The Conversation

Hello humans. US Department of Energy/Wikimedia Commons

It’s literally epoch-defining news. A group of experts tasked with considering the question of whether we have officially entered the Anthropocene – the geological age characterised by humans' influence on the planet – has delivered its answer: yes.

The British-led Working Group on the Anthropocene (WGA) told a geology conference in Cape Town that, in its considered opinion, the Anthropocene epoch began in 1950 – the start of the era of nuclear bomb tests, disposable plastics and the human population boom.

The Anthropocene has fast become an academic buzzword and has achieved a degree of public visibility in recent years. But the more the term is used, the more confusion reigns, at least for those not versed in the niceties of the underpinning science.

Roughly translated, the Anthropocene means the “age of humans”. Geologists examine layers of rock called “strata”, which tell a story of changes to the functioning of Earth’s surface and near-surface processes, be these oceanic, biological, terrestrial, riverine, atmospheric, tectonic or chemical.

When geologists identify boundaries between layers that appear to be global, those boundaries become candidates for formal recognition by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). The commission produces the International Chronostratigraphic Chart, which delimits verified changes during the planet’s 4.5 billion-year evolution.

Earth’s history, spiralling towards the present. USGS/Wikimedia Commons

The chart features a hierarchy of terms like “system” and “stage”; generally, the suffix “-cene” refers to a geologically brief stretch of time and sits at the bottom of the hierarchy. We have spent the past 11,500 years or so living in the so-called Holocene epoch, the interglacial period during which Homo sapiens has flourished.

If the Holocene has now truly given way to the Anthropocene, it’s because a single species – us – has significantly altered the character of the entire hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, lithosphere and atmosphere.

The end of an era?

Making this call is not straightforward, because the Anthropocene proposition is being investigated in different areas of science, using different methods and criteria for assessing the evidence. Despite its geological ring, the term Anthropocene was coined not by a geologist, but by the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen in 2000.

He and his colleagues in the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program have amassed considerable evidence about changes to everything from nutrient cycles to ocean acidity to levels of biodiversity across the planet.

Comparing these changes to those occurring during the Holocene, they concluded that we humans have made an indelible mark on our one and only home. We have altered the Earth system qualitatively, in ways that call into question our very survival over the coming few centuries.

Crutzen’s group talks of the post-1950 period as the “Great Acceleration”, when a range of factors – from human population numbers, to disposable plastics, to nitrogen fertiliser – began to increase exponentially. But their benchmark for identifying this as a significant change has nothing to do with geological stratigraphy. Instead, they ask whether the present period is qualitatively different to the situation during the Holocene.

Rocking out

Meanwhile, a small group of geologists has been investigating the stratigraphic evidence for the Anthropocene. A few years ago a subcommission of the ICS set up the Anthropocene working group, which has now suggested that human activity has left an indelible mark on the stratigraphic record.

The major problem with this approach is that any signal is not yet captured in rock. Humans have not been around long enough for any planet-wide impacts to be evident in Earth’s geology itself. This means that any evidence for a Holocene-Anthropocene boundary would necessarily be found in less permanent media like ice sheets, soil layers or ocean sediments.

The ICS has always considered evidence for boundaries that pertain to the past, usually the deep past. The WGA is thus working against convention by looking for present-day stratigraphic markers that might demonstrate humans’ planetary impact. Only in thousands of years' time might future geologists (if there are any) confirm that these markers are geologically significant.

In the meantime, the group must be content to identify specific calendar years when significant human impacts have been evident. For example, one is 1945, when the Trinity atomic device was detonated in New Mexico. This and subsequent bomb tests have left global markers of radioactivity that ought still to be evident in 10,000 years.

Alternatively, geographers Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin have suggested that 1610 might be a better candidate for a crucial human-induced step change. That was the year when atmospheric carbon dioxide dipped markedly, suggesting a human fingerprint linked to the New World colonists' impact on indigenous American agriculture, although this idea is contested.

Decision time

The fact that the WGA has picked a more recent date, 1950, suggests that it agrees with the idea of defining the Great Acceleration of the latter half of the 20th century as the moment we stepped into the Anthropocene.

It’s not a decision that is taken lightly. The ICS is extremely scrupulous about amending the International Chronostratigraphic Chart. The WGA’s suggestion will face a rigorous evaluation before it can be scientifically accepted by the commission. It may be many years before it is formally ratified.

Elsewhere, the term is fast becoming a widely used description of how people now relate to our planet, rather like the Iron Age or the Renaissance. These words describe real changes in history and enjoy widespread use in academia and beyond, without the need for rigorously defined “boundary markers” to delimit them from prior periods.

Does any of this really matter? Should we care that the jury is still out in geology, while other scientists feel confident that humans are altering the entire Earth system?

Writing on The Conversation, geologist James Scourse suggests not. He feels that the geological debate is “manufactured” and that humans' impact on Earth is sufficiently well recognised that we have no need of a new term to describe it.

Clearly, many scientists beg to differ. A key reason, arguably, is the failure of virtually every society on the planet to acknowledge the sheer magnitude of the human impact on Earth. Only last year did we finally negotiate a truly global treaty to confront climate change.

In this light, the Anthropocene allows scientists to assemble a set of large-scale human impacts under one graphic conceptual banner. Its scientific status therefore matters a great deal if people worldwide are at long last to wake up to the environmental effects of their collective actions.

Gaining traction

But the scientific credibility of the Anthropocene proposition is likely to be called into question the more that scientists use the term informally or otherwise. Here the recent history of climate science in the public domain is instructive.

Even more than the concept of global warming, the Anthropocene is provocative because it implies that our current way of life, especially in wealthy parts of the world, is utterly unsustainable. Large companies who make profits from environmental despoliation – oil multinationals, chemical companies, car makers and countless others – have much to lose if the concept becomes linked with political agendas devoted to things like degrowth and decarbonisation. When one considers the organised attacks on climate science in the United States and elsewhere, it seems likely that Anthropocene science will be challenged on ostensibly scientific grounds by non-scientists who dislike its implications.

Sadly, such attacks are likely to succeed. In geology, the AWG’s unconventional proclamation potentially leaves any ICS definition open to challenge. If accepted, it also means that all indicators of the Holocene would now have to be referred to as things of the past, despite evidence that the transition to a human-shaped world is not quite complete in some places.

Some climate contrarians still refuse to accept that researchers can truly distinguish a human signature in the climate. Similarly, scientists who address themselves to the Anthropocene will doubtless face questions about how much these changes to the planet are really beyond the range of natural variability.

If “Anthropocene sceptics” gain the same momentum as climate deniers have enjoyed, they will sow seeds of confusion into what ought to be a mature public debate about how humans can transform their relationship with the Earth. But we can resist this confusion by recognising that we don’t need the ICS’s imprimatur to appreciate that we are indeed waving goodbye to Earth as we have known it throughout human civilisation.

We can also recognise that Earth system science is not as precise as nuclear physics or geometry. This lack of precision does not mean that the Anthropocene is pure scientific speculation. It means that science knows enough to sound the alarm, without knowing all the details about the unfolding emergency.

The Anthropocene deserves to become part of our lexicon – a way we understand who we are, what we’re doing and what our responsibilities are as a species – so long as we remember that not all humans are equal contributors to our planetary maladies, with many being victims.

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

This week’s first sitting of the 45th Parliament of Australia is considering a A$6.5 billion “omnibus savings bill”, including a proposed cut of A$1.3 billion to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). If adopted, it would effectively mean the end of ARENA and would devastate clean energy research in Australia.

From driving innovation and economic growth, to creating jobs, to addressing climate change and ensuring a reliable and affordable energy system for the future, ARENA plays a critical role. Most perversely, by reducing Australia’s role in the booming global clean energy industry, closing ARENA would likely reduce Australia’s capacity to balance its budget in years to come.

What is ARENA?

ARENA, an independent Commonwealth agency, has driven most of Australia’s innovative renewable energy projects in recent years. This includes Australia’s world-leading solar photovaltaics research centre at UNSW, the Carnegie wave energy pilot in Perth, AGL’s virtual power station trial and UTS’s own research into local electricity trading and network opportunity mapping.

