Keep it in the ground: Shell's 1991 film warning of climate change danger uncovered | The Guardian

More than a quarter of a century ago, oil giant Shell made an extraordinary public film about the dangers of global warming, called Climate of Concern, which has just been rediscovered. The film, says one leading climate scientist, is one of the best he has ever seen: the science is sharp, the predictions uncannily accurate and the suggested solutions smart. The film even had an urgent message: “Action now is seen as the only safe insurance.”

Yet Shell has spent the 26 years since investing many billions in highly polluting tar sands and helping to lobby against climate action. As Bill McKibben told me: “Imagine if Shell had taken their own advice and we’d spent the last quarter century in all-out pursuit of renewables, energy efficiency, and conservation. We wouldn’t have solved the problem of global warming, but we’d be well on the way. Shell made a big difference in the world – a difference for the worse.”

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Turnbull is on a 'clean coal' collision course with APRA | The AFR

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is on a collision course with the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority over his government's crusade for Australia's $10 billion green bank to invest in "clean coal" power stations, experts say.

The independent banking regulator entered the climate policy debate 10 days ago with a speech by APRA member Geoff Summerhayes warning that banks and their directors could be legally liable if they fail to consider the increasing risk of carbon-intensive assets such as power stations becoming "stranded'.

APRA's dramatic intervention came days after Treasurer Scott Morrison brought a lump of coal to Parliament to champion "clean coal" power as a solution to the blackouts that have hit the electricity grid with growing shares of wind and solar energy and coal plant retirements.

Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg and other ministers say they will change the $10 billion Commonwealth-owned Clean Energy Finance Corporation's guidelines to redefine "clean energy' to include "clean coal" power in order to stabilise the grid.

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APRA channels its inner Fisher/Carney | Sarah Barker, Minter Ellison

Sarah Barker at the Climate Alliance National Conference in October 2016 talking on the subject of fiduciary duties.

As was heavily covered in the weekend press, there has been a significant shift in APRA’s position on the relevance of climate change risk to the financial sector.  In a keynote speech to the Insurance Council of Australia entitled 'Australia's New Horizon: Climate Change Challenges & Prudential Risk', Mr Geoff Summerhayes (Executive Board Member of APRA) stated:

·      APRA-regulated entities can no longer treat climate change as ‘non-financial’ issue, or one that will only crystallise in the distant future.  Associated risks extend far beyond the physical (ecological) realm to economic transition risks (regulatory, technological and societal). Many of these risks are financial in nature, foreseeable and material – and are actionable now by Australian banks, insurers, asset owners and asset managers. 

·      The speech cites three key recent developments that have influenced APRA in articulating this view: (a) the Paris Agreement, and Australia’s ratification thereof, (b) the G20 Financial Stability Board Bloomberg TCFD climate risk disclosure recommendations, and (c) a recent legal opinion on directors’ duties with regard to climate change risks by senior commercial barrister Noel Hutley SC (briefed by Sarah Barker of Minter Ellison on instruction of the Centre for Policy Development and Future Business Council). 

·      In dealing with these risks, ‘scenario planning is the new normal’. Markets and investors increasingly expect corporations to apply a sophisticated and robust approach to modelling of the potential impacts of climate-related risks under different scenarios, and over different time horizons.  This includes the sub-2°C transition scenario around which the Paris Agreement (ratified by Australia in November 2016) is anchored.  The Recommendations of the G20 Financial Stability Board’s TCFD, released on 14 December 2016, provide clear guidance in this regard.

·      A failure to proactively govern the financial risks associated with climate change, now, can present significant litigation exposures for corporations and their directors.

·      This does not mean that APRA is ‘suddenly elevating climate-related issues to the top of our priority list. But it does mean joining the wider conversation that is already going on around this issue – and being explicit that climate change is likely to have material, financial implications that should be carefully considered.’  

The full transcript of Mr Summerhayes' speech is available here.  

Legal opinion shaking up the nation's boardrooms | The Age

On February 17 Australia's prudential regulator warned that climate change could threaten the stability of the entire financial system. It follows a landmark legal opinion that company directors could face heavy fines and damages if they ignore climate change related risk.

The climate bombshell the politicians didn't touch | The Age

Non-existent clean coal does not power Turnbull's house! | The Saturday Paper

 It is an unusual double standard by which Malcolm Turnbull lives.

The common complaint against politicians is that they do not practise what they preach, that their private behaviour is of a lower standard than what they publicly advocate. But in Prime Minister Turnbull’s case it’s the opposite. He practises what he dares not preach.

On his Point Piper mansion, his office confirmed this week, Turnbull has an array of solar panels capable of generating 14.5kW of electricity. 

That is a pretty big system. The current average capacity of new domestic solar systems in New South Wales is about 6kW, but people can get by with less, provided they are not profligate with their power.

The leader of the Greens, for example, Senator Richard Di Natale, runs a household of four people on 3kW of solar-generating capacity with attached storage, and lives completely off-grid. Occasionally, during the bleakest months of the Victorian winter, he tells us, he augments this with generator power. 

