ACF on design of the carbon pollution reduction scheme
July 17, 2008
The Australian Conservation Foundation has welcomed the 2010 start date and the inclusion of transport in the Federal Government’s ‘carbon pollution reduction scheme’, but said the scheme’s emphasis on compensation for electricity generators would weaken its effectiveness.
“Polluting industries that have spent the last decade doing little or nothing to prepare for a carbon-constrained economy should not get a golden handshake,” said ACF climate change program manager Tony Mohr.
“The more compensation that goes to big polluters, the bigger the financial burden on the poor, the most vulnerable and rural Australians.”
On the inclusion of transport in the scheme, Mr Mohr said: “Transport generates about 14 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse pollution, so it’s important these emissions are counted in the scheme.
“Cutting fuel excise will hardly make a difference to family budgets – in fact it means the Government will have less money to invest in public transport and building more efficient cars. Better public transport will provide the long-term solution to petrol price rises and our greenhouse emission problems.
“While Ross Garnaut recommended half the permit revenue should go to households, the Government has not indicated what percentage of the money raised by the scheme would go towards helping households and companies become more energy efficient.
“Government help for households and companies to be more efficient with lighting and heating, to install insulation and efficient hot water systems will cut emissions – and energy bills.
“The scheme’s recognition of the greenhouse benefits of tree planting but its failure to recognise the emissions generated by tree clearing is unbalanced and disappointing.
“The key test for this emissions trading scheme will be whether it succeeds in dramatically cutting Australia’s greenhouse pollution in the crucial period before 2020.”
Article From http://www.acfonline.org.au/articles/news.asp?news_id=1840
3 in 4 voters support an ETS
July 16, 2008
THREE-QUARTERS of voters believe Australia should act on climate change even if the rest of the world does not, according to a new poll that will hearten the Rudd Government as it prepares to release its discussion paper on emissions trading tomorrow.
The Essential Media poll found 58 per cent of Coalition voters believe Australia should take action even if other countries do not, despite the fact that Brendan Nelson spent most of last week suggesting that acting before the world as a whole would be “economic suicide”.
Only 25 per cent of the 1700 voters polled believed Australia should act only when other major economies agreed to do so.
After a week in which the Opposition Leader publicly toyed with a tougher and more sceptical stance on climate change and emissions trading before finally falling back into line with his party’s policy, Dr Nelson is taking a holiday this week — a decision defended by his frontbench colleagues yesterday.
Climate change spokesman Greg Hunt said the Opposition Leader needed a break and other senior Coalition figures would be available to comment on the Government’s emissions trading paper in his absence.
“We’ll have a collective response on the day,” Mr Hunt said.
Later in the day, Dr Nelson’s office confirmed he would break his holiday tomorrow to respond to the Government’s discussion paper on behalf of the Coalition. Dr Nelson will also be breaking his holiday on Thursday to attend a reception with the Pope.
The Government’s green paper runs to hundreds of pages, but will not contain vital information about targets for greenhouse gas reductions or the potential economic costs of proposed action, because crucial Treasury modelling is not yet finished.
Lenore Taylor, The Australian http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24021126-11949,00.html
Penny Wong on the green paper and emissions trading scheme
July 13, 2008
The Government’s plans for the Australian emissions trading scheme (AETS) will become clearer this week with the release of the green paper on Wednesday. Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong has emphasised that the paper is a discussion paper - a part of the public consultation process and not the Government’s final policy. The paper will detail whether plans will include petrol in the scheme and how households will be compensated. It will outline key design elements of the AETS including the requirement for around 1000 Australian companies, primarily the large polluters, to obtain carbon credits under the scheme.
World class waste management plant for Sydney
July 7, 2008
THE future of rubbish is in the tiny jaws of billions of hungry microbes in Camden.
Sydney is about to get one of the world’s most modern waste management centres, in which methane from garbage-chewing microbes powers the plant and feeds enough electricity back into the grid to light up 1700 households.
Macarthur Resource Recovery Park, built in an old landfill site called Jacks Gully, will today begin receiving rubbish from about 300,000 people in the Campbelltown, Camden, Wollondilly and Wingecarribee shires.
“Even the best-run landfill site can only capture about 70 per cent of the methane, whereas this plant will capture and use 100 per cent,” said Ken Kanofski, the chief executive of WSN Environmental Solutions, the company that built the plant.
Using tiny organisms to break down waste is not new - it used to be called “rotting away” - but the Macarthur plant has refined the process.
Improved sorting procedures will separate all the garbage that can be broken down, concentrating the methane-producing elements into a series of tanks.
Other rubbish will be sorted into recyclable plastic, metal and glass, which will be sold on to manufacturers, and compost will be made from food and garden waste.
The remaining 15 per cent of rubbish, consisting mostly of old bricks, dirt, rubber and vegetable oils, will go into landfill.
