek investment backing and government incentive. Ausra, the company he founded, was bought by the French government-owned nuclear energy giant, Areva, for around $200 million early last year. Now Areva has been chosen to “bring the technology home" and build a $1.2 billion, 250MW solar thermal hybrid plant near CS Energy’s Kogan Creek power station in Chinchilla in south west Queensland.

BP Solar closed Australia’s only solar PV manufacturing facilities in 2008, although that had more to do with internal decision-making than local policy. But its consortium partner, Australia’s Pacific Hydro, pushed all its renewable energy development overseas in the mid 2000s after Howard refused to extend the renewable energy target. Now the consortium, along with Spanish solar giant FRV, attracted to these shores for the first time by the Flagships process, has been chosen to build a $923 million, 150MW solar PV plant in Moree in NSW.

There is a more in-depth look at Areva’s winning solar thermal power project at Chinchilla (close to another Areva solar / gas hybrid project at Kogan Creek) - Areva pushes the solar hybrid solution.

The $1.2 billion Solar Dawn project selected for funding under the Solar Flagships program will combine solar thermal energy from the unique compact linear Fresnel reflector (CLFR) conceived in Australia with gas-fired power, in what could be a template for future solar developments.

The plant to be developed by French nuclear giant Areva, with help from Wind Prospect CWP and operated by CS Energy, will have a capacity of 250MW, but will be boosted by gas-fired power to ensure it can provide a “firm" dispatch to the grid when the sun is not shining, an important consideration for utility customers.

Under the terms of the flagships criteria, gas will be limited to 15 per cent of its annual capacity, but in practice it could provide significantly more. A nearby facility using the same solar thermal technology at CS Energy’s Kogan Creek plant is using solar as a 44MW “booster" to coal fired power, and it is not yet clear which system will prove to be the most efficient or cost effective.
…

The Chinchilla plant will have thousands of mirrors spread over 200 hectares in a site that will total 500 hectares. It will be located adjacent to the Kogan Creek power station, and the Western Down substation. …

GP: Are you cheaper than the others, do you think?
AW: I think that there is definitely an element of lowest costs. Areva Solar’s compact linear fresnel reflector (CLFR) technology is based on a simple, durable design using commodity materials and it certainly has a significant level of local content through construction and supply that were no doubt attractive to the Government. Not just that, but the technology itself was pioneered here in Australia.

GP: Sure, by David Mills.
AW: And so it’s going to be a showcase internationally, not just for Areva, but also for Australian innovation in general .

GP: There has been some criticism when the shortlisted candidates were announced that linear fresnel was a bit like yesterday’s technology and that maybe the technology of the future was solar towers. How do you respond to that?
AW: I think that yesterday’s technology is probably the wrong description. Parabolic trough technology has been around for 25 years and I think that solar thermal is going in two separate directions: the first one is obviously the powered tower which is all about a fairly complex concentration on a single, small focal point. The other way that it’s going is the linear systems, like CLFR (compact linear fresnel reflector) which is what Areva has invested in, which is targeting the cost and performance trade off.
Now, the attractiveness of CLFR technology is that it’s direct steam generation, so it doesn’t require that balance of plant or heat exchanger equipment, it doesn’t have the environmental hazards of dealing with a thermal oil circuit and consequently it has a capital cost advantage. The Areva Solar technology is a very, very advanced technology that produces super heated steam. And I think that those comments about yesteryear technology do not understand the progress that Areva has made to technology.

GP: Indeed, we’ve written before that Areva has succeeded in a significant lift in temperature and I guess that improves its efficiency.
AW: That’s right. So, Areva’s technology is the only linear technology that generates super-heated steam and our temperatures are in excess of what is achievable by a parabolic trough plant. By producing super heated steam at a such a temperature and pressure, we increase the efficiency in a power generation application of using our technology, which improves the project economics.

GP: How much will this project cost?
AW: About $1.2 billion. It’s subject to finalisation at financial close which will occur before the end of the year, so that’s just an estimate as of today and once we go through the process over the next few months of bedding down all of the final agreements, then we’ll be able to come out with the final estimate.

