Oh dear. Anyone who’s still getting their ‘news’ from SMH needs their head examined:
Subsidy for bulbs wasted:
THE flawed scheme to cut greenhouse gas abatements by giving away lightbulbs has squandered an estimated $60 million of NSW taxpayers’ money, the State Opposition says….An assessment of the scheme by the Opposition has found that NSW Greenhouse Abatement Credits issued by the Government have been largely wasted. It was claimed initially that as many as 80 per cent of the lightbulbs given away were installed. But later surveys found most households never installed them, and that only four out of 10 of the lightbulbs were ever used.
‘Later’ being the operative word there, rather than ‘recently’. The changes to the installation rate occured after an audit in 2006, sending all the businesses operating under the Demand Side Abatement Rule to the wall. Despite insistent pleas for transitional arrangements until a national scheme could be brokered, none was given and around 1000 people lost their jobs in companies like Neco and Easy Being Green. Some forms of structural adjustment are more equal than others…
The real story here is the upcoming ‘Super Saturday’ of by-elections. (Guy Beres has an excellent analysis).
The flaws in the scheme have been well publicised since its commencement in 2003 (see the work by CEEM, most recently a 2007 Energy Policy journal article). The design of the NSW Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme design had two initial objectives; both of which were political wedges:
1) against the encumbent Howard Government’s recalcitrance on global warming
2) against the creeping influence of Greens on the inner urban electorates.
Protecting the asset values of (state owned) coal fired generation facilities was always going to difficult to spin. (See, for example this effort by Ian MacDonald) [update: as Lefty E queries in comments, this context is crucial to understanding the perverse incentives behind the NSW Right's push for electricity privatisation]
In the meantime, in another corner of Baseline and Credit fantasy world, Yvo De Boer had a discussion/debate with Jeffrey Sachs about Kyoto, post-Kyoto and all that at Columbia University last Friday. De Boer began with the squib, “you cannot pick an empty pocket, and a demander cannot be picky.” He went to point out the futility of the emissions trading vs. tax debate, but pointed out some alleged benefits of market-based approach:
• Comprehensive agreement guaranteeing action, buy-in of private sector; preference for market based mechanisms because of preference for job creation and investment opportunities.
• Acceptable to civil society because environmental benefits can be checked an assured.
• Information asymmetry: tax and ets only identical in outcome with full knowledge of cost of abatement. 1st phase shows that governments don’t have full knowledge of cost of abatement; market mechanism needed to deliver price discovery.
• Dynamic efficiency on two levels:
o Prices reflect supply and demand; whereas the incentive for further demands reflects
o Cap and trade creates new asset class and stimulates a more active response.
Sachs pulled some punches in taking down these first few non-sequiturs. No Yvo, Markets aren’t the only transparent mechanisms for allocating resources (anyone who’s tried to follow a meeting of the executive board of the CDM would argue the reverse is true). As for the ‘information asymmetry’ argument, sorry but these are pure designer markets. Governments determine their caps in a political environment.
But the real travesty was in the alleged proof that the CDM was working (for whom we might ask?) For de Boer, the success is in the numbers: 1170 Projects have been registered. 195m CERs issued etc. In other words, because there’s lots of money going around it’s working. The tragedy, as evidenced by De Boer’s own figures was that the CDM has colonized all expectations for mitigation investment, dwarfing domestic energy efficiency and other policies in developing countries. Any expansion of the CDM after 2012 has to be based on more than just a first step sideways.
*Title after Brad DeLong
dk.au can you explain what some of the TLAs mean?
I’ve put in two of my low energy light bulbs and I have two spare for later. As a result I probably started using them a couple of months later than I would have though, because I knocked back an offer to instal free light bulbs because I knew I was getting some in the post.
The shower head was a bit of a bummer though. It gunked up because I didn’t use it for about a month because I was in hospital.
As for the by-election, this poor bloke Nathan Rees [?] is being blamed for the long line of stuff ups by the NSW Right. Fortunately a small proportion of those low life have exited politics, but not enough.
glen: CDM – Clean Development Mechanism, one of three arms of emissions trading under the Kyoto Protocol (one is also project based, ‘Joint Implementation’ and the other is national ‘emissions trading’ to meet the Kyoto targets). The wikipedia page for emissions trading is quite poor actually. I’ll be making some updates when I have some time.
any others?
Hang on – does this explain the NSW ALP Right’s last ditch efforts to privatise? Pass the thorny emissions issues onto some privtae sector entity?
dk do you have to borrow from Brad DeLong’s press-bagging title scheme?
One thing that we need in this county is Australian voices telling stories…
Yeah pretty much. Pump up the buyers with assurances of ‘protection’ then turn around and load them up with the real liabilities depending on the political pressure applied.
