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The Coalition's attack on renewables is being undone by the soaring electricity prices in fossil-fuel dependent Queensland. What is it that the general public appears knows about renewables and electricity prices that so many in the conservative side of politics, including federal energy minister Josh Frydenberg, do not?

The social cost of carbon estimates the damage caused by a tonne of carbon dioxide. Coal image from www.shutterstock.com

One of the key measures President Barack Obama used to develop climate policy could be under threat under President Donald Trump. The “social cost of carbon”, a dollar measure of how much damage is inflicted by a tonne of carbon dioxide, underpins many US and other energy-related regulations (and in the UK too, for example).

The latest estimates from William Nordhaus, one of the best-known economists dealing with climate change issues (together with Nicholas Stern), put the social cost of carbon in 2015 at a baseline of US$31.20. This rises over time as the impacts of climate change worsen.

Conversely, the social cost of carbon is also the “government’s best estimate of how much society gains over the long haul” by reducing CO₂ emissions.

Nordhaus uses an economic model known as the Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy (or DICE) model, which he developed in the 1990s. I understand it’s one of the leading models for examining the effects of climate change on the economy. Other researchers have adapted and modified DICE to examine issues associated with the economics of climate change.

Social costs of carbon estimates have been – and remain – helpful for assessing the climate impacts of carbon dioxide emission changes, but perhaps not for the incoming Trump administration in the US.

‘More bad news than good news’

First, though, let’s consider the update to Nordhaus’ DICE model. He finds that the results strengthen earlier ones, which indicate “the high likelihood of rapid warming and major damages if policies continue along the unrestrained path” – his view of current policy settings. He revises upwards his estimate of the social cost of carbon by about 50% on the last modelling.

Further, Nordhaus argues that the 2°C “safe” limit set under the Paris Agreement seems to be “infeasible” even with reasonably accessible technologies. This is because of the inertia of the climate system, rapid projected economic growth in the near term, and revisions to the model.

His view is that a 2.5°C limit is “technically feasible” but that “extreme virtually universal global policy measures” would be required. By implication, such measures could refer to geo-engineering and, in particular, removing CO₂ from the atmosphere.

Nordhaus also notes:

Of the six largest countries or regions, only the EU has implemented national climate policies, and the policies of the EU today are very modest. Moreover, from the perspective of political economy in different countries as of December 2016, the prospects of strong policy measures appear to be dimming rather than brightening.

As a result of the DICE modelling, Nordhaus states that there is more bad news than good news and that the need for effective climate change policies is “more and not less pressing”.

His results relate to a world without climate policies, which, as he says, “is reasonably accurate for virtually the entire globe today. The results show rapidly rising accumulation of CO₂, temperatures changes, and damages.”

An end to the use of the social cost of carbon?

As well as the definition earlier of that cost, it could also be described as a government’s best estimate “of how much society gains over the long haul by cutting each tonne” of CO₂ emissions.

While the Obama administration relied on the DICE model (and others) in arriving at a social cost of carbon – such cost is already important in the formation of 79 federal regulations – it appears that the incoming Trump administration might modify or end this use.

It has been argued – by Harvard’s Cass Sunstein and the University of Chicago’s Michael Greenstone – that such action would defy law, science and economics. It is probably unlikely that use of the social cost of carbon would be done away with completely (lowering the operative number might be more likely), although Greenstone and Sunstein do contemplate it.

Sunstein and Greenstone conclude that, without it, federal regulations would have no quantifiable benefits. And that would have implications for emission reductions and assessing progress on dealing with climate change.

And Nordhaus concludes:

The future is highly uncertain for virtually all variables, particularly economic variables such as future emissions, damages, and the social cost of carbon.

That’s definitely the case for climate change policy and action in the US following the election of Donald Trump. For President Trump’s supporters, it appears that “turning back the clock is the most important thing the president-elect can do to help businesses succeed”.

And the president may well do that. He has argued for an increase in coal use and suggested that, under his administration, the US would withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement.

David Hodgkinson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Not a day goes by that I don’t stand in awe at under-resourced and vulnerable farmers committed to moving mountains despite the odds against them

For those standing on the precipice of life the impacts of climate change are an ever present reality. The rural poor in Southeast Asia are some of the most vulnerable to climate extremes and seasonal vagaries. For these farmers, many who live at subsistence level and survive on less that $1US a day, life is a high-wire act with no safety net.

One stroke of bad luck – a drought, flood or pest outbreak – and they tumble further into hardship. Yet, here in Cambodia I work at an agricultural research centre with the most humbling and inspiring people. Not a day goes by that I don’t stand in awe at an under-resourced team committed to moving mountains despite the odds lined up against them.

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The crack in Antarctica's Larsen C Ice Shelf that looks set to spawn a giant iceberg has spread a further 10km.