ARENA has funded 60 completed projects and is managing a further 200. Many more are in the pipeline. It has also leveraged A$1.30 in private-sector R&D funding for every dollar of government funding – a fact that is often overlooked amid talk of budget savings.

Without ARENA’s grants and leveraged co-funding, very few of these projects would have happened. While its sister organisation, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, plays an important role in helping to finance established renewable projects and technologies, only ARENA can provide the research grant co-funding to develop these technologies in the first place.

ARENA was formed in 2012 as part of the Gillard government’s Clean Energy Future package. It drew together a range of clean energy programs and funds such as the Solar Flagships, the Australian Solar Institute and some, such as the Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund, which the Howard government established. ARENA was given the twin goals of:

1. Improving the competitiveness of renewable energy technologies

2. Increasing the supply of renewable energy in Australia.

ARENA was one of five key elements of the Clean Energy Future package slated for abolition by the Abbott government. While the carbon price and Climate Commission were cut, ARENA, the CEFC and the Climate Change Authority were saved by opposition and crossbench support, albeit with a A$435 million cut to ARENA’s original budget.

Now, three years on, the Turnbull government has chosen to keep the CEFC but its plan to slash ARENA’s budget remains. The Labor opposition has yet to announce its position on the proposed cut. Meanwhile, clean energy researchers across Australia are calling on all parties to support the agency.

ARENA’s innovation role

The process of energy technology innovation can be thought of as having a series of phases, which have different funding needs (see below).

The first phase is typically fundamental research and development. Two examples are the world-leading research programs at UNSW Australia and ANU, which have developed the world’s most efficient solar photovoltaic and solar thermal technologies. Both are ARENA-funded; neither could have been effectively funded by loans.

Technologies then need to be piloted in the real world – as in the case of the Carnegie Wave Energy project in Perth. This stage is often still too risky for most commercial lenders, so some public grant funding remains critical.

Next comes the large-scale demonstration phase – bringing technologies down the cost curve by developing viable business models and supply chains, with the aim of making them cost-competitive. Here, a mix of loan and grant funding is needed.

Australia’s large-scale solar industry is an example of a sector in this stage of development. In 2015, ARENA realised that despite having 1.5 million solar roofs and plenty of sunshine, Australia had a dearth of large-scale solar projects (only four operating and four in development). As such, it has committed A$100 million to help build more solar farms.

Finally, there are commercial renewable technologies that are already cost-competitive with other energy sources. Wind energy is the prime example of this, which is precisely why ARENA has not funded wind projects.

Our changing energy system

Innovation is not purely about technology development; it is also about addressing complex challenges such as how to manage the changing nature of our energy system. On a cents per kilowatt-hour basis, wind energy is now cheaper than new-build coal and solar power is cheaper than grid electricity. These two trends will continue, but our energy market is struggling to adapt to the new technology mix.

ARENA has a crucial role to play here. For example, it has funded the Institute of Sustainable Futures (ISF) at UTS to develop a set of Network Opportunity Maps. These show locations in the grid where demand management and decentralised generation (solar, storage etc) can help avoid costly grid upgrades.

ARENA has also funded ISF’s research into local energy trading (also known as peer-to-peer energy or virtual net metering). This is aimed at avoiding the predicted “energy death spiral”, by encouraging consumers and power companies to compromise in making the most of existing infrastructure, reducing consumers' bills and supporting local power generation.

Meeting our climate targets

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, ARENA is helping to meet Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions target, which calls for a 26-28% cut relative to 2005 levels by 2030.

The electricity sector is Australia’s largest carbon emissions source. ARENA has a vital role in delivering cost-effective emissions reductions. There are two main mechanisms to decarbonise the sector: increasing energy productivity and efficiency, and switching from fossil fuels to renewables. As outlined above, ARENA is a key player in the latter process and is primed to play a leading role in the former.

It would be a tragic error to cut funding to an agency that is making such an important and successful contribution to fulfilling Australia’s obligations under the Paris climate agreement, as well as driving innovation and energy affordability. No other agency combines all of these facets.

More renewable policy instability?

In a 2010 speech on low-carbon energy, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull acknowledged the role of government in supporting clean energy innovation, saying:

Government support for innovation and investment in clean stationary energy is important, particularly at the early stages.

The need for this support is not going to go away. If ARENA and its research grant funding is abolished, a similar organisation will doubtless soon need to be re-established. In the meantime, millions of dollars in opportunities would have been wasted and irreplaceable industry and research expertise lost.

After years of policy instability around renewable energy, which has held back the domestic development of one of the world’s fastest-growing industries, do we really want to embrace even more uncertainty?

To paraphrase former Harvard University president Derek Bok, if you think research is expensive, try ignorance.

Nicky Ison is a Senior Research Consultant at the Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF) at the University of Technology Sydney and a Founding Director of Community Power Agency. ISF undertakes paid sustainability research for a wide range of government, corporate and NGO clients. ISF has received several grants from ARENA which have helped to co-fund projects in clean energy research. Without ARENA co-funding, these projects would have been unlikely to proceed. For more information about these projects, please see: www.isf.uts.edu.au. Community Power Agency is a not-for-profit organisation working to grow a vibrant community energy sector. Community Power Agency is in regular contact with ARENA about how to best support the emerging Australian community energy sector.

Chris Dunstan is a Research Director at the Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF) at the University of Technology Sydney. ISF undertakes paid sustainability research for a wide range of government, corporate and NGO clients. ISF has received several grants from ARENA which have helped to co-fund projects in clean energy research. Without ARENA co-funding, these projects would have been unlikely to proceed. For more information about these projects, please see: www.isf.uts.edu.au

Storm damage and a high tide in Adelaide. Witness King Tides/Flickr

The wild storms that lashed eastern Australia earlier this year damaged property and eroded beaches, causing millions of dollars' worth of damage. As sea levels rise, the impact of storms will threaten more and more homes, businesses and services along the coastline.

CSIRO projections suggest that seas may rise by as much 82cm by the end of the century. When added to high tides, and with the influence of winds and associated storms, this can mean inundation by waters as high as a couple of metres.

As a community, we have to start deciding what must be protected, and how and when; where we will let nature take its course; how and if we need to modify the way we live and work near the coast; and so on. Many of these decisions fall largely to local governments.

We have launched a website to help local councils and Australians prepare for a climate change future. CoastAdapt lets you find maps of your local area under future sea-level scenarios, read case studies, and make adaptation plans.

How will sea-level rise affect you?

Using sea-level rise modelling from John Church and his team at CSIRO, CoastAdapt provides sea-level projections for four greenhouse gas scenarios, for individual local government areas. This also provides a set of inundation maps for the selected local government area.

Sydney’s possible sea level in 2100 under a worst-case scenario. Inundated areas shown in pale blue. NCCARF

The inundation maps (developed by the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information) show the average projected sea-level rise for a particular climate change scenario, combined with the highest tide. The method provides an approximation of where flooding may occur.

Because water is simply filled onto the map according to elevation, it doesn’t account for things like estuary shapes and water movement, the behaviour of waves and so on.

Brisbane’s possible sea level in 2100 under a worst-case scenario. Inundated areas shown in pale blue. NCCARF

But both the maps and the sea-level projections are a useful way to start thinking about where risks may lie in any given local government area.

CoastAdapt also looks at what we know about coastal processes in the present day. Understanding these characteristics helps us understand where and why the coast is vulnerable to inundation and erosion.

For instance, sandy coasts are much more vulnerable to erosion than rocky coasts. The information will help decision-makers understand the behaviour of their coasts and their susceptibility to erosion under sea-level rise.

Darwin’s possible sea level in 2100 under a worst-case scenario. Inundated areas shown in pale blue. NCCARF Local councils already adapting

Adaptation is already happening on the ground around Australian local councils. We have highlighted several of these on CoastAdapt.

In the small seaside town of Port Fairy in southeast Victoria, for example, an active community group is monitoring the accelerated erosion of dunes on one of their beaches. The council and community have worked together to prioritise protecting dune areas with decommissioned landfill to prevent this rubbish tip being exposed to the beach.

Other councils have already undertaken the process of assessing their risks and drafting adaptation plans.

Low-lying areas in the City of Lake Macquarie already experience occasional flooding from high seas. This is expected to become more common and more severe.

