It’s the kind of document you’d expect a Turnbull-led conservative government to put out – finish the process of privatizing the energy sector, remove remaining price controls (and introduce smart meters to enable time-of-day pricing), phase out all green energy schemes other than the carbon price that aren’t clearly “complementary”, and trust the market to match supply with demand.

And the assumption dripping through the document is that changes to Australia’s energy mix will be glacially slow. Both stationary energy and transport will continue to run on coal, gas and oil for decades to come, with a mode shift from coal to gas and ultimately to renewables. Large-scale ones, mind you – the short shrift given to small-scale solar systems would be amusing if it wasn’t serious.

The striking weakness of the document is the superficiality of risk analysis. Not so much the risks of short-term supply shocks of various forms of energy – these are studied in a couple of other departmental publications referenced in the White Paper. I’m more concerned about, for want of a better term, “long-term shocks” – disruptive changes (for good, bad, or a mix of both) to supply or demand of various forms of energy.

For instance, consider a scenario where solar PV achieves (unsubsidised) price parity with retail household electricity across much of Australia. This is not beyond the realms of plausibility in many parts of Australia, given the continuing plummet in prices. Or, for that matter, what happens if electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids progress to the point where they become mainstream somewhat faster than the status-quo modelling indicates? If something like this happens, will a policy response be required – and, more to the point, are the policies in the White Paper sufficiently flexible to cope with such disruptions?

Or, conversely, what if anything can be done to reduce the risks of the scenario where neither renewables nor carbon capture and storage pan out? Oh, we’ve got a risk mitigation thought bubble here…and given it’s Mar’n, it shouldn’t be a surprise that it starts with n and ends with “uclear”. Look – I’m glad somebody in the ALP is prepared to mention the unmentionable. But I’d very much prefer us to try very hard to find alternatives – not least because if and when we do have to go down that road, the argument will be much easier if there has been a fair-dinkum attempt to find them.

Of course, the most likely disruption – the one I’m desperately hoping for – is the one where the world’s governments actually take the kind of action required to seriously tackle climate change. If Australia’s emissions trajectory has to adjust itself rather more abruptly than we’d like – and without the crutch of cheap international permits – what happens?

I don’t think Mar’n spends much time worrying about such scenarios. I’d be much happier if he, and this White Paper – did.

There is little doubt that, at Copenhagen, Rudd as a ‘friend of the chair’ gave it his best shot. But at the end of his term as PM will he be able to, in all conscience, say the same? Will he be able to:

sit down, look my children in the eyes and tell them in clear conscience that I did absolutely everything I could to achieve action to avoid dangerous climate change.

In full flight in the speech Rudd referred to a letter from 6 year-old Gracie who had written to him as he set out for Copenhagen:

“Hi” she wrote. “My name is Gracie. How old are you?”

Gracie continues “I am writing to you because I want you all to be strong in Copenhagen… Please listen to us as it is our future.”

I wonder what Gracie thinks of him now.

I have a theory that Rudd came back with a condition akin to post traumatic stress disorder.

I plan to return to the following in a subsequent post, but the shorter version of what Der Spiegel reckons happened at Copenhagen is as follows. A smaller meeting of about 25 critical players was convened in order to resolve intractable differences while the main body waited. In that meeting there was a direct confrontation between France and Germany on the one hand and China and India on the other. The Europeans ran into a brick wall. Obama seemed to equivocate. The Chinese asked for consultation time, because their premier had strategically withdrawn to his hotel room.

It was late afternoon and the meeting never in fact reconvened. Early that evening Obama went down to the floor below to a room booked by the Indians where India, China, Brazil and South Africa caucused. There he found the Chinese leader and in that room the Copenhagen Protocol was crafted, leaving out all that the Europeans regarded as essential.

Rudd assisting a chair who was clearly out of his depth must have felt useless and irrelevant in a conference that he had hoped would legitimise his domestic stance. Ever since he has avoided properly addressing climate change.

But Germany had no less at stake and has dusted itself off to host a series talks in an attempt to progress matters. In this news report Australia’s recalcitrance is noted.

They even put on an extra informal meeting of 45 selected states, the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, in an attempt to break the ice and find a basis for trust. Most countries sent their ministers. Australia sent a Deputy Secretary.

For Rudd the “great moral and economic issue challenge of our time” has been set aside while he concentrates on being re-elected.

Perhaps he is right. Apart from the official UNFCCC stream of talks there are other conferences. Bolivia, for example, on behalf of the ALBA countries organised the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. They think that the end of capitalism is a prerequisite for curing Mother Earth. Those countries were strangely absent from Petersberg.