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APRA declares managing climate risk a prudential obligation | Investment Magazine

After years of ambiguity, the prudential regulator has stated clearly that banks, insurers and superannuation funds have a duty to calculate the financial risks associated with climate change.

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) last week put the financial services industry on notice that it is worried about the financial risks climate change poses, declaring it an “important and explicit part” of the agency’s thinking.  More

Submission to the Victorian Government Retail Electricity Review | Alan Pears AM

The Victorian Government has appointed an independent panel to conduct a review of electricity and gas retail markets in Victoria (the review). The panel comprises John Thwaites, Terence Mulder and Patricia Faulkner. The panel will prepare a final report to the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change that examines the operation of the Victorian electricity and gas retail markets and provides options that would improve outcomes for consumers.

The independent panel will be supported by a secretariat administered by the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP).

The review will consider the operation of the electricity and gas retail markets in Victoria in respect of supply to residential and small business consumers – defined for Victorian regulatory purposes as consumers with annual consumption less than 40MWh for electricity and 1,000GJ for gas. 

Submissions in response to the discussion paper are invited by Tuesday 28 February 2017. 

Please click here to read Alan Pears' AM submission to the review.

How to spend an extra US$600 billion a year on climate finance | The Fifth Estate

Jenya Khvatsky’s start-up company CleanTek Market has been founded to create a global online platform to connect clean technology projects, technologies and organisations with investors, end users and intermediaries. Here’s how he reads the imperatives for such a service.

We are in the midst of a clean technology revolution. There is now widespread acceptance that the global economy is transitioning away from a traditional fossil-based model to one based on sustainable use of resources and energy.

To achieve an orderly transition, the scale of financing required can be counted in the trillions – not billions – of dollars. A widely quoted report by the International Energy Agency estimated that US$1 trillion a year to 2050 is required to finance this transition (IEA, 2015). Yet the cleantech market has averaged US$360 billion a year over the first half of this decade, peaking at US$391 billion in 2014, to be valued at US$5.5 trillion (CPI, 2015). The current scale of the market is impressive – and yet it is some 60 per cent below what is required. A clear market failure.

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'Clean coal' too costly for CEFC mandate | AFR

Mandating the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to invest in "clean coal" would require a spectacular government backflip just nine weeks after it issued the lender with strict conditions on the profitability of new projects. 

Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann told the agency that its purpose was to help mobilise investment in "renewable energy, low emissions and energy efficiency projects and technologies", and instructed them to "apply commercial rigour when making investment decisions".

In particular, the direction said the CEFC must strive for an average return across the portfolio of 3 to 4 percentage points above the five year bond rate (2.3 per cent).

However, there are only three carbon capture and storage projects operating in the world and none are currently commercially viable. Super critical coal-fired power stations would also struggle to deliver commercial returns, while also  not meeting current guidelines to reduce emissions by 50 per cent.

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'Clean coal': billions of dollars and lots of carbon | Ben Potter

The Turnbull government wants to ease Clean Energy Finance Corporation guidelines to allow "clean coal" to qualify for "clean energy" funding but figures from a big Japanese supplier of clean coal plants suggest the guidelines would have to be gutted to get the plants over the line. Jonathan Carroll
A top executive at the largest Japanese supplier of high tech coal-fired power plants says they would likely cost more than thought in Australia and still emit relatively large quantities of carbon.

Akihiko Kazuno, head of global strategic planning for Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems, said the company's ultra-supercritical power stations – the most advanced currently being built commercially – typically cost between $US1.5 billion and $US3.5 billion per 1000 megawatts of capacity.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg, Treasurer Scott Morrison and the Minerals Council of Australia – which is launching a "Coal: Making the future possible" advertising campaign – are pushing for "clean coal" plants to be built in Australia.

But industry says the plants are "unbankable" because of their high costs and carbon risk and resources entrepreneurs Gina Rinehart and Trevor St Baker have shunned the technology too.

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Are fossil fuel companies telling investors enough about the risks of climate change? | The Conversation

Prior to President Donald Trump taking office, there was a push to require oil and gas companies to inform their investors about the risks of climate change. As governments step up efforts to regulate carbon emissions, the thinking goes, fossil fuel companies’ assets could depreciate in value over time.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, for example, was probing how ExxonMobil discloses the impact of that risk on the value of its reserves. And disclosure advocates have been pressing the agency to take more decisive action.

Now that Republicans control Congress and the White House, will the SEC reverse course? And should it?

The Trump administration’s apparent skepticism regarding climate change may portend such a change in direction. And Congress’ decision to roll back transparency rules for U.S. energy companies in the Dodd-Frank Act suggests transparency policy more broadly is being loosened.

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Startling air pollution maps reveal the true extent of rising emissions in the UK | Wired

Environmental campaigners place great importance on people using public transport over driving, but when it comes to the London Underground, the tables have been turned.

