AUSTRALIA  

Australia now gets nearly 80% of its power from coal plants. Only 1% comes from wind power; less than 2% comes from solar energy. Until Kevin Rudd became the new prime minister of Australia in November 2007, Australia was the only significant nation not to have signed the Kyoto Protocol along with the USA. Ratification came into effect in March 2008 and Australia has committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60% of 2000 (not 1990) levels by 2050. However half of those reductions would come from imported permits and it is not expected that emissions will begin falling until around 2030. The so-called 2020 target of 5% reduction (in itself not very ambitious) would be achieved by importing carbon permits from developing countries. Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are among the highest in the world at about 28 tonnes per capita. Although Australia has no nuclear power stations, it has almost 40% of the world's known uranium reserves, of which it supplies only 19% of the world market.

Australia is a small greenhouse gas polluter in global terms, but one of the worst per capita because it relies heavily for its electricity on its abundant reserves of coal, which also make it the world's largest exporter of the polluting fuel. As the driest continent after Antarctica, it is also considered one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. link         

Currently, 8% of Australia's electricity comes from renewable sources, including hydroelectric generators built late last century, according to the private Clean Energy Council. But climate change Minister Penny Wong told the Senate that even with one-fifth of Australia's electricity coming from renewable sources by 2020, the nation's carbon gas emissions are projected to be 20% higher than 2000 levels. link

   
Recent news:

Jan. 18 2012: Australians want wind, but politics and media get in the way. A new study found that 83% of Australians supported wind, with only 14% opposed. Interestingly, it found the opposite for coal, which is opposed by 65% of people. Gas was intermediate between the two. link

Climate - a major issue 

The Big Dry.  Australia is the most arid continent on Earth and perpetually struggles with water scarcity problems that will only worsen as the planetary temperature rises. About two-thirds of Australia receives less than 20 inches of rain a year, and only 10% of the continent receives more than 40 inches. Presently in what is known locally as the "Big Dry", Australia is in the grip of its worst drought in a century which has been causing devastation in the country. More than 10,000 Australian farming families have had to leave their land as a result of the country's ongoing drought. link  South Australia, Australia's driest state, has decided to buy in water supplies amid fears it will run out in 2009. In December 2008, the government of South Australia said it had spent tens of millions of dollars to ensure Adelaide (Australia's fifth-largest city) and the state had enough water. South Australia, which already receives the least rainfall of any Australian state, is experiencing the worst drought in a thousand years according to scientific experts. The state's water security minister said she had purchased 61 billion gallons of extra water for 2009. link

January 2011: Extreme weather part of Australia’s future. Global Change Professor Peter Grace from the Queensland University of Technology says Australia will see a higher incidence of extreme weather events like the flooding in Queensland, saying greenhouse gases and global warning are contributing factors, whether people want to accept it or not. He says it will not happen tomorrow, but it will happen in years to come and people will come to know major flooding.  Since late December 2010, more than 70 towns and cities across Queensland have been flooded and more than 200,000 people have been affected. link

August  2010: First Australian territory to take GHG emissions seriously. Australia's smallest self-governing territory, the Australian Capital Territory, announced plans to enact tough energy laws on greenhouse gas emissions. A new bill aims to reduce carbon emissions by 40% of its 1990 levels by 2020 and become carbon neutral by 2060. link

July  2010: Australia's five largest cities to spend $13.2bn on desalination plants. The plants are scheduled to be up and running in two years and will draw up to 30% of their water from the ocean. Critics argue that desalination will add to the very climate change that is aggravating the country's water shortage, and urge better water management and conservation.    link

October  2009: Climate change threatens Australia's coastal lifestyle, report warns. With 80% of Australians living along the coast, a government environmental committee warns that thousands of miles of Australia's coastline are under threat from rising sea levels. A new report into the effects of climate change on Australia's vast coastline is forcing the country to consider the unthinkable: life away from the surf. The report does not say the government should force people to move inland, but proposes that an independent group look into whether the government could - and should - do just that. link

September 2009:  Bottled water only imminent. As the 10-year drought continues and could become permanent, Australia's 5th largest city, Adelaide, is at risk of having to ship water in to its residents. "We are talking about 1.3 million people, who are not far off becoming reliant on bottled water. We are talking a national emergency," said South Australian MP David Winderlich.  link

Desalination plants necessary for Australia. Desalination plants could supply about one-third of the country's water in the next two years, according to estimates. Since the 1970s, southwest Australia has seen declines of up to 20% in its annual rainfall. In the past decade, a drought said to be the worst in  more than 100 years parched much of the country 
and forced state and local agencies to look to alternate sources of water. Through analysis of snowfall in Antarctica, scientists have pegged climate change as a cause of the extreme weather, and predict that water shortages will only intensify in the future.  link
 
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Solar Power versus Coal

Australia, already the world biggest coal exporter (see here), plans to double its coal exports by 2030. According to Greenleft, a radical independent news source, PM Kevin Rudd has presented the illusion of an effective response to climate change, which steers the middle ground between big business and green groups. However in practice, he is just as pro-coal as his predecessor, John Howard. link

Today less than 2% of energy is sourced from solar power, though a 154 MW photovoltaic (PV) solar power station is planned in Victoria State (projected cost $420 million). It is expected to be the biggest and most efficient solar power station in the world and will generate electricity directly from the sun to meet the annual needs of over 45,000 homes with zero greenhouse gas emissions.