Connor speaks to Guardian environment reporter Michael Slezak about the successes and failures of the climate movement, the future of the Paris agreement during a Trump presidency and how Australia can be pushed to take climate change seriously. Connor cautions the environment movement not to walk away from engaging in domestic politics and says informed, engaged citizens can exert a positive influence on the debate

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Dr Anne Hoggett speaks with Guardian Australia environment reporter Michael Slezak about the extensive damage the mass coral bleaching event has wrought on the Great Barrier Reef, as viewed from the Lizard Island Research Station, and says the scale of destruction is by far the ‘worst insult the reef has had’

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David Ritter speaks with Guardian environment reporter Michael Slezak about how the Donald Trump presidency election will impact the future of environment and climate change campaigning in Australia and around the region

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Publicly funded competition had already cost £100m when it was cancelled by the Treasury amid concerns over cost to consumers

A publicly funded scheme to reduce carbon emissions collapsed, after running up costs of £100m, following a disagreement between government departments, Whitehall’s spending watchdog has concluded.

Ministers launched a competition for developing technology to capture carbon emissions before Treasury officials cancelled the project, a report by the National Audit Office has found.

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Old energy rules were all about locking in cheap base-load power, and supplementing it with more expensive capacity, generally gas, to meet the peaks. The new way is about putting in super-cheap, “base-cost” renewable power at the heart of the world’s grids.

Each day glaciologist Jason Roberts flies planes over Antarctica to map the terrain under the ice, trying to discover how climate change will affect sea level rise. Roberts, who works for the Australian Antarctic Division, says the point of his work is to look for the ‘canary in the coalmine’, identifying hotspots where warm water is interacting with the east Antarctic ice shelf, making it vulnerable to changing climate conditions that could have drastic implications

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I’ve maintained a wall between my job and my emotional response to it, but this month I’ve felt dread rising about looming disaster, and it’s an awakening

Until recently, like a sociopath might have little feelings when witnessing violence, I’ve managed to have relatively mild emotional responses to climate change.

For five years I’ve been covering climate change – the science that underpins it, the things that are driving it, the devastation it is wreaking, and the desperate measures we need to urgently put in place to mitigate it. (Not to mention the reporting I’ve done on the pathetic politics surrounding it.)

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Spot electricity prices have gone through the stratosphere this summer, particularly in Queensland where average prices have been more than double of renewable energy leader South Australia.

It feels like every other day there’s at least one new article touting blockchain as “the next big thing in energy.” But the blockchain is a bit of an esoteric concept to most of us. So, what is it?

APX and CBL Markets plan to explore additional environmental market registry connections in 2017.

Kutubdia, an island of fishing villages and salt farms, has halved in size in 20 years, with family homes destroyed by ever-encroaching tides. In nearby Cox’s Bazar, more frequent storms have had a severe impact on fishermen’s catches

All photographs by Noor Alam/Majority World

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Only 17.7% of respondents in polling commissioned by GetUp believe renewable energy is the primary culprit

Australian voters have not been swayed by a campaign attempting to blame rising power prices on renewable energy, according to new polling commissioned by GetUp.

Conservative media, as well as the federal government, have been attacking renewable energy, blaming it for rising power bills as well as blackouts that were caused by extreme weather.

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The Independent Review into the Future Security of the National Electricity Market, chaired by Australia’s Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel, is commencing a wide-ranging open public consultation process.

A 47-year-old man was taken after trying to wade across the East Alligator river, Northern Territory police say

A man has been killed by a crocodile at Cahill’s Crossing in Kakadu national park.

Northern Territory police said the 47-year-old man was attempting to wade across the East Alligator river with two women about 4pm on Thursday when he was taken by a 3.5-metre saltwater crocodile. The two women, who made it across the river, did not witness the attack but raised the alarm when they saw he was gone.

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You rather spoiled your commendable editorial (19 January) on making America great again by going green, when you dismissed the idea of protectionist carbon tariffs on those US exports made artificially cheap by being produced using subsidised fossil fuels. This could be an important transitional step to shifting a world economy already falling out of love with globalisation towards one shaped by green “progressive protectionism”. At its heart would be an emphasis on protecting and rebuilding sustainable local economies. This would offer a far more secure future for the majority than the socially and environmentally destructive form of global economic warfare inherent in international competitiveness and export-led growth.

Prioritising the domestic would allow massive funding for a long-term, climate-healing “jobs in every community” approach of making all buildings and transport systems energy efficient and powered by decentralised renewables. It would also see off rightwing populists by providing long-term employment for those parts of the “left behind” that can’t be reached by any other form of economic activity. The threat of carbon tariffs on relevant US exports could well be a useful tool towards pushing Trump to shift his promised increase in infrastructure investment into one that would be a nationwide, decentralised job generator that also helped tackle climate change.
Colin Hines
(Author, Progressive Protectionism) London

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Can coal be part of Australia's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Coal image from www.shutterstock.com

Replacing old coal power stations with new “ultra-supercritical” stations could help meet Australia’s greenhouse gas targets, according to research commissioned by Resources Minister Matt Canavan. Other analysts have reacted with scepticism.

Echoing recent prime ministers, Canavan retorted that these criticisms were part of an “ideological” attack on coal:

Coal has an important role to play as Australia and the rest of the world reduce carbon dioxide emissions… Australia has the resources to be a low-cost and efficient energy superpower. Access to affordable and reliable power underpins our economy and is the key to long-term jobs in the manufacturing sector.

