For what it’s worth, my guess is that domestically we’ll basically stand still until 2020 on emissions, and our “cuts” will come from stopping deforestation in Indonesia and PNG.

That’s a tricky one isn’t it? Globally, Australia’s emissions don’t amount to much, but shouldn’t we aim to lead by example and cut our own emissions ASAP?

Note this quote from Dr Pep Canadell of CSIRO’s Global Carbon Project:

The new body of information shows considerable value in preserving tropical forests such as those in the Amazon and Indonesia as carbon sinks, that they do not release the carbon back into the atmosphere as has been suggested,” Dr Canadell says. “However, it also demonstrates the need to avoid higher levels of global warming, which could slow the ability of forests to accumulate carbon.” (My emphasis) http://www.csiro.au/news/GlobalCarbonProject-Deforestation.html

I mentioned Amazonian forest expert Philip Fearnside in my comments on the “Rainforests and Emissions-shifting” blog and referred to a couple of his papers. Here’s a link to his website which is a very useful resource if you’re interested in deforestation: http://philip.inpa.gov.br/publ_livres/lista%20aberta.htm

Fearnside has written a book chapter which is influenced by his earlier papers. It is currently in preprint, awaiting publication in a book called Climate Change Science and Policy. He’s got a link to the chapter on his website: Chapter 48, Tropical Forests in Mitigating Climate Change http://philip.inpa.gov.br/publ_livres/Preprints/2008/Schneider%20et%20al%20book-Ch%2048%20-%20Mitigation.pdf

In this chapter he discusses the current negotiations for including tropical forests in the post-2012 agreement:

Several proposals are under consideration. One is that of the 15-country “Coalition for Rainforest Nations” led by Papua New Guinea and Costa Rica, which presented a proposal in Montreal in December 2005 to grant carbon credit that could be sold and used to meet emissions reduction commitments made under Kyoto Protocol. Brazil submitted a competing proposal in Nairobi in December 2006 for a voluntary fund for financing deforestation reduction that would not produce credit towards achieving targets for reducing use of fossil fuels.

In an ideal world, I think Brazil’s proposal sounds the most honourable.

Fearnside also makes this rather ominous statement:

Even if Amazonian forest is in fact destroyed by climate change in 80 years (as the Hadley Center model indicates under a business-as-usual scenario; see Chapter ___), those 80 years have value that must be compensated if deforestation is avoided.

Also see the comment in his conclusion where he notes:

Incorporating tropical forests into efforts to mitigate global warming has proved to be a complex and controversial task.…the greatest impediments have been political rather than technical.

Some comments on EVs - hopefully no-one here sees them as a magic bullet. Will electric cars of the future have the long range and short recharge (fuelling) time of internal combustion cars? Current EVs are no good for long-distance journeys greater than say 400 km per day.

For many people a range of 400km/day is quite fine. For those who have second cars solely for commuting to work, 100 or 200km would probably be adequate. Petrol/Electric hybrid vehicles that have larger battery capacity and where you can charge the battery from external sources would suit even many more people.

Seems to me the logical time to plug in an EV is at home overnight, which is when the sun doesn’t shine. To smooth out the load EVs should really be charging during the day (when solar generation is peaking) and feeding back into the grid at night (when solar generation is zero), but unfortunately cars are typically out and about during the day (running down their batteries) and stationary at night.

If you do understand V2G, would you mind explaining it to me?

Either renewables will be cost-effective and environmentally sustainable, or they won’t. If they’re cost-effective to generate Australia’s current needs, they’ll be cost-effective and environmentally sustainable to generate twice Australia’s current needs. As I’ve had pointed out to me on numerous occasions in the past (when I’ve criticised renewables advocates for completely ignoring the costs of generation you can’t depend on), electric cars actually provide a way around the biggest problem with wind and solar, because most of the time people will be happy to charge them up when electricity is abundant and thus cheap. If battery tech improves just a little bit, people will also be happy to feed electricity back into the grid from them, providing reserve power far, far in excess of what’s required.