When fully operational, the plant would stop about 9000 truckloads of waste going to landfill each year, said the NSW Environment Minister, Verity Firth.
“Macarthur Resource Recovery Park also produces more water than it uses through a combination of rainwater harvesting and extracting water from the waste it receives,” Ms Firth said in a statement.
When it is operating to capacity next March, the $50 million plant will reduce the carbon footprint of each household in the area by the equivalent of half a tonne of carbon dioxide a year - the same as removing a clothes dryer from each house.
About 8 per cent of Sydney’s garbage will pass through the Macarthur plant, but the company is hoping to get the go-ahead to develop more plants.
“I would think there is room for about 15 of these plants around the state - about seven in Sydney and others in the bigger regional areas,” Mr Kanofski said.
Ben Cubby, www.smh.com.au
TRANSCRIPT: CCF light globes carry dangerous toxins
July 2, 2008
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 01/07/2008
The push to phase out power hungry light bulbs is underway across the country. But now there’s growing fears about energy efficient globes which contain mercury, a dangerous toxin.
Transcript
KERRY O’BRIEN, PRESENTER: While both sides of politics are gearing up for a long and bruising debate about an emissions trading scheme for Australia, at least they’re not arguing about the replacement of power hungry light bulbs with more energy efficient globes.
The move was introduced by Malcolm Turnbull as John Howard’s environment minister. And the Rudd Government has actually accelerated the introduction.
The phase out will now be completed in the next two years. But there’s a downside.
These energy efficient globes contain mercury, a dangerous toxin that affects the nervous system.
The way things work now is the new globes wear out and are discarded, they’ll end up in their million in the garbage tip, contaminating landfill.
Green groups are calling on the Government to introduce a national recycling scheme by the end of year. but they fear that the Government is not listening.
Thea Dikeos reports.
THEA DIKEOS, REPORTER: It’s been lighting Australian home s for over a hundred years, but here and across the world, the incandescent globe is going out for good.
MALCOLM TURNBULL, FORMER ENVIRONMENT MINSTER (February 2007): By 2015, when the incandescent light-bulb will only be found in a museum. It will mean Australia is emitting 4 million tonnes less of carbon dioxide than it otherwise would.
THEA DIKEOS: Last year then environment minister Malcolm Turnbull introduces the phase-in of the energy efficient compact fluorescent globe, or CFL.
The longer-lasting CFL globe uses 70 per cent less electricity, offering a substantial cut in green house gas emissions.
After the election of the Rudd Government, new Environment Minister Peter Garrett enthusiastically embraced the new globe.
PETER GARRETT, ENVIRONMENT MINISTER: We’re going to bring forward by 12 months the phase-put of inefficient incandescent light-bulbs.
THEA DIKEOS: While consumers might feel good about using less electricity and reducing greenhouse gases, few would be aware that they contain one of the world’s most toxic substances, mercury.
It’s not surprising as most packs don’t contain any warnings.
JOHN BUCKERIDGE, NATUAL RESOURCES ENGINEER: It’s a neuro-toxin, and what it does is it disrupts the ends of the neurons, our nerve system, and prevents them functioning effectively. So our nerves simply breakdown, disintegrate.
THEA DIKEOS: Guidelines posted on the Department of Environment’s website say that if one of these globes breaks nearby windows and doors should be opened to ventilate the room.
But the biggest fear is how to dispose of the globes once their life is over.
JOHN BUCKERIDGE: One of these globes by itself is probably not a major issue. It’s when they are collected and dumped on mass. When we’re talking thousands, hundreds of thousands into a landfill, that’s when we have the problems.
THEA DIKEOS: According to John Buckeridge, a natural resources engineer, and head of Engineering at Melbourne’s RMIT, dumping mercury into landfill actually makes it more dangerous.
JOHN BUCKERIDGE: Under these conditions we can have certain types of bacteria growing, which is able to change mercury into hits diethyl mercury and it happens in landfills. And that, that material, when it’s produced is extremely toxic.
THEA DIKEOS: Lighting containing mercury is banned from landfill in the countries of the European Union, Taiwan, Japan, and New Zealand. That’s not the case in Australia.
JEFF ANGEL, TOTAL ENVIRONMENT CENTRE: Certainly products with toxic contaminants should be banned from landfill. That’s the safe, the environmentally responsible thing to do.
BRYAN DOUGLAS, LIGHTING COUNCI LOF AUSTRALIA: The jury is still out on the effects on mercury in landfill. Not just from lamps but from other sources.
And I might add that the source of mercury from lamps is very small compared to the total mercury in our environment.
And even if mercury going to landfill so we would not advocate an immediate ban on lamps going to landfill.
THEA DIKEOS: This view is reiterated in a summary of a draft report into mercury by the Federal Department of Environment and Water which says some of the mercury from waste may also be sequestered in landfill long term.