China too organised a conference to re-assert and consolidate its position.

Perhaps Rudd correctly thinks that Australia is wasting its time trying to influence what emerges from that lot where incompatible positions are strongly held.

Meanwhile in Oz, Rudd has no less than three cabinet ministers working on climate change, Penny Wong, Peter Garrett and Martin Ferguson. Indeed there are four cabinet ministers, Kim Carr as well, involved in the $4.5 billion clean energy initiative. Between them they should have been able to devise appropriate strategies and communicate them to the public. They have failed.

Of the three main players, Ferguson has largely sailed under the radar, yet much of the remaining action falls in his bailiwick. Darren Lewin-Hill in a thread comment links to his reports on a meeting with Ferguson. I urge you to read the extended version of Darren’s account. Ferguson’s championing of fossil fuels is grotesque.

Ferguson claims that his fundamental concern is JOBS. Declan Kuch did an excellent piece last year on the sources of Marn’s passion for jobs:

Martin’s anti-environmental alliance with global resource companies arises from this “slavery to the jobs ideology of the late 1940s”, as one Labor staffer I spoke to put it.

I think the question as to whether Ferguson is a closet denialist must be answered in the affirmative. Or else he has no respect for tourism jobs since his policies are incompatible with the retention of such jobs along the Great Barrier Reef, in Kakadu and on the snowfields of the Australian Alps.

May I remind you that this man is Minister for Tourism. It’s a disgrace, simply a disgrace.

It’s a shame that the two politicians with the greatest passion for and understanding of climate change, Malcolm Turnbull and Greg Hunt, are in a party that chews politicians up and spits them out if they get serious about the matter.

A few weeks ago John Davidson, who comments as John D, attended a small afternoon tea put on by Michael Johnston (Liberal – Ryan) for constituents that had contacted him about climate change. Greg Hunt was there to help. John tells me he was impressed with Hunt’s mastery of his brief and the amount of investigation and thinking he had done about climate change. But here’s the rub. Hunt said that 60% of Coalition pollies nationally (80% in Qld) were a against climate action while 75% of Australian citizens were in favour nationally.

Hunt’s concern was to convince Coalition members that there was a political need for the party to support climate action and that the costs would not be as great as they feared.

Recently something called the Climate Competitiveness Index was launched. While doing very well on climate accountability, on climate performance within the OECD Australia is towards the back of the pack. By my count there are 24 countries ahead of us and 4 behind.

The official key findings are here. Carbon Positive has a useful summary pointing out that:

Germany, France, the UK and Nordic countries, have the most consistent performance across the eight domains and between accountability and performance.

And then this:

In the US, Canada and Australia, there is a telling mis-match between citizen concerns and price signals, and divergent views within the business community and in politics.

Could it be that in those three countries climate sceptics/denialists/agnotologists have been most successful in causing mayhem, doubt and uncertainty? Could it be that we have elected the wrong politicians?

When the situation is desperate you take the first step. Reports like the Climate Competitiveness Index give the impression that there is widespread activity elsewhere. Countries are said to be “fiercely competitive as people strive to achieve first mover advantages.”

Finland, for example, is planning massive direct action to boost its renewable energy production to meet European Union requirements of 38% of energy consumption by 2020. The additional capacity needed is equivalent to three big nuclear power plants. Germany and Switzerland, I understand, are thinking of going for 30% reductions by 2020 instead of 20%.

As one of the highest per capita emitters and a major emitter overall, Australia matters. And the world has noticed.

I’m sure Gracie has too.

Rudd’s climate change reversal was the embodiment of a cynicism of truly monumental proportions; the culmination of a sustained failure to hold a policy conversation with the public, and born of fear of an Abbott fear campaign.

So as May Day dawns, it’s worth posing the question: what has happened to Australian Labor?

I can’t remember who first described Kevin Rudd as ‘Australia’s inaugural Federal premier’, but there’s real truth in that phrase. The risk averse nature of state politics, the obsession with controlling the media cycle, the concentration on bite sized focus grouped ‘announceables’, and the failure to lead public opinion; it’s all there with Rudd.

It’s the triumph of the political pragmatists – a vacuous politics driven by the minutiae of electoral calculus which Paul Keating warned against in the midst of the 2007 Rudd ascendancy. Sure, it might make sense to ‘clear the decks’ and pitch solely to the outer suburban and regional voters Abbott is also appealling to with his unprincipled populism. ‘Keep the conversation on health’, one can imagine Ruddistas intoning with the frequency of a constantly repeated soundbite.

But something more profound is at work here; a failure of political imagination and courage.