Or are you claiming that we’re going to run out of iron ore, aluminium, and plastic to make them out of?

The driver of this change is cost to consumer. Basically the equivalent cost of electricity to drive a car as far as a litre of petrol would is about $0.20 which is near enough to an order of magnitude less than the cost of petrol at todays prices. Many pundits see petrol getting way more expensive, but electricity probably won’t get similarly expensive (for political reasons).

The maintenance on electric motors is also less costly than the maintenance of internal combustion engines.

Adoption of electric cars also threaten to derail (no pun intended) the effectiveness of the mooted push towards public transport.

Technology like the efficient, high energy density, cheap, fast charging EEStor ultracapacitor will fuel the paradigm shift towards electric cars.

If we want a properly reliable grid in 2020 (in light of the above) then our national strategy would really need to be advocating building grid capacity as fast as possible right now. Clearly we would want that additional capacity to be the non-emitting kind.

I suspect anyone who either projects or hopes for stable or falling electricity consumption are going to be badly disappointed at best.

Carbonsink: if they do hand masses of permits to emitters, I’ll bollock them long and loud.

I’m sure Penny (minister-for-doing-nothing-about-climate-change) Wong is trembling in her boots

For what it’s worth, my guess is that domestically we’ll basically stand still until 2020 on emissions, and our “cuts” will come from stopping deforestation in Indonesia and PNG.

Broadly agree, although I think its probable that emissions will continue to grow between 2010 and 2020, but at a slower rate. Certainly the bulk of any “cuts” will come from prevention of deforestation overseas, and land use change in Australia. Anything, but anything but actual conservation in Australia.

You’ve done well: I dips me lid.

cheers

thanks: I didn’t want to bore people witless with details. It includes cooking, washing machine (we use clothes line not clothes dryer), computer, TV, occasional DVD player, hot water durting he night [off peak rates].

The only gas we have is for some room heating: all else is electric.

We live in a regional town: the only gas option initially was bottled gas - at least double the cost (per litre) of ‘natural gas/ town reticulated gas’) plus a hefty rental charge for the loan of the bottle.

Just shows there is a wide variety of useage patterns, set-ups of appliances etc., I suppose.

Robert, I hope it’s instantaneous excess: otherwise my assumption that the solar PV cells can earn us a few dollars a day while the sun hines Mon-Fri and we’re away working, goes out the window!

Chris (a different one): I wasn’t suggesting my solar PV should heat water: as I understand it, my water heating is off peak, only at night, when solar PV generation is notoriously woeful
Cheerio

For what it’s worth, my guess is that domestically we’ll basically stand still until 2020 on emissions, and our “cuts” will come from stopping deforestation in Indonesia and PNG.

One nice thing about carbon trading as generally proposed is that, generally, the transaction costs will be pretty low, and the players in the market will be large and able to afford expert advice and analysis.

And one not-so-nice thing about carbon trading is the government (under enormous political pressure) will hand the big players billions of dollars worth of free emissions.

I’m willing to bet that Australia’s emissions five years after carbon trading is introduced will be higher not lower.

You want to take that bet Robert?

But it’s an awfully complicated way of redistributing income. If you want to transfer money from the rich to the poor, rejigging income taxes is a hell of a lot easier way to do so.

If there was the remotest possibility of any government of any flavour bringing in emissions trading that actually bites –OR– a carbon tax for income tax trade-off –OR– personal carbon trading, I’d be a happy man.

We’re not going to do any of that, what will happen is the pollies will cut fuel taxes.

I had another look at the bill, that’s what it says. It is for summer though. It went up to 5.7 over last winter. Our fridge IS very small. All energy-saving lightbulbs, no heating or cooling, no appliances on standby, no dishwasher, clothes only washed when they need to be washed.

People actually wash clothes when they don’t need to? If people are that bored they’d be welcome to drop around to my place and wash mine instead
Seriously though its that sort of low energy which everyone should be striving for. And $70-80 quarterly electricity bills are a great reward.