Lake Macquarie Council has successfully worked with the local community to come up with 39 possible management actions, which the community then assessed against social, economic and environmental criteria. The area now has a strategy for dealing with current flooding and for gradually building protection for future sea-level rise.

This approach has engaged community members and given them the opportunity to help decide the future of their community.

Melbourne’s possible sea level in 2100 under a worst-case scenario. Inundated areas shown in pale blue. NCCARF Getting prepared

What stumps councils and other coastal decision-makers is the scale and complexity of the problem. Each decision-maker needs to have some sense of the risk of future climate change to their interests, then develop plans that will help them to cope or adapt to these risks. Planners and adaptors must navigate uncertainty in where, when and how much change they must consider, and how these changes interact with other issues that must be managed.

To better understand the risk, decision-makers need access to timely, authoritative advice presented in ways and levels that are useful for their needs. This is particularly true for an issue such as climate science, which is technically complex.

Climate projections, particularly at the local level, come with a level of certainty and probability. The further we look into the future, the more extraneous factors are unknown – for example, will global policy succeed in bringing down greenhouse emissions? Or will these keep increasing, which will necessitate planning for worst-case scenarios?

Add to this the questions around legal risk, financing adaptation measures, accommodating community views and so on, and the task is daunting.

That’s the thinking behind CoastAdapt – the first national attempt to create a platform that brings together a range of data, tools and research that have been developing and growing over the last decade. As well as maps and case studies, we’ve also built an adaptation planning framework (Coastal Climate Adaptation Decision Support) and set up an online forum for people to ask questions, exchange ideas and even pose questions to our panel of experts.

The author would like to acknowledge the work of staff of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility. CoastAdapt is in beta version and is seeking feedback. The final version will be released in early 2017.

Sarah Boulter works for NCCARF. NCCARF receives funding from the Department of Environment and Energy.

In calling for an end to fossil fuel subsidies, critics of Australia’s fuel tax credits system have highlighted its cost to Australian taxpayers and the budget bottom line.

The Greens have said that ending fossil fuel subsidies to big mining companies would save Australian taxpayers A$21 billion over the forward estimates (the next four years). On the ABC’s Q&A program, Greens deputy leader Larissa Waters said her party advocated:

getting rid of the A$24 billion over the forward estimates – that’s four years – in free money that goes to the fossil fuel sector in things like cheap diesel and accelerated depreciation.

These numbers are drawn from policy costings produced by the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) ahead of the July federal election.

The PBO’s 2016 post-election report, which details the budget impacts of various election commitments, notes that:

Parliamentary Budget Office, 2016 post-election report

The Greens propose abolishing fuel tax credits for all industries except agricultural businesses, ending accelerated asset depreciation for aircraft, the oil and gas industry and vehicles (except for those used for agricultural purposes), and a range of other measures.

Opinions differ on whether fuel tax credits constitute a “subsidy” or not.

Most fuel users have to pay a fuel excise of 39.5 cents per litre. But businesses can claim exemption from this obligation in certain circumstances. This exemption takes the form of a credit for the fuel tax (excise or customs duty) that’s included in the price of fuel.

These tax breaks include fuel excise exemptions for off-road use of fuel by the mining industry and primary producers. There’s also a partial rebate for large trucks (over 4.5 tonnes), the owners of which pay a road usage charge rather than the excise.

The PBO has estimated that the Australian Greens' proposal of abolishing the fuel tax credit for all industries except agricultural businesses would increase the budget balance by about A$4.5 billion a year.

Unpacking the assumptions

However, it’s worth detailing the assumptions that underpin these calculations.

First, the PBO says its costing assumes that business fuel usage does not change as a result of the policy. As the goal of a higher tax is to reduce fuel use and pollution, the PBO’s reported estimate will therefore be an overestimate of the revenue gain.

Also, uncertainty about the future means that all such revenue estimates are far from guaranteed. The PBO notes that:

Parliamentary Budget Office

Many consider the 39.5 cents a litre fuel excise a crude form of user-pays fee to cover the cost of government expenditures on public roads. The revenue raised by fuel excise of A$17.8 billion and state taxes on motor vehicles of A$9.5 billion for 2014-15 more than cover federal, state and local government spending on road construction, maintenance and other related costs.

This is the logical argument put forward by representatives of the mining industry for exemption from the fuel excise. They note that the mining industry builds and maintains its own roads. A similar argument applies for fuel used by primary industry for off-road purposes.

Others argue that fuel taxes help encourage people to use less of it, and thereby reduce pollution. However, a 39.5 cents per litre tax represents a very large tax per tonne of CO2 equivalent. If the fuel excise was regarded just as a tax on greenhouse gas emissions, the 39.5 cents per litre represents a tax of more than A$150 per tonne of greenhouse gas from the combustion of fuel – several times higher than the Gillard government’s A$24 per tonne carbon price, and the even lower European Union pollution permit price. It is stretching credibility to say the fuel excise is just a tax on pollution.

I’d argue in favour of the position taken in the 2010 Henry tax review, which recommended a roughly revenue-neutral reform package, replacing the current fuel excise and state motor vehicle taxes with a road user charge, a congestion tax and a pollution tax.

With this reform, the mining and agricultural industries would be exempt from the tax components on fuel for road funding and for congestion, but would pay a component for the external costs associated with greenhouse gas emissions.

John Freebairn 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.

Millions of tonnes of food go into landfill each year. Food waste image from www.shutterstock.com

Around 4 million tonnes of food reaches landfill in Australia each year. This forms part of Australia’s organic waste, the country’s largest unrecovered stream of waste that goes into landfill.

There’s a missed opportunity here to recover this waste and do something useful with it. In particular, we can use it for energy such as biofuel. This forms part of a broader concept known as the “circular economy”.

In the absence of federal initiatives, state and local governments and communities are developing projects to foster a circular economy that can absorb this and other waste. This would then provide usable products to assist businesses and households and improve sustainability.

Simply disposing of waste in landfill affects households, businesses and governments. It requires time, energy and space, and poses environmental risks. When waste is repurposed for energy and fertiliser, it can give businesses a competitive edge, foster sustainable growth and create jobs.

The circular economy

A circular economy aims to bundle policy and business strategies into a system that works for everyone.

On a wider scale, circular economies underpin food security by reducing and reusing the amount of food waste, utilising byproducts and food waste and recycling nutrients as fertiliser.

While one way of repurposing food waste is to turn it into biofuel, a circular economy does not require all waste to be repurposed. Unwanted food can be given to the needy, or go into further processing. The idea is we extract every joule possible from organic matter, which may require multiple uses.

Some overseas governments have policies that compel businesses to keep their waste out of landfill. These countries are well on the way to developing circular economies. The star performers include Denmark, Japan, the Netherlands, Scotland and Sweden.

In Australia, the federal government has offered no such incentives. Instead, communities are taking it upon themselves to repurpose waste. State and local governments are introducing policies that offer incentives for recycling, or penalties for producing landfill.

There is a growing interest in co-digestion to boost biogas production, particularly for small wastewater facilities.

Co-digestion is the addition of other waste streams such as:

• municipal wastewater/sludge

• food and drink manufacturer process waste (including waste from the beverage, meat processing, dairy, brewing and wine industries)

• paper/pulp waste

• greasy waste/fats, oils and greases (from grease trap pump-outs)

• residential food and green waste (via trucked collection)

• residential/commercial food waste (organics rubbish bins)

• food waste (from supermarkets or supermarket chains).

So let’s have a look at recent advances around the country.

South Australia

Commissioned in 2013, South Australia Water’s Glenelg wastewater treatment is Australia’s first co-digestion facility. The addition of food byproducts such as milk, cheese, beer, wine and soft drink has increased power generation from 55% to 75% of the plant’s power requirement.

The South Australian government is developing a bioenergy roadmap. The aim is to link biomass suppliers in regions to users of energy and help to support local businesses to add value.

Victoria

Yarra Valley Water’s waste-to-energy facility is a new co-digestion development at Aurora Sewage Treatment Plant, north of Melbourne. It will process 100 cubic metres of waste each day. The waste is delivered by trucks from local commercial waste producers, such as markets and food manufacturing.