But it concedes that more research is required into the impact of mercury sources in Australia and advocates and education campaign about the safe handling and disposal of CFL lamps for the general public.
JOHN BUCKERIDGE: I would not want them going in my backyard. That’s perhaps the simplest answer for you. You know if you said well if they’re that damn safe put them in your back garden, dig a hole there and bury them that would be crazy.
THEA DIKEOS: The manufacturers say their green globes in fact reduce the total amount of mercury into the atmosphere.
BRYAN DOUGLAS: Burning coal to produce energy releases mercury into the atmosphere so the mercury environmental foot print from CFL’s is actually smaller than it is for incandescent lamps because they are so much more energy efficient.
THEA DIKEOS: Australia’s only mercury recycling plant is in Campbellfield in Victoria. Each day thousands of fluorescent lights are broken up. The glass and aluminium are recycled and the mercury distilled.
DALE ROBBINS, CMA ECOCYCLE: There’s potentially 10 million CFL’s to be recycled each year. That’s a number that we’ve projected and believe that it may in fact increase.
THEA DIKEOS: But at the moment collection of household lighting waste for recycling at the Victorian plant is limited to a small number of councils around the country.
RECEPTIONSIST, SUTHERLAND COUNICL: Hello, can I help you?
MEMBER OF PUBLIC: I’d just like to recycle the globes.
RECEPTIONSIST: Certainly, pop them in box at the end of the counter.
THEA DIKEOS: Sutherland Shire council in Sydney’s south has four collection boxes in community centres and also at the council headquarters.
JANELLE BOOTH, WASTE MINIMISATION COORDINATOR: We expect it to cost about $4,000. We’ve only had the system in place for about six months to date and it’s really quite affordable. It’s about 5 cents per household.
THEA DIKEOS: State and Federal environment ministers have not looked at a plan for a national lighting recycling system despite the accelerated faze in of the green globes. Local government, which is at the frontline of waste management, is worried.
GENIA MCCAFFREY, NSW LOCAL GOVERNMENT: We are concerned that this could be a problem both for our council workers who are collecting the waste and clearly a problem once they’re in the landfill.
THEA DIKEOS: Councils are urging the manufacturers of the globes to take responsibility for their product and play a greater role in funding a recycling scheme by putting a levy on the cost of their globe.
JEFF ANGEL: Certainly the best way to fund the recycling process in a sustainable way is to put a levy because that gives you a constant flow of income which will support the collection facilities.
THEA DIKEOS: But the industry is awaiting the result of a trial in Victoria involving a voluntary take back scheme using a small number of lighting stores.
BRYAN DOUGLAS: We need to look at the results of this pilot program before we can come to any conclusion about whether we do it by a levy, whether the industry funds it in its entirety.
THEA DIKEOS: In a statement the Environment Minister Peter Garrett said the Government is investigating whether CFL’s should be treated as a national waste priority, and this will be discussed at a meeting of State environment ministers later in the year.
JEFF ANGEL: The point is that these lights are good for the environment when they’re being used, and they should do no harm to the environment when they’re being disposed.
Chicken: The most sustainable meat
July 1, 2008
After decades of playing second fiddle to beef, poultry has become the Australia’s most popular meat in recent years.
But now the humble chook is also being promoted as an environmental champion.
David Farrell from the University of Queensland will tell 2000 delegates to the 23rd World Poultry Congress in Brisbane next week that eating even more chicken will be vital to help an overcrowded planet feed itself.
Dr Farrell said a growing world population, the biofuel industry, increased demand for meat in developing countries plus the effects of climate change would put even more pressure on the world’s already stretched food supply.
He does not believe technology or enough extra arable land will become available to meet the increased demand sustainably, particularly with much of the world’s meat coming from animals fed intensively on grain.
The beauty of chickens is that they can turn less than two kilograms of grain feed into a kilogram of body weight while the ratio for pork is about 4:1 and beef at least 7:1.
But in his paper to the congress, Dr Farrell writes that even with increased chicken consumption at the expense of other meats, the escalating cost and scarcity of feed grain will mean that by 2016 livestock produce will “be out of reach of many of those expected to be categorised as ‘middle class’ in developing countries”.
As for the world’s most impoverished people, “they will continue to compete with livestock for valuable grain so that despite the optimistic predictions of a reduction in numbers of the undernourished and needy, realistically this is unlikely to occur. Mother Earth can no longer cope.”
A recent report by Cranfield University in Britain showed that, compared to other meats, chicken also required the least energy to produce and emitted the least amount of greenhouse gases. The finance house Morgan Stanley has released a paper predicting a global boom time for chicken meat because it will have much lower feed and pollution costs than other meats.
Andreas Dubs, the executive director of the Australian Chicken Meat Federation, said: “Prices at the cash register and … environmental sustainability will determine eating habits … If we want to continue to consume meat protein, chicken is the most economical and environmentally sustainable option.”
Daniel Lewis Regional Reporter
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