GP: Ok. And you’re getting $464 million from the federal government and $75 million from Queensland. How much debt and equity will there be?
AW: The debt equity mix has yet to be finalised. We’re currently finalising our negotiations with the project financiers, but we do have over capacity in both debt and equity.
...

GP: So, does the project depend on a good PPA then?
AW: Yes. The project will require a power purchase agreement in order to attract finance and we’re finalising arrangements over the next couple of months on an agreement that has been pursued right through the process.

GP: And how confident are you with that, because it’s been impossible for wind producers to get a PPA and their costs are much lower than yours?
AW: Well, you’ve got to understand that wind producers don’t have the same characteristics of dispatch as the Solar Dawn project. We’re able to offer a thermal capacity into the market place as a result of having a solar thermal and gas hybrid. Consequently, that’s very attractive to an energy retailer because it’s capacity that they can rely on within their portfolio.

GP: Will it also be attractive because you’ll be dispatching into peak times or at least shoulder times?
AW: That’s right. So, the dispatch profile of solar correlates extremely well with the demand in the system which is driven by air conditioning loads.

GP: Tell us about this solar-gas hybrid concept? Does that mean that you have to build an extra gas boiler to go with it? How much capacity of gas will you be building with it or will you be using facilities already at Kogan Creek?
AW: So, part of the design of the project includes the incorporation of gas boilers, which are there to be able to augment the supply from solar. So, where the turbine has headroom available which has not been fuelled by steam producers on the solar fuel, we’re able to use a supplementary fuel source which is gas to be able to get maximum capacity from the plant. So, it gives the off-taker the ability to rely on that capacity within their portfolio and ensures that they’re able to manage the risk in the energy market.

GP: How many megawatts of gas will you be putting in?
AW: The plant will be able to independently operate on solar, or it will be able to independently operate on gas. The 15 per cent restriction is from the guidelines under the Solar Flagships Program related to the annual energy that was dispatched from the plant. It’s not an instantaneous calculation. It’s a yearly calculation. We will build a pipeline in the local region to a number of gas sources and that pipeline will then supply the gas to the plant, so at day one we will have the capability to generate on gas-fired capacity if the sun is not shining.

There is also a look at the PV project in Victoria along with an interview with BP Solar - Big solar PV begins charge to parity.

Australia’s first large scale solar photovoltaic energy plant will start producing electricity from its Moree facility in 2013. If all goes to plan, and solar PV costs become competitive with wind as predicted in the next five years, some several dozen such projects will be likely be scattered across Australia by the end of the decade, adding a capacity of more than 4.5 gigawatts of emissions-free energy to the country’s electricity grid.

Construction by BP Solar and its consortium partners Pacific Hydro and Spain’s Fotowatio Renewable Ventures (FRV) will be done in stages, with about 30MW coming on line in 2013, and the rest by 2015. By the time it is complete the 150MW facility will be unlike anything seen in Australia to date.

The 645,000 panels will stretch over an area 3.4km long by 3km wide, or around 600 football stadiums. The next biggest installation in Australia is a 1.2MW array on a garage roof at the University of Queensland. And unlike rooftop panels, these arrays will be able to follow the sun, lifting their capacity factor to around 28 per cent (from about 15 per cent), and extending the duration of dispatchable energy earlier into the morning and later in the afternoon.

There is also an interview witrh 2 of the other companies involved in the solar flagships program - Q&A: FRV & Pacific Hydro.

Spanish solar giant Fotowatio Renewable Ventures (FRV) says it intends to build up its capacity in Australia after its consortium won the solar PV funding round from the Solar Flagships program.

FRV’s head of business development, Javier Huergo, says FRV – which will hold an equity stake of more than 50 per cent in the 150MW project at Moree – hopes more opportunities will emerge in Australia, which he sees as one of the most prospective in the world, along with the US and South Africa.

Cross posted from Peak Energy.