Through Sustainability Victoria, the state government is offering funding through the Advanced Organics Processing Technology Grants program, which supports the installation of small-scale onsite or precinct-scale anaerobic digestion technology for processing organic waste.

New South Wales

Australia’s best example of a community-driven circular economy is being developed in Cowra on the Lachlan River, part of the Murray-Darling catchment. This proposal shows the ability of state and local government, industry and farms to pool waste created in and around a country town to produce energy and fertiliser, which can be used within that same geographic circle.

The project will use two processes: anaerobic digestion and thermal recovery through either pyrolysis or torrefication (the breakdown of organic material at high temperature).

At full capacity, the Cowra biomass project will produce 60% of the town’s energy needs.

CLEAN Cowra: Creating a circular economy through aggregation of organic waste streams. MP= Meat processing; FP= Food processing; MRF= Materials recovery facility; WWTP= Waste water treatment plant; TR= Thermal recovery; AD= Anaerobic digestion; CHP= Combined heat and power. CLEAN Cowra

NSW’s council amalgamation process is also creating opportunities to link more waste producers and energy users through renewables that turn food, household and agricultural waste into power.

The NSW government’s Growing Community Energy grants have already helped the Cowra project.

The future?

The drive for communities and businesses to reap the rewards of extracting value from food waste is a result of an emerging trend in infrastructure planning, where the once parallel fields of water management, waste management and energy are teaming up.

It appears CLEAN Cowra and its regional and state equivalents are influencing the direction of federal government policy with relevant priority areas for ARENA being identified.

Whatever the driver, anything that can keep organic waste out of landfill has to be a good thing.

This topic will be discussed at this week’s Crawford Fund Conference.

Bernadette McCabe receives funding from Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) and Australian Meat Processor Corporation (AMPC). She is a member of Bioenergy Australia and is National Team Leader for the International Energy Agency's (IEA) Bioenergy Task 37: Energy from Biogas.

Tick paralysis is one of the most common preventable causes of death in dogs and cats along the east coast of Australia.

Some 10,000 dogs are affected each year, 5% of them fatally. That means 500 dogs will die from ticks each year, with the remainder undergoing discomfort and suffering.

What’s more, there is a great cost to owners. Bills for treatment range from A$5,000 to A$10,000 in the most severely affected patients.

In Sydney, the “tick season” begins in September (although there are no hard and fast rules). Caught early, ticks are easy and cheap to treat.

But if undetected, tick attachment can make for an expensive and sometimes tragic trip to the vet. So what’s the best way to keep your pet safe as the weather warms up?

How do ticks paralyse and kill?

Tick paralysis results from a neurotoxin secreted in the saliva of the paralysis tick, Ixodes holocyclus, as it sucks the blood of mammalian hosts. As the tick feeds, it secretes holocyclotoxin (tick toxin) into the bloodstream.

This parasite normally lives on native Australian marsupials such as bandicoots, macropods and possums, which have developed some immunity to tick toxin.

Cats, dogs and children are generally not so lucky. After three to four days there is often sufficient intoxication (or envenomation) for the development of muscle weakness and eventually paralysis.

The tick toxin prevents the release of packets of acetylcholine neurotransmitter from the motor nerve terminals, which communicate with muscles. Typically, dogs developing tick paralysis first get a change in their bark, which observant owners pick up on. They may also regurgitate food due to weakness of muscles in the throat and oesophagus.

As the concentration of toxin in the blood rises, muscles get progressively weaker, resulting first in a wobbly hind-limb gait, then hind-limb paralysis and eventually flaccid paralysis of all four legs. Owners will often say dogs have “gone in the back legs”.

Paradoxically, cats get agitated and develop a funny breathing pattern with a soft grunt at the end of expiration. Weakness is typically less obvious to their owners, at least early in disease progression.

In advanced cases, the respiratory muscles are paralysed, which results in death unless the patient is placed on a ventilator.

Human babies and children can also suffer from tick intoxication. Historically, more children have died of (often misdiagnosed) tick paralysis in Australia than from snake bite, although this is rare these days because of modern intensive care practices and use of tick anti-toxin (antibodies against holocyclotoxin).

The life cycle of the paralysis tick results in this disease being seasonal, especially in New South Wales. Most cases occur in spring and summer, because this is when ticks are more active and numerous. It is also a time when pets’ acquired immunity is lowest.

Tick paralysis tends to be especially common in certain areas. For example, the northern beaches of Sydney are a hot spot, with Avalon often being called “tick central”. Many human patients with ticks attached are seen at Mona Vale Hospital in northern Sydney.

In Brisbane, southeast Queensland and the north coast of NSW, the tick season is longer and the disease is even more common. Paralysis ticks are not found west of the Great Dividing Range, so pets in Canberra are safe, unless they visit the coast for the weekend.

New preventative measures

Tick paralysis is an eminently treatable disease, and management is straightforward if cases are presented early.

If you find a tick on your pet, all you need to do is lever it off using the correct technique (many advocate killing the tick first).

But if the diagnosis is missed, or if owners present affected cats and dogs only when signs are advanced, then treatment is complex and expensive. Tragically, some patients die despite advanced therapy including the administration of tick anti-toxin and assistance with breathing.

Not only is there a real risk of death, but all affected animals suffer from the disease. From a welfare perspective, it’s better to focus on prevention, rather than treatment. And because tick paralysis is preventable, it’s usually not covered by pet insurance.

Until last year, prevention relied on a daily search of every at-risk pet for ticks, and the prophylactic administration of systemic or topical acaricide or drugs with a tick repellent and/or killing action, such as fipronil or permethrin. These are all applied directly to pets' fur.

But these treatments can be washed off by rain, shampooing or swimming. Permethrin, although quite effective and safe in dogs, is devastatingly toxic to cats. Many were inadvertently treated (and killed) as a result of poor labelling of various canine products.

Last year there was a paradigm shift in tick paralysis prevention. MSD Animal Health released fluralaner (sold as Bravecto) – a new preventative drug. This is one of the first of a new class of drugs that act on both ticks and other arthropods, including fleas.

Fluralaner is available through vets or online as a chewable tablet for dogs. A transdermal formulation will soon be available for cats, which can be applied directly to the fur.

One tablet of the correct size will protect dogs against tick paralysis for four months or longer and be effective also against flea infestation for three months. (Australian studies show the drug is 100% effective against paralysis ticks for four months, and 96% effective for five months.) There are other products that are similarly effective but need to be given once a month.

Since last year’s tick season, vets up and down the coast have observed a sharp reduction in the number of dogs presented for tick paralysis. So we are pretty sure these new products are doing exactly what they are supposed to do.

The products would appear to be very safe to use on dogs, with a wide margin of safety. However, as with any drug, you should consider consulting with your vet.

My wish is to cajole as many pet owners to administer these drugs to all at-risk animals before the tick season starts in earnest.

At the moment, the simplest path is to recommend that all dogs get a fluralaner tablet towards the end of August and ideally again in December. A good way to synchronise this might be remember to give the first dose on Wattle Day (September 1) and then again on New Year’s Day.

If every dog owner did this, tick paralysis would be eradicated as a cause of death and suffering in dogs. And soon we will have a similar product suitable for cats, which we can just squirt onto the fur over their necks.

So, get your pet ticked off this spring.

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

Our EcoCheck series takes the pulse of some of Australia’s most important ecosystems to find out if they’re in good health or on the wane.

Australia’s Top End, Kimberley and Cape York Peninsula evoke images of vast, awe-inspiring and ancient landscapes. Whether on the hunt for a prized barramundi, admiring some of the oldest rock art in the world, or pursuing a spectacular palm cockatoo along a pristine river, hundreds of thousands of people flock to this region each year. But how are our vast northern landscapes faring environmentally, and what challenges are on the horizon?

Above 17° south, bounded by a rough line from Cairns, Queensland, to Derby, Western Australia, are the high-rainfall (more than 1,000mm a year) tropical savannas. These are the largest and most intact ecosystem of their kind on Earth. With the exception of some “smaller” pockets of rainforest (such as Queensland’s Kutini-Payamu (Iron Range) National Park), the vegetation of the region is dominated by mixed Eucalyptus forest and woodland with a grassy understorey.