Much has been made over the past few days of Kevin Rudd’s lack of a reform agenda. I’m often suspicious of that word. Too often, it means a narrow economism, focused solely on enabling business to compete in a globalised world. Few point to the passage of the Sex Discrimination Act in 1984 by the Hawke Government as a great reform, preferring to laud the deregulation of markets and the floating of the dollar. Yet the former represented a real shift in the possibilities of equality in this nation, and a reconfiguration of social relations for the better. The Rudd government’s record is equally barren on both scores, and a chance has been missed to lead on an issue the PM himself quite correctly identified as the great challenge of our times.

It may be that Paul Norton is right and that the Labor party, reflecting the class and workplace cleavages of another century, finds it difficult to factor sustainability into its political equation. Indeed, that failure, whose consequences are now writ large, opens the political space for The Greens, as opposed to the soft environmentalism and middle class civil liberties agenda of the now departed Democrats. But the intransigence of some Ministers, unions and a recrudescent party culture is no excuse for a Prime Minister whose power within the government has constantly been celebrated.

What’s left for Labor? There are still reasons to re-elect the Rudd Government, and reasons which transcend the horror of the Abbott alternative. There’s something in having Ministers with the right instincts, and with a desire to put right the wreckage John Howard inflicted on all of us. The irony is that some of those Ministers who are most attuned to the demands of the second decade of the new century are now at risk from Rudd’s obsession with a risk-free politics. Labor should have another term, but some time in that term, and the sooner the better, Kevin Rudd should go.

Update: My thoughts on Brisbane Labour Day 2010, and John Quiggin‘s reflections on May Day.

The disconnect between the assumptions of the discussion paper – a 45% increase in energy demand to 2020 (Why?!?!?) – and the reality of both the climate change response required here and the one actually unfolding in the US and UK was just startling. The ever energetic Fiona Wain was a joy to watch, coming up with bold suggestions at every turn. But of course the harumphing response from RET was, where do we get the capital in these GFC-ish times? Who pays? Funnily enough, this is the flipside of the CC Emo response to the first ‘Energy [R]evolution’ paper at the height of the resource boom: ie. where are the staff in this ‘skills shortage-ish times? And to all those who think public engagement should be quarantined from climate change strategy, watch this space for more ‘regulatory capture’ – a term coined by one participant to sum up the perversely self-referential logic by which the stationary energy market is regulated.

Elsewhere: Mark Gamble reviews Third Way progenitor Anthony Giddens’ new book on the Politics of Climate Change

[A]lthough Giddens is sympathetic to green values, he is very critical of the means that are often advocated to achieve them, because they ignore politics. Radical decentralisation will not deliver the co-ordinated action that is required; the precautionary principle is deeply flawed because it can justify radically opposed courses of action; and the idea of sustainable development is simply incoherent. Giddens favours instead using the percentages principle, accepting that all action involves risks and that the task is to analyse the scale of the risk and make the best choice possible in conditions of uncertainty. This means, for example, accepting the need for new nuclear power stations.

For Giddens, any possible solutions to the climate crisis have to involve a big role for government and the return of planning. In his writings on the Third Way, Giddens was a strong advocate of markets and of the state performing an enabling rather than a command role.

He continues to stress the importance of markets and is very critical of those currents of green thought that reject markets altogether. But Giddens is also keenly aware of the shortcomings of markets in the face of a problem such as climate change, and although he thinks markets are still crucial in any solution (the financial services industry, particularly insurance, has an essential part to play), he thinks they will not participate fully unless governments take a much more active role. What is needed is not just an enabling but an “ensuring” state, a state that can actually deliver outcomes.

Realigning the ostensibly social democratic goals of Kevin Rudd with Energy policy more generally is going to be one hell of a challenge.

As Keane noted back in early March, there is a “High Level Consultative Committee” which is

… “one of the key sources of advice for the development of the White Paper” which “represents a cross-section of stakeholders in Australia’s energy sector… from discovery and exploration through to export and end use, and in both existing and emerging technologies.”

However, that’s a bit misleading.

The Committee is composed of representatives from Shell, BHP’s uranium division, Santos, Woodside, Rio Tinto, Origin, AGL, Xstrata, the Energy Supply Association, the Petroleum Production and Exploration Association. The non-fossil fuel representatives are the Australian Energy Market Operator; chair and Department of Resources Deputy Secretary Drew Clark; the Secretary of the Victorian Department of Primary Industry, Richard Bolt, the Prime Minister’s National Security Adviser Duncan Lewis and the CEO of CSIRO, Dr Megan Clark.