Michael S. What would you suggest as a title?
We recently re-signed with Origin Energy on a new green Earth deal. The bloke on the phone excitedly told me about the showerhead and bulbs I was getting – only about fifteen years too late. When the paperwork came I checked, and yep, Origin, just like any other retailer, was generating greenhouse friendly (I think it was that scheme) credits for my ‘change over’. What bullshit. And I’ll bet the calculation assumed electric hot water too, rather than gas-boosted solar.
Greenhouse Friendly is the Federal accreditation, wilful. I’m not aware of any demand side measures on that scheme. It sounds a lot more like NSW NGACs… And if you’ve got gas boosted solar, they shouldn’t have given you any of that.
It’s a policy basket case on all fronts, except perhaps the Forestry side.
dk.au, the point is, the little contract booklet that came (after I signed on) was clear in referring to credits Origin were creating (maybe selling to themselves as offsets?), without any reference to my actual domestic situation. They definitely assumed that my new low flow shower head was going to replace something, without asking what, so they made an assumption there.
Assumptions about take-up of these sorts of schemes also needs to factor in those who converted a long time ago, not just those who are too apathetic to change.
(not sure about your forestry comment, that’s all over the shop as well, at least as regards future plantations, and native forest harvesting).
One thing that we need in this county is Australian voices telling stories…
As a daily Fairfax reader, one of my main complaints that it’s not necessarily Australian voices telling stories. For instance, the Sunday AGE’s uncritical reporting of the GOP “Obama was in the same room with Ayers!!!” talking point, as if it was serious fact, via some US correspondent who wrote like he’d just used some GOP press release.
There are also heaps of op-eds by non Australian voices, which is not always a bad thing, but far too many from IPA “fellows”, which take the neoliberal AEI gospel.
Wilful, the Origin Energy “GreenEarth” product is based on Origin sourcing its electricity from accredited renewable sources. It’s not a demand-side measure. Maybe the bulbs and shower head they sent you were some kind of marketing sweetener package.
No Tim, it was clear in the contract that we were assigning rights over. Also, GreenEarth is not just accredited renewable sources – I’m not sure how my natural gas could possibly be so!
Oh absolutely. It’s all about about making assumptions (about the trustworthiness of businesses, the honesty of citizens etc). Problem is, the sociology of institutions intrudes into these assumptions quite rudely. Your salesperson may not have been on commission, but almost certainly had a quota to fulfill. Of course, all of this gets bracketed out by the threat of ‘audit’.
That’s certainly the view taken in designing the relative intensity rule for the GGAS – Hazelwood generates NGACs just for burning coal!
Seriously though, there needs to be a cutoff (eg. 1 Jan 1990) for these schemes to be effective, otherwise they just won’t produce meaningful action.
Care to elaborate on the problems with forestry?
We had a guy come to the door and offer us 5 or 10 (free) or something, but the deal was they sent a “technician” around to install them, (begs the how many aargh-joke doesn’t it). We’ve got ‘em already so said thanks no but thanks. As he went to go I said, what if I go and get some ordinary ones, and have them in when the tech comes round? The guy said sure, lots of people do that, and got a bit excited, thinking he was gonna get his fee.
I love a tight-arse country, of lurks and shit-for-brains,…
Feel free to complete.
Free??? Did I hear Free? I’ll have six. And some for ‘ron.
By way of contrast to Danny’s account, we responded to a Energy Australia agreed appointment time whereupon a guy who was over qualified for his previous (redundant) job but glad to have EA take him on as a ‘door-to-door’. Replaced about 20 filament bulbs, letting me do the ladder work, and left me a few spares. Frankly I was chuffed as this guy knew his wattage and what was appropriate when and where. But the shopping centre campaigns worry me a bit if they are just giving out free bulbs. Its the old story ..never value something freely given.
I like the clean, bright white light of the compact flouros. but I REALLY resent the death of Fairfax – it’s little more than a poorly written lifestyle ad placement sheet.
Pablo 15: I’m completely on for getting employment up in sustainable industries and businesses, I was this () close to doing what needed to be done, just to give the guy who came to our place,
the business, so he got his churn fee, and the visit to our place wasn’t a waste of his time.
I just couldn’t do it, an accident of inherited family values, but my point was, according to this guy, heaps did, they’d go to the trouble even though they didn’t need the hand-out, probably significantly contributing to the blowout of the scheme, most importanatly with all the opportunity cost, just to satisfy the don’t-miss-out hoarding instinct. I don’t see how that’s ” never valuing something free”, quite the opposite.