Within the fire-prone Great Northern Savannas exist fire-sensitive communities such as these Allosyncapria ternata rainforests along the edge of the Arnhem Plateau in Kakadu National Park. Brett Murphy

There is a distinct monsoonal pattern of rainfall. Almost all of it falls during the wet season (December-March), followed by an extended dry (April-November). Wet-season rains drive abundant grass growth, which subsequently dries and fuels regular bushfires – making these landscapes among the most fire-prone on Earth. The dominant land tenures of the region are Indigenous, cattle grazing and conservation.

Cattle grazing is widespread in the Great Northern Savannas. Mark Ziembicki

These savannas are home to a vast array of plant and animal species. The Kimberley supports at least 2,000 native plant species, while the Cape York Peninsula has some 3,000. More than 400 bird and 100 mammal species call the region home, along with invertebrates such as moths, butterflies, ants and termites, and spiders. Many of the latter are still undescribed and poorly studied.

Many species, such as the scaly-tailed possum, are endemic to the region, meaning they are found nowhere else.

A large male antilopine wallaroo, endemic to tropical Australia. Euan Ritchie

The general lack of extensive habitat loss and modification, as compared to the broad-scale land clearing in southern Australia since European arrival, can give a false impression that the tropical savannas and their species are in good health. But research suggests otherwise, and considerable threats exist.

Fire-promoting weeds such as gamba grass, widely sown until very recently as fodder for cattle, are transforming habitats from diverse woodlands to burnt-out, low-diversity grasslands. Indeed, the fires themselves, which are considered too frequent and too late in the dry season at some locations, are now thought to be a primary driver of species loss.

Notable examples of wildlife in trouble include declines of many seed-eating birds, such as the spectacular Gouldian finch, and the catastrophic decline of native mammal species, most prominently in Australia’s largest national park, Kakadu.

Bauxite mining threatens the habitat of vulnerable Cape York palm cockatoos. Mark Ziembicki

Added pressures include bauxite mining, forestry and cattle grazing. The latter activity exerts strong pressures on the characteristically leached, nutrient-poor, tropical soils. Most recently, changes to Queensland’s land-clearing laws have led to virgin savanna woodland being cleared.

It is likely some threats may also combine to make matters worse for certain species. For instance, frequent fires, intensive cattle grazing and the overabundance of introduced species such as feral donkeys and horses all combine to remove vegetation cover. This, together with the presence of feral cats, makes some native animals more vulnerable to predation.

New threats

This globally significant ecosystem, already under threat, is facing new challenges too. Proposals to use the region as a food bowl for Asia are associated with calls for the damming of waterways and land clearing for agriculture.

This is against a backdrop of climate change, which among other effects may bring less predictable wet seasons, more frequent and intense storms (cyclones) and fires, and hotter, longer dry seasons. Such changes are not only likely to harm some species, but could also make those much-touted agricultural goals far more difficult to achieve.

Great opportunities exist in northern Australia, but we need to avoid the mistakes of the past. Mark Ziembicki

Great opportunities do exist in northern Australia, including carbon farming and expanded tourism enterprises. In some cases this might require difficult transitions, as already seen in parts of Cape York Peninsula, where often economically unviable cattle stations have become joint Indigenous and conservation-managed lands.

A key priority for the Great Northern Savannas should be to maintain people on country. It’s often thought that the solution to reducing environmental impacts is removing people from landscapes, but as people disappear so too does their stewardship and ability to manage and care for the land.

Importantly, and finally, we must also learn the historical lessons from southern Australia if we are to avoid making similar mistakes all over again, jeopardising the unique and precious values of the north.

Are you a researcher who studies an iconic Australian ecosystem and would like to give it an EcoCheck? Get in touch.

Euan Ritchie receives funding from Pozible, the Australia and Pacific Science Foundation, and the Australian Research Council. Euan Ritchie is affiliated with the Ecological Society of Australia and the Australian Mammal Society.

Brett Murphy receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Environmental Science Programme and the Hermon Slade Foundation.

Australia's island wildlife is particularly vulnerable to invasive species. Roderick Eime/Flickr, CC BY

Australia has some 8,300 islands, many of them home to threatened species. But humans have introduced rodents and predators such as feral cats and foxes to many of these islands, devastating native wildlife and changing entire island ecosystems. Removing invasive mammals has proven to be a very effective tool for protecting island species.

As a result, the federal government has made it a priority to remove invasive vertebrates from islands where they pose the most severe threats to native plants and animals.

But choosing where to remove those invasives is difficult. We don’t have complete information about the distribution of native species and threats across the nation’s 8,300 islands, and we haven’t been able to predict where eradication will have the most benefit.

However, in a recent study published in Nature Communications, our global team of scientists looked at islands around the world to consider where we can get the biggest bang for our buck.

Eradicating cats, rats and pigs from Flinders Island in Tasmania would help save forty-spotted pardalotes. Francesco Veronesi, CC BY-SA It costs money to save species

The total cost of the recently completed rat and rabbit eradication on Macquarie Island was A$27 million. The proposed removal of rats from Lord Howe Island off New South Wales is expected to cost A$9 million.

Federal Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg has just announced funding to remove feral cats from five islands: Christmas Island, Dirk Hartog Island and the French Islands in Western Australia; and Bruny and King Islands in Tasmania.

Conservation dollars are limited, so it is important that these pricey interventions be focused on the islands where they will go the furthest toward conserving native island biodiversity.

Conversely, it is essential that we identify places where they won’t provide much benefit, either because a threatened species is likely to go extinct regardless of such interventions, or because the invasive species actually poses little threat.

It cost A$24 million to eradicate rats and rabbits from Macquarie Island. Macquarie Island image from www.shutterstock.com Island life

We analysed the effects of invasive mammals on 1,200 globally threatened species across more than 1,000 islands to develop a model for where eradicating invasive wildlife will provide the greatest benefits to island species.

We estimate nearly half of threatened species populations on islands could disappear without conservation efforts. But targeted eradication could prevent 40-75% of these losses.

We found that just a few types of invasive mammals – rats, cats, pigs, mongooses and weasels – are most strongly associated with the disappearance of native species from islands.

Importantly, our study shows that the impacts of invasive mammals vary widely across the type of native species (native amphibians, birds, reptiles or mammals) and the conditions of the islands on which they live.

For example, we found that removing invasive mammals from small, dry islands could halve the extirpation risk for threatened native birds and mammals, but doing so on large, wet islands would have less benefit.

Australia’s most important islands

Our study included thirty-three Australian islands, home to 17 species of globally threatened birds, mammals and amphibians including the woylie (or brush-tailed bettong), Tasmania devils, black-browed albatross and Cooloola sedgefrog.

Eighteen of these islands are also home to introduced rats, cats or pigs, which potentially threaten native species with extinction.

Traditionally, we might assume that eradicating cats and rats would always reduce bird extinctions. However, our study suggests otherwise.

Eradicating cats and rats could help northern quolls on some islands. Quoll image from www.shutterstock.com

Rat or cat eradication may have little benefit on some islands. This is either because these invasive species have relatively minor impacts in some island environments, or because the native population is likely to go extinct regardless of conservation interventions.

So our study shows that of these 18 islands, eradicating invasive species on only two would likely prevent extinction of three native species populations. These are the eradication of cats and rats on Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory, which would avert the extirpation (that is, the island-level extinction) of the northern quoll and northern hopping mouse; and the eradication of cats, rats and pigs on Flinders Island in Tasmania, which would avert the extirpation of the forty-spotted pardalote.

While this sounds like a tiny number, remember we haven’t looked at all of Australia’s islands and the species that live on them. Indeed, we only included species considered threatened at a global level. For the other islands not included in our study, species threatened with extinction at regional or national scales may - or may not - benefit from eradicating invasive species. As more information comes in on these islands, our analysis can suggest which of these we should focus on.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

When it comes to conserving the world’s oceans, bigger isn’t necessarily better. Globally, there has been an increasing trend towards placing very large marine reserves in remote regions. While these reserves help to meet some conservation targets, we don’t know if they are achieving their ultimate goal of protecting the diversity of life.

In 2002, the Convention on Biological Diversity called for at least 10% of each of the world’s land and marine habitats to be effectively conserved by 2010. Protected areas currently cover 14% of the land, but less than 3.4% of the marine environment.