A recent study, published by the University of Surrey found that Londoners who travel on the Tube are exposed to 68mg of harmful pollutant PM10 daily, whereas car drivers experience 8.2mg. Describing the results as an "environmental injustice" against Londoners, lead author Dr Prashant Kumar is calling for more to be to done to reduce the health risks.

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Trump's vow to scrap the Paris climate change accord faces skepticism from corporations, GOP moderates | LA Times

Trashing the Paris Agreement made for a great campaign prop at Donald Trump’s rallies, where the climate change accord was portrayed as a product of the out-of-touch, insufferable elites that Trump pledged to sweep from power.

Now the landmark agreement, signed under President Obama, is fast becoming a nuisance for President Trump’s White House.

It is putting the president under increasing pressure from places he may not have expected. His own secretary of State appears to see little upside in the president following through on the signature campaign vow to scrap it. His ambassador to the United Nations is hedging. And titans of industries that Trump promised would be unleashed to create new jobs once freed from the agreement’s constraints are openly hostile to Trump’s plan to put it through the shredder.

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Energy politics has Malcolm Turnbull in a tangle | The New Daily

Malcolm Turnbull playing a Tony Abbott-style energy policy never looked convincing. Now, even he realises that his attack on renewable energy was misdirected.

Worse, it exposed the government’s complete lack of a coherent policy and made them look out of touch with consumer and business sentiment.

The plan was simple last year: the Prime Minister could restore the government’s fortunes by coming up with a contemporary version of Mr Abbott’s carbon tax scare.

The beguiling appeal was to link Labor’s climate change policies to the rising cost of living. The message was simple: vote Labor and your power bill will go even higher.

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Republicans’ winning idea: Less carbon in the atmosphere, more equal distribution of income | Robert Reich

"A group of former Republican officials (including James A. Baker, Henry Paulson, George P. Shultz, Marty Feldstein and Greg Mankiw) is proposing a carbon tax that would start at $40 per ton and gradually increase.

The proceeds of the tax would be distributed to every American.

The average family of four would receive $2,000 annually in dividends. As the tax rises, so would their dividends. Since everyone would receive the same amount of revenue from the tax regardless of their income level, the dividend would make a bigger difference for poorer families than for wealthier ones.

It’s a win-win: Less carbon in the atmosphere, and more equal distribution of income. That it’s being proposed by Republicans doesn’t make the idea any less worthy.

I’m aware that some on the left would rather use revenues from such a tax to invest in clean energy and other social causes rather than return the revenues directly to the public. That detail can be worked out.

The idea is getting a hearing in the White House. And in these dreadful times, that’s good news indeed."

Robert Reich, one of the nation’s leading experts on work and the economy, is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. Time Magazine has named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written 13 books, including his latest best-seller, “Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future;” “The Work of Nations,” which has been translated into 22 languages; and his newest, an e-book, “Beyond Outrage.” His syndicated columns, television appearances, and public radio commentaries reach millions of people each week. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, and Chairman of the citizen’s group Common Cause. His new movie "Inequality for All" is in Theaters. His widely-read blog can be found at www.robertreich.org.

Hard facts unmask the fiction behind Coalition's 'coal comeback' | Lenore Taylor

Watching politics builds a high tolerance for hypocrisy and humbug, but even I am aghast at the Coalition’s antics this week – fondling a lump of coal in parliament while accusing the opposition of an “ideological approach to energy” and negligence in policy planning.

Seriously. There’s a long list of blame and shame for Australia’s threadbare climate and energy policy, and the failure to plan for an energy market crisis that experts have warned about for years. But Malcolm Turnbull’s Coalition takes out first place.

Arguably all sides of politics have made mistakes or miscalculations to get us to this point of omni-failure – high prices, blackouts and an inability to reduce electricity sector emissions – and yes, ideology has played a part: mostly the climate-change denying, renewables-are-a-socialist-plot ideology espoused by sections of the Liberal and National parties that once upon a time, a long time ago, Turnbull also railed against.

Before we untether from reality entirely and drift off into a Trump-like universe where truth belongs to whoever delivers the best poll-driven lines or brings the dumbest prop to question time, let’s hammer down a few facts. Because we aren’t reviewing bad theatre here and when some commentators opine about whether Turnbull’s lines will “work”, or how funny the whole thing was, what they are really assessing is whether the prime minister can successfully, and in broad daylight, shift the blame for a monumental stuff-up, while apparently proposing solutions that will make it substantially worse in every regard.

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Fossil fuel divestment is worth $7tn globally yet Australia still clings to coal | Blair Palese

Health fund HCF divests from fossil fuels, saying industry harms members | The Guardian

HCF has become the first Australian private health fund to divest from fossil fuels, having decided that the industry harms the health and wellbeing of its members, pulling about $20m out of fossil fuel companies in Australia and overseas.

In a letter to the campaign group Market Forces dated 15 December 2016, HCF said it would be divesting from fossil fuels on the same ground it used for pulling out of the tobacco industry.

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