Compare this with the fact that when, up here anyway, water was getting real short and water use targets were set, overall the population exceeded the target per capita savings, and by quite a bit. Maybe the difference is the light bulbs are objects that can be stashed, stacked, like in Scrooge McDuck’s Money Bin, even potentially exchanged, whereas water is more like a service you can’t easily do that with, and not usually associated with paying money for at the time of use. Different story when there were water tank rebates, effectively freebies. It’s a puzzlement.
When the bird flu scare first hit big, and tamiflu was gonna be in very short supply, there were stories that medico’s were hoarding, and a survey showed a frighteningly high percentage of them said if it hit, they wouldn’t be showing up for work, but looking out for number one. It’s that instinct I find most worrying about things getting really tough one way and/or another, and why I reckon Kev was on the money to nip the “quick, get your money out while you can” rush in the bud. Cos I reckon the rush was on the cards.
Aparently he was a major tight-arse himself, his idea of a party was Jatz without the cheese. Remember, he couldn’t even pay the full amount for child minding, he/they fingered the nation for as much of it as he/they could get away with. Frightening, the nation turning Ruddy.
I wonder if the Rudd and Rein household made sure they got their share of freebie light bulbs?
The giveaways were only in NSW.
Any ‘additionality’ of the scheme was effectively obliterated with the stroke of the pen on the legislation banning incandescent bulbs where replacements were readily available. Sensible policy like that should be happening in all sorts of areas. It just needs government to step up.
Danny is appealing to a higher instinct than I exhibited with the energy freebies. But his rural water shortage example reminds me of all those farmers who have waited out the government – in most cases Dept Ag, Dept water resources or soils division – to come and dig their farm dams for nothing. Ok so it wouldn’t happen today but there are still plenty of freebies in the way of fencing, windbreaks and farm plans that a resolute farmer can qualify for. Exceptional circumstances in drought may only be the latest and most chronic of taxpayer subsidies. It may explain why only 32 farmers nationwide took up Howard’s $175 000 pack up and leave offer in the face of drought 2005-6 version. As dk.au suggests, government needs to step up to the challenge but I have my doubts.
It’s all my fault dk.au
I got 2 lots of the giveaway boxes of 6 x long life globes and a shower head… and a nice fella bloke from Sydney Water who came round and did all the changeovers on the taps as well. All freebies.
In terms of the new low watt fluro bulbs, at the time I still had a few new incandescent bulbs in the cupboard, and I then let them and all the rest in situ ones die before replacing with the low watt fluro’s, which took some time to replace all.
Incandescent bulbs were always dying so you needed a decent stock of different wattages etc – so there was probably a lag in take up was due to not replacing bulbs until current stock had been used etc. I know it’s silly but I couldn’t throw out perfectly good bulbs and also replace ones that were working until they all died a natural death, even though there was power savings to be had.
It was because I’d grown up using these bulbs and had known no others – so another few months what the hell etc. However, after using the new bulbs for some years now, you couldn’t pay me to go back and I’d change every bulb in any new house I moved into straight away.
But you don’t know something until you know it. If they re-did the Audit in 2008 – I would guess the take up rate of these free bulbs would be almost 100% by now.
At the last BIFF I saw an hilarious, if you know a bit about china and/or the language, dystopic satire from China, Good Cats, Hao Mao, a wicked poitical pun, about the greed and corruption behind China’s economic miracle, and the anti-hero in it, personifying thier economy, exhibited their classic white shoe brigade business trajectory, which I gather happens in every village and town as they come into the 20th century, as in get electricity: vanguard son goes off to big city, gets a bank roll at construction site, comes back to the village, sets up a caged-chicken “farm” cashcow, invests in a load of light bulbs off the back of a truck, typically dodgy, but he blames the crazy-making flickering light on dodgy wiring by the utility that’s previously been through town, with the arguement, it’s the same all over town, all his light bulb’s can’t be duds, which the peasants buy, then he moves on to dodgy real estate. Great scene when the gas installer guys turn up, get abused and thrown down the stairs just for showing up.
They weren’t energy efficient fluoros.
On the other hand, blogging and an anarchic movie making and exhibition scene is rife, they don’t give a stuff about distribution chains, just make it, burn it, and show it, and let others burn it and show it. So social memes can go like bush fires. Hopefully for the world, the Green China one can spark up, real soon. It’s the point of the 2010 Shanghai Expo, which the Olympics was organisational practice for.
How many lightbulbs does it take to change a nation?
Care to elaborate on the problems with forestry?
dk.au, I won’t go into it at length, particularly because I’ll probably get into an argument with a certain person ‘round here, and also due to time constraints, but the essence of the problem is accounting (just like with DSM). In a sense, it’s all Australia’s fault through article 3.4 of the Kyoto Protocol.