Australia’s marine reserve system covers more than a third of our oceans. This system was based on the best available information and a commitment to minimising the effects of the new protected areas on existing users. However, since its release the system has been strongly criticised for doing little to protect biodiversity, and it is currently under review.

In a new study published in Scientific Reports, we looked at the current and proposed marine reserves off northwest Australia – an area that is also home to significant oil and gas resources. Our findings show how conservation objectives could be met more efficiently. Using technical advances, including the latest spatial modelling software, we were able to fill major gaps in biodiversity representation, with minimal losses to industry.

A delicate balance

Australia’s northwest supports important habitats such as mangrove forests, seagrass beds, coral reefs and sponge gardens. These environments support exceptionally diverse marine communities and provide important habitat for many vulnerable and threatened species, including dugongs, turtles and whale sharks.

This region also supports valuable industrial resources, including the majority of Australia’s conventional gas reserves.

A 2013 global analysis found that regions featuring both high numbers of species and large fossil fuel reserves have the greatest need for industry regulation, monitoring and conservation.

Proposed and existing state and Commonwealth marine reserves in northwest Australia shown in relation to petroleum leases. Cordelia Moore Conservation opportunitites

Not all protected areas contribute equally to conserving species and habitats. The level of protection can range from no-take zones (which usually don’t allow any human exploitation), to areas allowing different types and levels of activities such tourism, fishing and petroleum and mineral extraction.

A recent review of 87 marine reserves across the globe revealed that no-take areas, when well enforced, old, large and isolated, provided the greatest benefits for species and habitats. It is estimated that no-take areas cover less than 0.3% of the world’s oceans.

In Australia’s northwest, no-take zones cover 10.2% of the area, which is excellent by world standards in terms of size. However, an analysis of gaps in the network reveal opportunities to better meet the Convention on Biological Diversity’s recommended minimum target level of representation across all species and features of conservation interest.

We provided the most comprehensive description of the species present across the region enabling us to examine how well local species are represented within the current marine reserves. Of the 674 species examined, 98.2% had less than 10% of their habitat included within the no-take areas, while more than a third of these (227 species) had less than 2% of their habitat included.

Into the abyss

Few industries in this region operate in depths greater than 200 metres. Therefore, the habitats and biodiversity most at risk are those exposed to human activity on the continental shelf, at these shallower depths.

However, the research also found that three-quarters of the no-take marine reserves are sited over a deep abyssal plain and continental rise within the Argo-Rowley Terrace (3,000-6,000m deep). These habitats are unnecessarily over-represented (85% of the abyss is protected), as their remoteness and extreme depth make them logistically and financially unattractive for petroleum or mineral extraction anyway.

The majority of the no-take marine reserves lie over a deep abyssal plain. Cordelia Moore

Proposed multiple-use zones in Commonwealth waters provide some much-needed extra representation of the continental shelf (0-200m depth). However, all mining activities and most commercial fishing activities are permissible pending approval. This means that the management of these multiple-use zones will require some serious consideration to ensure they are effective.

A win for conservation and industry

An imbalance in marine reserve representation can be driven by governments wanting to minimise socio-economic costs. But it doesn’t have to be one or the other.

Our research has shown that better zoning options can maximise the number of species while still keeping losses to industry very low. Our results show that the 10% biodiversity conservation targets could be met with estimated losses of only 4.9% of area valuable to the petroleum industry and 7.2% loss to the fishing industry (in terms of total catch in kg).

Examples of how the no-take reserves could be extended or redesigned to represent the region’s unique species and habitats. Cordelia Moore

Management plans for the Commonwealth marine reserves are under review and changes that deliver win-win outcomes, like the ones we have found, should be considered.

We have shown how no-take areas in northwest Australia could either be extended or redesigned to ensure the region’s biodiversity is adequately represented. The cost-benefit analysis used is flexible and provides several alternative reserve designs. This allows for open and transparent discussions to ensure we find the best balance between conservation and industry.

Cordelia Moore has received funding from the University of Western Australia, the Australian Institute of Marine Science and CSIRO.

Clay Bryce receives funding from the Western Australian Museum and Woodside Energy.

Hugh Possingham receives funding from The Australian Research Council, The Department of The Environment (Australia) and a lot of other groups. He is affiliated with the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, Bush Heritage Australia and sits on heaps of boards and committees.

Oliver Berry receives funding from The Western Australian Marine Science Institution.

Romola Stewart has previously received funding from PEW Charitable Trusts Australia.

Ben Radford 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.

Britain's industrial pioneers couldn't have known how they would affect the climate. Henry Gastineau

In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, no one would have thought that their burning of fossil fuels would have an almost immediate effect on the climate. But our new study, published today in Nature, reveals that warming in some regions actually began as early as the 1830s.

That is much earlier than previously thought, so our discovery redefines our understanding of when human activity began to influence our climate.

Determining when global warming began, and how quickly the planet has warmed since then, is essential for understanding how much we have altered the climate in different parts of the world. Our study helps to answer the question of whether our climate is already operating outside thresholds that are considered safe for human society and functional ecosystems.

Our findings show that warming did not develop at the same time across the planet. The tropical oceans and the Arctic were the first regions to begin warming, in the 1830s. Europe, North America and Asia followed roughly two decades later.

Surprisingly, the results show that the southern hemisphere began warming much later, with Australasia and South America starting to warm from the early 20th century. This continental-scale time lag is still evident today: while some parts of Antarctica have begun to warm, a clear warming signal over the entire continent is still not detectable.

The warming in most regions reversed what would otherwise have been a cooling trend related to high volcanic activity during the preceding centuries.

Global warming got underway much earlier in the north.

By pinpointing the date when human-induced climate change started, we can then begin to work out when the warming trend broke through the boundaries of the climate’s natural fluctuations, because it takes some decades for the global warming signal to “emerge” above the natural climate variability.

According to our evidence, in all regions except for Antarctica, we are now well and truly operating in a greenhouse-influenced world. We know this because the only climate models that can reproduce the results seen in our records of past climate are those models that factor in the effect of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by humans.

These remarkable findings were pieced together from the most unusual of sources – not thermometers or satellites, but rather from natural climate archives. These include coral skeletons, ice cores, tree rings, cave deposits and ocean and lake sediment layers, all of which record the climate as they grow or accumulate.

These archives provide long records that extend back 500 years – well before the Industrial Revolution – and provide a critical baseline for the planet’s past climate, one that is impossible to obtain otherwise.

But why is there no clear warming fingerprint yet seen across Antarctica? The answer most likely lies in the vast Southern Ocean, which isolates the frozen continent from the warming happening elsewhere.

The westerly winds that circulate through the Southern Ocean around Antarctica keep warm air masses from lower latitudes at bay. Ozone depletion and rising greenhouse gas concentrations during the 20th century have also caused this wind barrier to get stronger.

The Southern Ocean currents that flow around Antarctica also tend to move warmer surface waters away from the continent, to be replaced with cold deeper water that hasn’t yet been affected by surface greenhouse warming. This process could potentially delay Antarctica’s warming by centuries.

Ocean insulation

The delay in warming observed in the rest of the southern hemisphere is something we do not yet fully understand. It could simply be because fewer records are available from the southern hemisphere, meaning that we still don’t have a full picture of what is happening.

Alternatively, like Antarctica, the southern hemisphere’s oceans could be holding back warming – partly through winds and currents, but perhaps also because of “thermal inertia”, whereby the ocean can absorb far more heat energy than the atmosphere or the land before its temperature markedly increases. Bear in mind that the southern half of the globe has much more ocean than the north.

Essentially, then, the coolness of the southern hemisphere’s vast oceans could be “insulating” Australasia and South America from the impact of global warming. The question is, for how long?

If our evidence of delayed warming in the southern hemisphere holds true, it could mean we are in in for more climate surprises as global warming begins to overcome the thermal inertia of our surrounding oceans. Could the recent record warming of Australian waters, and the subsequent damage to the Great Barrier Reef, be an early sign that this is already occurring?

Recent research suggest that the mass bleaching event of the reef was made 175 times more likely by climate change. Following the recent severity of such extremes, a better understanding of how anthropogenic greenhouse warming is already impacting the southern hemisphere is critical.

