Date:   2/24/2011 8:16:15 PM ( 13 y ago)
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http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/44480.html


Another step towards renewable energy


Dan Cass

You could feel the increased energy in Parliament House yesterday after the historic carbon tax agreement between the Labor Government and the Australian Greens.

The Greens senators and the Labor side were energised by the victory of having made mutual concessions and negotiated a foundation agreement.

As Michelle Grattan writes today in her analysis, "The bottom line is that the Government is right to be pursuing a carbon price because that is the correct policy for Australia to have".

The ABC’s Tony Eastley was also right on AM this morning when he introduced the story saying that the tax “raises more questions than answers”.

The primary question for the MPCCC now is: What do we need to build the solar, wind and other renewable energies at a large scale, rapidly? This means making an industry plan for renewable baseload electricity. Once Australians see renewable energy pumping out power 24/7, the age of coal is over and the politics of climate solved.

The secondary question is: How should we compensate households, to ensure fairness and win the next election?

Today is the beginning of a new political dynamic, where the political economy of renewable energy (which we should always understand to include energy conservation) is represented by a coalition spanning both houses of Parliament.

The renewable energy industry now has to get very organised, quickly. It needs to align with the climate movement, unions and the MPCCC faction, including the country independents.

If the solar and wind companies let themselves be represented by the Clean Energy Council they will lose and gas will win. They must help the Labor Government understand that Australia cannot afford to sink capital into gas and forgo the benefits of renewable energy transition. China, the US and EU are not waiting for a renewable energy silver bullet. They are getting on with the deployment and development of available technologies.

The risks are high. The environment movement is still shell-shocked by Copenhagen and the failure of former PM Kevin Rudd’s CPRS scheme. As a result, support for the agreement from traditional players, the Australian Conservation Foundation, Climate Institute and Australian Youth Climate Coalition has been weaker than it should be.

The agreement has been supported by big companies, from the biggest of all - BHP Billiton - to Westpac and also energy giants Origin Energy and AGL Energy.

The “can’t do” campaign will be meeting in PR war rooms across Australia this morning, deciding how much to spend on lobbying, advertising and astro-turfing.

As always, America leads the way for Australia's politics and we should note the news on Bloomberg overnight that the American Petroleum Institute will start backing political candidates this year, in order to prevent climate action by president Barack Obama.

The nastiest end of the anti-tax campaign will come from a right-wing extremist grouping that includes Fox News’s Glenn Beck and is backed by the notorious Koch brothers. Koch and Koch are oil barons who run the largest private company in the USA and fund climate sceptics, race haters and the Tea Party, with funding tentacles reaching into Australia.

At risk of making things seem impossibly complex, Peak Oil also has to be factored in to the dynamic. News overnight is that Tapis Crude is at a two-year high.

The MPCCC should spend some of the proceeds of the tax on biofuels that do not displace food crops (because they are grown on arid lands) and electric vehicles. Both of these measures will bring in the outer-suburban swinging voters.

Electric cars are a huge PR boon for the green movement and we are lucky that the Israeli-American Better Place company is gearing up to roll out a $600 million network of electric car infrastructure here.

The Courier Mail and other News Ltd papers are already running the scare campaign as fact, claiming that “Petrol, groceries and electricity bills could soar from July 1 next year under Julia Gillard's new carbon tax”. Prices are slowly soaring anyway due to global dynamics including Peak Oil. The Courier Mail can not calculate the specific incremental impact of this agreement.

The Clean Energy Council will be under considerable pressure now, to define what “clean” means. The scientific definition is that “clean” energy is ecologically sustainable, which means conserved and renewable energy. The PR definition is that “clean” means gas. The public might believe PR in the beginning, but once they understand the argument, they will go with the science.

Once the renewable energy plan is decided, it will be necessary for the PM to install the right minister into the energy portfolio, to implement it. It should be someone with positive energy.

Dan Cass was the Australian Conservation Foundation’s official observer at the Earth Summit (UNCED) in Rio in 1992. He is a lobbyist.
 

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