Trees that are grown for over 100 years get to count the stored carbon. Good luck measuring that accurately, but that’s a relatively small problem. Arbitrarily, they have to have been on cleared land as of 1 Jan 1990. Even though that land was almost certainly once forested previously. If the trees do get harvested then suddenly all that carbon is considered to be emitted, even though we know that’s not true.
In native forests, there’s a thousand metric shitloads of carbon there, but sequestration can’t really be measured with any degree of certainty and we’ll be debating the total quanta until the cows come home. Again, if harvested, all is assumed lost, even though a solid proportion goes into houses, furniture etc. And of course, if you don’t use timber, you use concrete.
Mature forests eventually end up emitting more methane than they sequester carbon (not that I’m suggesting we can afford to emit the already sequestered carbon).
Lay on top of that a natural cycle of fire which creates massive waves of loss and recovery. And the biophysical effects of climate change. And the nasty divisive politics of timber harvesting (plantations as well as native forestry), and you soon realise that forestry and timber is completely all over the shop when it comes to climate change.
This is because it is uniquely the only manipulable sink that we have that is also a potential source.
What you really mean to say, dk.au, is that “anyone who believes everything that they read needs their head examined”.
“How many lightbulbs does it take to change a nation?” That is very funny, Danny. But I suspect that the answer is the same,……
“just one, but the nation has got to want to change”!!
Thank you, BilB. My faith in the possibility of co-operativity in the species is restored.
Thanks for that wilful.
My understanding is that it’s only devastating fire events that matter to most plantations. Plantation managers usually have detailed fire management plans (and staff) in place in Summer. Still, I take your point that there are immense uncertainties of larger time periods.
Of course – don’t know how that got past the subeditor
BTW, the audit leading to the installation factor change in 2006 took place because IPART noticed that the total number of bulbs given away was approaching the total number of possible light fittings in NSW.
“total number of bulbs given away was approaching the total number of possible light fittings”: Oh no, not a light fitting gap !! Quick, install more light fittings!! It’s a very strange love indeed.
hahaha
Meanwhile, Dog Bites Man
.. or .. Suppose they gave a (fossil fuels) mine, and no-one dug it.
Aside, if there’s anyone from the Brains Trust here: What’s the state of play with solar energy capture efficiency these days, especially re: that old saw of how much energy/resource$ it takes to make them vs yield? Are we still talking silicon, and difficult-to-scale bench engineering?
Could we please at least have a global project, sponsored by MS and Apple and Cisco, to work up a solarpowered internet?
My wireless broadcast point is DC, my notebook is DC, so I can theoretically create a local solar netnode, which could mesh with the guy down the road’s, etc. Flocks of carrier pigeons could carry sd ram with the cache updates between cities.
Then we’ll have something to occupy ourselves when the world is forced to the realisation Lao Tsu was right, “Do nothing and everything is done”, that all that environment-compromising yet ultimately gratuitous waste of time and energy humans do which we know of as Teh Economy can, must and will be eliminated, and we can just time-share the remaining work required for essential services. Like serving in the corn milk eco chino palaces which will be in walking distance from everybody.
Of course! That’s where the pigeons fly in, fly out!
danny, I’m sure someone will step into the breach, but the issue for PV always up till now has been $$. They’ve always been a net energy generator, that old myth about them having massive carbon debts to pay back hasn’t been true in a long long time. But yeah, the cost of refining silicon remains a massive barrier. Scaleable and all, they are made in some decent quantities, just too expensive.
Start with Wikipedia. There are several future options that I’m aware of, all designed to reduce the silicon problem:
* sliver cell – http://www.originenergy.com.au/1233/SLIVER-technology
* Concentrators, such as the Victorian plant – http://www.solarsystems.com.au/HCPV_technology.html
* solar thermal – not really PV, but still the sun.
dk.au, plantations still have to contend with wildire, and this is a very real business risk for them. Increasing, with climate change. But this isn’t a major accountancy issue, and as the plantation is not native (even if eucalypt spp.) this can’t considered part of a natural cycle.
On the role of old growth forests as carbon sinks (as well as stores):
Luyssaert, S. et. al. Old-growth forests as global carbon sinks Nature 455, pp. 213-215 (11 September 2008) | doi:10.1038/nature07276
On whether methane emissions from old growth forests are significant:
Dueck, T. et. al. No evidence for substantial aerobic methane emission by terrestrial plants: a 13C-labelling approach New Phytologist 175 (1), pp. 29-35 (27 April 2007)
Readers who are interested in the possibility of perverse outcomes from including reforestation in an ETS may wish to check out my joint submission with Judith Ajani to the CPRS Green Paper (available on the submissions section of the CPRS website).