What to do about it

Leading scientists from around the world met in Geneva last week to discuss the goal of limiting average global warming to 1.5℃ – the more ambitious of the two targets enshrined in the Paris climate agreement.

Last year, global temperatures crossed the 1℃ threshold, and 2016 is on track to be 1.2-1.3℃ above our climate baseline.

But here’s the kicker. That baseline is relative to 1850–1900, when most of our thermometer-based temperature records began. What our study shows is that for many parts of the world that estimate isn’t good enough, because global warming was already under way, so the real baseline would be lower.

The small increases in greenhouse gases during the 19th century had a small effect on Earth’s temperatures, but with the longer perspective we get from our natural climate records we see that big changes occurred. These fractions of a degree of extra warming might seem insignificant at first, but as we nudge ever closer to the 1.5℃ guardrail (and potentially beyond), the past tells us that small changes matter.

Helen McGregor will be online to answer your questions from 2pm AEST today. Post a query in the comments below.

Helen McGregor receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the University of Wollongong, Australia.

Joelle Gergis receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Nerilie Abram receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Steven Phipps receives funding from the Australian Antarctic Science Program, the Australian Research Council, the International Union for Quaternary Research, the National Computational Infrastructure Merit Allocation Scheme, the New Zealand Marsden Fund, the University of Tasmania and UNSW Australia.

Low-energy or zero-energy housing is international best practice, but is still considered costly. Part of the problem is that studies of housing standards typically use only cost-benefit analysis to assess their value, and so often wrongly conclude that sustainable housing is unaffordable.

Our new research shows how such analyses may miss some flow-on financial benefits – such as reduced energy bills and lower mobility costs. Most importantly, these analyses also overlook effects on householders' health and quality of life arising from factors such as improved thermal comfort.

Sustainable housing can also have important benefits for some of the most vulnerable members of our community, as the report released this week shows.

The environmental performance of Australian housing has improved slowly, associated with changes in minimum building regulations and the creation of subsidies such as solar rebates. This is despite sustainable housing having many documented benefits, including lower (or non-existent) utility bills and greenhouse gas emissions, and improved comfort and health.

Conventional cost-benefit analyses exclude these benefits. That leaves significant gaps in the story that could be used to support investment in sustainable housing.

What did the study assess?

Our study involved a three-year, mixed-method evaluation of a small sustainable housing development in Horsham, Victoria. Commissioned by the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the study used both quantitative and qualitative methods, which are rarely combined to assess housing policy and environmental performance.

Four two-bedroom, nine-star-rated (under the National House Energy Rating Scheme, NatHERS) houses were built to maximise passive solar principles. The design elements and technologies used included (partial) reverse brick-veneer construction, double-glazed windows, solar hot water, a 1.5-kilowatt solar photovoltaic system and a shared 5,000-litre rainwater tank.

The houses were built without air conditioning. They do have ceiling fans and gas heating in the living area.

We evaluated these nine-star houses against seven control houses also in Horsham and built to DHHS standards, with a six-star NatHERS rating. We also compared the results to a DHHS technical model of standard industry practice. We conducted a traditional cost-benefit analysis, technical performance analysis (utility consumption, internal temperature), three rounds of interviews with the householders during different seasons, and a personalised household sustainability assessment.

Through a traditional cost-benefit lens, the nine-star housing was not financially viable for DHHS. Even if DHHS was able to capture the savings to the householders, payback was only achieved within 40 years for one of the four dwellings in a high-energy-price future. This was due to higher-than-expected capital costs for the sustainability initiatives.

Falling short: the conventional cost-benefit outcome for the nine-star houses. RMIT Centre for Urban Research, DHHS

However, resale value could be up to A$40,000 higher per unit. The technical performance analysis also identified significant benefits for the nine-star households. These included reduced utility consumption and bills. One occupant told us:

Look, I haven’t paid any off my power bill in six months and I’m still in credit.

We found that these households:

• were A$1,000 a year better off as a result of reduced utility consumption (including solar feed-in tariff);

• purchased 45% less electricity than the control households (and 73% less than the standard industry practice);

• consumed 22% less water (30% less than the industry standard);

• had 40% less CO₂ environmental impact from power use (63% less than the industry standard); and

Car equivalent of environmental performance. RMIT Centre for Urban Research, DHHS

• were comfortable with the indoor temperature of their house for 10% more of the time (even without air conditioning).

Summary of average annual utilities consumed/generated from each dwelling. RMIT Centre for Urban Research, DHHS

Extreme weather events magnified the comfort benefits. On a second consecutive day above 41℃, the nine-star houses were up to 16.6℃ cooler (without air conditioning) compared to the department’s standard six-star house (which had air conditioning).

This meant householders could stay at home during heatwaves rather than needing to seek alternative accommodation, which happened sometimes for the control households. One occupant said:

…in summer I would sit down at the supermarket, you know, because it was cool … [Now] I can stay home and veg out.

Temperature in the living rooms of monitored houses and external temperature for January 18-19, 2013. RMIT Centre for Urban Research, DHHS Residents confirm well-being benefits

Interviews with residents highlighted positive social outcomes from living in sustainable housing, which supported the technical data. The benefits they described included improved health and personal finances.

For example, these householders said they had extra spending money due to low (or no) utility bills. This meant they could buy children Christmas presents, avoid personal debt and lay-by, or go on a holiday.

I do go clothes shopping on occasion now instead of thinking, “Oh God, I have to go and lay-by that.”

Householders described how this led to reduced stress and better mental health.

The research demonstrates that the housing sector’s over-reliance on cost-benefit analysis may be overlooking important benefits (and detriments) of different housing arrangements. Combining qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods can help uncover a more detailed and complete picture of how housing affects people’s lives.

Our research also highlights how sustainable housing benefits extend beyond the environment. These flow-on effects can improve the living conditions of some of the most vulnerable members of society. This, in turn, potentially reduces pressure on health and other support systems and sectors.

Combining sustainable and affordable housing

Our study is part of an emerging body of research that challenges the idea that sustainable housing is unaffordable.

The evidence increasingly shows that sustainability and good design can improve affordability when fuller cost-benefit analyses are undertaken and non-monetised social, health and well-being benefits are considered.

To date, however, there is limited “real world” research into people living in sustainable housing, particularly in the affordable housing sector. Without more multidisciplinary evaluations of this kind, we are left with an incomplete picture of the benefits of this type of housing.

Such studies will be critically important as Australia seeks to make the transition to a more sustainable future. Climate change and increased livability costs are likely to add to the challenges for social housing organisations and the tenants who depend on their services.

Trivess Moore receives funding from various organisations including the Australian Research Council and Victorian Department of Health and Human Services.

Cecily Maller receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program of the Australian Government, the Australian Research Council, and the Victorian Government's Department of Housing and Human Services. She is affiliated with the Institute of Australian Geographers and The Australian Sociological Association.

Ralph Horne receives funding from various organisations including the Australian Research Council and Victorian Department of Health and Human Services. He is also currently Director of the United Nations Global Compact - Cities Programme.

Yolande Strengers receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Energy Consumers Australia and the Victorian Government's Department of Health and Human Services.

Dear The Hon. Malcolm Turnbull MP, Prime Minister of Australia,

The following is an open letter signed by 154 Australian atmospheric, marine, environmental, biological and medical scientists, including several leading climatologists, for your and your government’s attention.

There is no Planet B

In July 2016, global temperatures soared to the hottest in the 136 years of the instrumental record, 0.1℃ warmer than previous warm Julys in 2015, 2011 and 2009. It followed a succession of rising temperatures, moving from 0.42℃ above average in 2000, to 0.87℃ above average by 2015.

Developments in the atmosphere-ocean system reported by major climate research organisations (including NASA, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US National Snow & Ice Data Center, the UK Met Office Hadley Centre, the Tyndall Centre, the Potsdam Institute; the science academics of dozens of nations; and in Australia the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology) include:

• A rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to 404.39 parts per million (ppm; as of July 2016), an average rise of 3.08 ppm per year. This rate is unprecedented in the geological record of the past 55 million years, and is tracking towards the stability threshold of the Antarctic ice sheet, estimated at around 450ppm atmospheric CO₂.