But with an increasing population and demand for energy expanding, Australia is very dependent upon coal. As a primary producer, user and the world’s leading exporter, its coal industry is very powerful and has one of the world's biggest public-private R&D efforts to make carbon capture and storage (CCS) a commercial reality. But, in the same way the US flagship CCS project FutureGen folded because of rising costs, some high-profile Australian projects have already been canned. The IEA (International Energy Agency) said several industrial-size pilot CCS projects planned for Europe, North America and Australia are making “slow progress” and if they fail to materialise soon, it will be at least 2030 before CCS can contribute meaningfully to greenhouse-gas reduction.  link

December 2010: In 2010, renewables contributed 8.67% (21,751GW) of Australia's energy supply. Of this, hydropower accounted for 60%, wind for 23%, bioenergy for 12% and solar for 2%. Over 100,000 rooftop solar systems were installed, more than the previous 10 years combined. link  (Australia has a renewable target of 20% by 2020.) 

January 10 2011: A 100MW solar farm will be built in New South Wales,  Australia's most populous state. Covering about 200 hectares and generating enough energy to power 20,000 homes, the farm will avoid the generation of 150,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions each year. link

Wind Power:

August 2011: 600MW wind farm planned for South Australia - link   

August  2010: Southern hemisphere's largest wind farm. A proposed 420MW project using 3MW wind turbines will see the largest wind farm in the southern hemisphere come to fruition in the western district of Victoria . Vestas, the supplier, expects to fully install the project by the first half of 2013.link  

October 2009: 192 MW Wind farm announced. Spanish firm Acciona has completed the commissioning of the Waubra windpark in Victoria, the biggest windpark installed by the company to date in the world with a capacity of 192 megawatts. The facility has represented an investment of around 450 million Australian dollars. The Waubra windpark has 128 AW-1500 wind turbines of 1.5 MW each, and will generate clean energy equivalent to the consumption of 140,000 Australian homes, avoiding the emission to the atmosphere of 635,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases per year. link

Other news:

October 2011: Carbon tax bill passes. Australia's lower house of parliament has narrowly passed (74 votes for and 72 against) a bill for a controversial carbon tax. It is expected to pass the Senate with the help of the Greens next month. The legislation would force about 500 of the biggest polluters to pay for each tonne of carbon dioxide they emit. The tax is central to the government's strategy to combat climate change, but the opposition says it will cause job losses and raise the cost of living.  link  
Carbon dioxide emissions would be taxed at A$23 beginning July 2012 covering the country's biggest 500 companies. In 2015, a market-based trading scheme will be introduced. The aim is to cut 159m tonnes of carbon pollution by 2020, reducing emissions by 5% below 2000 levels. Apart from the European Union, only New Zealand currently imposes a national carbon tax.  link  (60% of Australians say they oppose the tax; after the next election in 2013, a defeat for the government would possibly lead to a repeal of the tax. A vote on the bill will take place October 12 2011.)   

February 2010: Australia group rolls out plan for 100% renewable energy by 2020   A report to be released in the first half of 2010 finds that Australia can use solar and wind power to produce 100% of its electricity in 10 years using technologies that are available now. The study is being compiled by the Victoria–based advocacy group Beyond Zero Emissions and is based on the research of engineers and scientists. "We have concluded that there are no technological impediments to transforming Australia’s stationary energy sector to zero emissions over the next 10 years," said Matthew Wright, executive director of Beyond Zero Emissions. Wright concedes that the plan is ambitious. At the same time, he says, it is "totally feasible," despite the price tag. The cost of quitting carbon entirely is estimated at around $36 billion per year, or up to 3.5 percent of Australia's annual GDP. link

A growing population is another source of future problems for Australia. Currentl;y 21 millon people l;ive in Asutralia, The Optimum Population Trust,  an environmental organization in England whose concern is with the impact of population growth on the environment, determined that at the current standard of living (as determined by the WWF's Living Planet Report 2002), the optimum population for Australia is 10 million and at a lower standard of living it is 21 million – where it stands today. link   Government estimates that the population will increase by 53% by 2050 (to 33 million). 

Feb 2009: Australia faces collapse as climate change kicks in.  link  
Country profile from Renewable Energy World

[I’d like to thank Chris Marden of Victoria State Greens for his assistance.]