Despite the terms of reference identifying the need to reduce carbon emissions as a goal, the need for cleaner energy and conservation technologies and environmental sustainability, and specifically indicating the White Paper will cover both fossil fuel and renewable energy resources, and energy consumption, there are no representatives of the renewable energy sector on the committee, nor is anyone representing energy users.

With a board stacked like this, you can guess how they’ll define their woolly objectives of ensuring that “economic development is sustainable and efficient; effective operation of competitive energy markets is promoted and the need and scope for government intervention on the basis of market failure is identified”

Section 5.2 “Realising Australia’s energy resource potential” is where the commitment to a complete rejection of any democratic principles or consideration of externalities is most visible.

the Energy White Paper may consider:
a) strengthening the economic and scientific data on Australia’s energy resource potential by undertaking resource assessments
b) a plan to ensure Australia remains a preferred destination for investment and encourage Australia’s established energy exports, including LNG, and associated services
c) an assessment of whether there are efficient and effective legislation and administrative frameworks for the identification, exploration and development of energy resources
d) arrangements to improve the provision, expansion, regulation, ownership arrangements and utilisation of infrastructure.

Might I humbly suggest that they consider elevating this guy (who probably has an office next to the Deputy Secretary of Pub Rock) and giving him some power to define what an ‘efficient and effective’ framework looks like:

The ‘coal is cheap’ meme was dealt yet another blow last week with the release of a new ATSE report entitled The Hidden Costs of Electricity: Externalities of Power Generation in Australia.

Leaving aside for the moment the difficulties in accounting for the not hidden costs of electricity generation, it does seem rather strange that the National Electricity Market has been running for over a decade, is Australia’s largest Environmental Externalities market and yet nobody has thought to publish data on the toll its participants exact to public health through particulate emissions and people through global warming. The findings of the report would make Marn blush, cause they ain’t friendly. All this crap about ‘not picking’ winners relies on a concerted effort to ensure these kinds of calculations are kept as rough and marginal as possible. The challenge for the troglodytes in the energy industries is to provide plausible counter-calculations if they’re going to have any chance of keeping a presentable public face.

1) For reference, they note that the present wholesale price of electricity in Australia averages around $40/MWh.
2) They estimate that between $1.5 billion and $2.5 billion will be required over time in the Australian context for RD&D to fully demonstrate a single commercial application of CCS. I’d love to know how they arrived at that figure, but still.

Ouch.

That could buy an awful lot of solar thermal/wind integration/wave power research.

But there’s a much deeper issue here still, and it relates to the promises of big, complex technologies keeping within certain cost bounds. As Stephanie Cooke notes in this excellent piece, legacy issues with ‘too cheap to meter’ nuclear energy are a huge drag on the dreams of a clean energy revolution:

PRESIDENT OBAMA has made clean and efficient energy a top priority, and Congress has obliged with more than $32 billion in stimulus money mostly for conservation and alternative energy technologies like wind, solar and biofuel. Sadly, the Energy Department is too weighed down by nuclear energy programs to devote itself to bringing about the revolution Mr. Obama envisions.

Today, the department’s main task is managing the thousands of facilities involved in producing nuclear weapons during the cold war, and the associated cleanup of dozens of contaminated sites. Approximately two-thirds of its annual budget, which is roughly $27 billion, is spent on these activities, while only 15 percent is allocated for all energy programs, including managing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and researching and developing new technologies.

2/3rds of its annual budget spent cleaning up nukes? Let’s hope Marn isn’t setting us up with a similar problem.

Further reports today (as well as Stephen Mayne’s piece in Crikey) reinforce what was being said yesterday – that the polluters and the “skeptics” are making the running on the business response to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Green Paper. What looks like being the outcome is, in my view, a default back to the Howard position. Not only was the Green Paper based on the work done for the Howard Government by the Shergold Review, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that the business position, which is falling on at least some sympathetic ears within the government, is for a very low carbon price and a stack of free permits under the aegis of “adjustment”. In effect, it’s a “waiting on the world” strategy, with the BCA’s president Greig Gailey expected to make the familiar point about Australia only creating 1.5% of the world’s emissions in a speech to the Sydney Institute tonight. Gailey will also be calling for bipartisan support to create “certainty”, and given Kevin Rudd’s previous disdain for negotiating with The Greens, it would appear that there are powerful forces at work to create a policy outcome much more akin to the Malcolm Turnbull/Greg Hunt position than what Labor was actually suggesting might occur prior to the election.

If this is what’s going on, you have to wonder why they’re bothering at all. The outcome would mean that we’d be continuing to increase our emissions, not restraining them, at least in the immediate future.