This is not the first time Canavan has put his weight behind increasing Australia’s coal production to “help the environment”.

But technological promises and government support for coal’s bright future stretch back almost 40 years, long before the election of Tony “coal is good for humanity” Abbott, and have been entirely bipartisan, as have claims that Australian coal is especially clean.

Early days

The NSW was funding “supercoal” research for air-pollution reasons from the early 1980s. Climate change entered the fray in 1988, when delegates at the Australian Coal Association conference were told:

Coal’s contribution to the greenhouse effect is small… Means of controlling C0₂ emissions from coal-fired plant are considered best achieved by improved overall operating efficiency using new technology, rather than by endeavouring to capture C0₂ emissions.

The early Labor advocate of climate action, Graham Richardson, told a reporter in July 1989:

Fortunately we use mostly – but not entirely – the cleanest coal in the world. But that doesn’t mean we can’t improve the technology and so limit how much carbon dioxide is blown up the spout.

(Times change; Richardson recently called on Opposition Leader Bill Shorten to recant on his “silly” green goals.)

The same year the visiting president of the US National Coal Association told a government committee that, while much of the low-emissions technology was still in the laboratory stage, he was confident it could be applied soon to plants using coal to produce energy.

In 1991 Australian government funds supported an international conference on clean coal in Sydney.

After Australia’s first climate policy, the National Greenhouse Response Strategy, was agreed in December 1992, it quickly became clear that the Commonwealth was not going to stand in the way of state-level support for new coal-power stations.

On March 21 1994, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change became international law. Coincidentally, Singleton Council in New South Wales approved a new coal-fired power station. Greenpeace launched a legal challenge, but this failed in November 1994. The State Electricity Commission of Victoria’s greenhouse reduction plans died with privatisation.

Peak (clean) coal

It is debatable, but Labor perhaps had more concern – for both climate change and coalminers’ jobs – than the incoming Howard government. The Prime Minister’s Science Engineering and Innovation Council in 1999 suggested Australia ratify the Kyoto Protocol and see it as an opportunity and spur to new technologies.

This fell on John Howard’s deaf ears, but a December 2002 report, chaired by Rio Tinto’s chief technologist and government chief scientist Robin Batterham, was taken up, and the enthusiasm for carbon capture and storage (CCS) was born. A COAL21 plan followed in 2004, and the Australian Coal Association Low Emissions Technologies group was formed.

Howard’s enthusiasm for coal over renewables was such that he even called a “secret” meeting of fossil fuel producers to advise on lower emissions technologies.

The 2004 Energy White Paper continued the trend in support for CCS over renewables.

Labor’s innovation in 2007 was to say yes to both. As opposition leader, Kevin Rudd announced he would bring in a National Clean Coal Centre.

Had the Coalition won the 2007 election, it would have removed the Renewable Energy Target and replaced it with a scheme that would have allowed coal-with-CCS to be considered “low carbon”.

In 2008 the coal association spruiked “NewGenCoal” in television adverts.

It all started to go wrong in 2009, shortly after the launch of the expensive and controversial Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, Rudd’s brainchild.

Former Liberal minister Ian MacFarlane, who had previously urged the coal industry to sell its message, told ABC’s Four Corners:

The reality is, you are not going to see another coal-fired power station built in Australia. That’s, that’s a simple fact. You can talk about all the stuff you like about carbon capture storage, that concept will not materialise for 20 years, and probably never.

Geology intervened as the Queensland ZeroGen project ended in late 2010, when the state government decided to stop throwing taxpayers’ money at it.

And in 2013 it emerged that the coal association’s funding for low-emissions technologies had been broadened to include “promoting the use of coal”.

While there is now a functioning CCS plant in Canada, in Australia CCS limps on and the sums involved now are pitifully small.

Dark days ahead

Three concepts from the study of technological innovation may help us understand what is going on.

The first is the “hype cycle” – the observation that initial unrealistic enthusiasm for a shiny new technology goes up like a rocket and down like a stick, followed by a more gradual, tempered enthusiasm over time (for a recent appraisal see here).

The second is the sailing ship effect. When challenged by steamships, the incumbent technology added more sails, automated sailors and so on, trying to keep up. But ultimately it was in vain – a new technology won out.

Thirdly, supporters of incumbent technologies highlight teething problems in the challenger technologies, in what academics call “discursive battles”.

It’s fair to guess three things. Promises of clean coal, high-efficiency, low-emissions (HELE) coal power and bio-energy carbon capture and storage(BECCS) will escalate, but perhaps learning from the public mockery of the last two efforts – Australians for Coal and Little Black Rock.

Protests, by people who agree with James Hansen’s 2009 assessment that coal-fired power stations are death factories, will continue. Legal challenges will escalate.

Governments – state and federal – will keep wrestling with the greased pig that is the “energy trilemma”. 2017 will be bloody, and noisy.

Marc Hudson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.