• The rise in greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere and oceans is leading to an increase in extreme weather events relative to the period 1950-60, including tropical storms such as those in Fiji, Vanuatu and the Philippines, with lives lost and damage estimated in the billions of dollars. In Australia the frequency of extreme weather events has been increasing, and since 2001 the number of extreme heat records has outnumbered extreme cool records by almost three to one for daytime maximum temperatures, and around five to one for night-time minimum temperatures.

• Impacts on a similar scale are taking place in the ocean, where the CO₂ rise has caused an increase in acidity from pH 8.2 to 8.1 already. The pH is predicted to decrease to 7.8 by 2100, affecting coral reefs and the marine food chain.

• Ice sheet melt rates have been increasing and the rate of sea-level rise has been accelerating, from roughly 1.7mm per year over the past century to 3.2mm per year between 1993 and 2010, and to about 3.5mm per year today. This threatens low-lying islands, deltas and lower river valleys where billions of people live – a problem that is compounded by increased variability of river flows in terms of floods and draughts.

We are concerned that global warming, amplified by feedbacks from polar ice melt, methane release from permafrost, and extensive fires, may become irreversible, including the possible collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a crucial component of the global climate system that transfers heat from the tropics to the North Atlantic.

According to James Hansen, NASA’s former chief climate scientist, “burning all fossil fuels would create a different planet than the one that humanity knows“. Joachim Schellnhuber, Germany’s chief climate scientist, has summed up the situation by saying: “We’re simply talking about the very life support system of this planet.”

We note your broad agreement with this point, in light of your 2010 statement that:

…we are as humans conducting a massive science experiment with this planet. It’s the only planet we have got… We know that the consequences of unchecked global warming would be catastrophic… We as a human species have a deep and abiding obligation to this planet and to the generations that will come after us.

While the Paris Agreement remains unbinding and global warming has received minimal attention in the recent elections, governments worldwide are presiding over a large-scale demise of the planetary ecosystems, which threatens to leave large parts of Earth uninhabitable.

We call on the Australian government to tackle the root causes of an unfolding climate tragedy and do what is required to protect future generations and nature, including meaningful reductions of Australia’s peak carbon emissions and coal exports, while there is still time.

There is no Planet B.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Christine Adams-Hosking, Conservation planner, University of Queensland

Associate Professor Stephen Adelstein, Medical scientist, University of Sydney

Professor Ross Alford, Tropical ecologist, James Cook University

Dr Wallace Ambrose, Archaeological anthropologist, ANU

Dr Martin Anda, Environmental engineer, Murdoch University

Dr Marion Anderston, Geochemist, Monash University

Professor Michael Archer, Paleontologist, UNSW Australia

Dr Leanne Armand, Marine Researcher, Macquarie University

Professor Patricia Armati, Medical scientist, University of Sydney

Professor Owen Atkin, Plant respiration researcher, ANU

Professor Elaine Baker, Marine scientist, University of Sydney

Associate Professor Cathy Banwell, Medical scientist, ANU

Dr Andrew Barnes, Aquatic animal health researcher, University of Queensland

Dr Fiona Beck, Renewable energy researcher, ANU

Dr Tom Beer, Climatic and environmental change researcher, CSIRO

Professor Andrew Blakers, Photovoltaics/energy storage researcher, ANU

Professor Phillip Board, Medical scientist, ANU

Professor Justin Borevitz, Plant geneticist, ANU

Dr Caryl Bosman, Environmental planning researcher, Griffith University

Professor David Bowman, Forestry researcher, University of Tasmania

Dr Timothy Broadribb, Plant Scientist, University of Tasmania

Dr Helen Brown, Environmental health researcher, Curtin University

Dr Tim Brown, Medicine and environment researcher, ANU

Professor Ralf Buckley, Conservation/ecotourism researcher, Griffith University

Dr Florian Busch, Plant scientist, ANU

Dr Jason Byrne, Urban design researcher, Curtin University

Professor Maria Byrne, Marine and developmental biologist, University of Sydney

Dr Martina Calais, Renewable energy researcher, Murdoch University

Associate Professor Craig Carter, Engineering and IT researcher, Murdoch University

Dr Phill Cassey, Ecologist, Adelaide University

Professor Carla Catterall, Ecologist, Griffith University

Dr Juleen Cavanaugh, Biomedical scientist, ANU

Professor Fred Chow, Plant biologist, ANU

Associate Professor David Cohen, Geochemist, UNSW Australia

Professor Steven Cooper, Evolutionary biologist, SA Museum

Professor Rod Connolly, Marine scientist, Griffith University

Professor Jann Conroy, Plant scientist, Western Sydney University

Dr Lucy Coupland, Medical scientist, ANU

Dr Joseph Coventry, Solar energy researcher, ANU

Dr Chris Creagh, Physicist, Murdoch University

Professor Patricia Dale, Environment/planning researcher, Griffith University

Dr Armanda Davies, Planning geographer, Curtin University

Dr Ian Davies, Forestry fire management researcher, ANU

Dr Kirsten Davies, Ethno-ecology and environmental law researcher, Macquarie University

Dr Robert Davis, Vertebrate biologist, Edith Cowan University

Professor Keith Dear, Global health researcher, ANU

Dr Fjalar de Haan, Sustainability researcher, University of Melbourne

Professor Hans Peter Dietz, Medical scientist, Penrith Hospital

Professor Bob Douglas, Medical scientist, ANU

Associate Professor Mark Douglas, Medical scientist, University of Sydney

Dr Jen Drysdale, Climate and energy researcher, University of Melbourne

Professor Angela Dulhunty, Medical scientist, ANU

Professor Robyn Eckersley, Climate change governance researcher, University of Melbourne

Dr Elin Charles Edwards, Environmental geographer, University of Queensland

Professor David Eldridge, Evolutionary biologist, UNSW Australia

Professor David Elsworth, Environmental ecologist, Western Sydney University

Associate Professor Jason Evans, Climate change researcher, UNSW Australia

Dr Isabelle Ferru, Medical scientist, ANU

Professor Tim Flannery, Climate Council

Professor Barry Fox, Ecologist, UNSW Australia

Dr Evan Franklin, Solar energy researcher, ANU

Dr Diego Garcia-Bellido, Paleontologist, University of Adelaide

Dr Stephen Garnett, Conservation and sustainability researcher, Charles Darwin University

Dr John Gillen, Soil scientist, ANU

Dr Andrew Glikson, Paleoclimatologist, ANU

Dr Susan Gould, Climate change researcher, Griffith UNiversity

Professor Colin Groves, Anthropologist, ANU

Dr Huade Guan, Hydro-meteorologist, Flinders University

Professor Neil Gunningham, Global governance researcher, ANU

Dr Asish Hagar, Medical scientist, UNSW Australia

Dr Nina Hall, Sustainable water researcher, University of Queensland

Dr Willow Hallgren, Atmospheric scientist, Griffith University

Dr Elizabeth Hanna, Environmental health researcher, ANU

Associate Professor David Harley, Epidemiologist, ANU

Professor Robert S. Hill, Paleobotanist, University of Adelaide

Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Marine climatologist and Great Barrier Reef researcher, University of Queensland

Professor Geoff Hope, Archaeologist and natural history researcher, ANU

Associate Professor Michael Howes, Environmental scientist, Griffith University

Professor Lesley Hughes, Climate change and species researcher, University of Adelaide

Dr Paul Humphries, Environmental scientist, Charles Sturt University

Professor Phillip Jenning, Energy researcher, Murdoch University

Professor Darryl Jones, Behavioural ecologist, Griffith University

Dr Hugh Jones, Medical scientist, University of Western Australia

Dr Jochen Kaempf, Physical oceanographer, Flinders University

Professor Jeffrey Keelan, Medical scientist, University of Western Australia

Professor Peter Kershaw, Biogeographer and botanist, Monash University

Dr Carsten Kulheim, Plant physiologist, ANU

Professor Rakkesh Kumar, Medical scientist, UNSW Australia

Dr Lori Lach, Rainforest conservationist, James Cook University

Professor Barry Lacopetta, Medical scientist, University of Western Australia

Professor Trevor Lamb, Medical scientist, ANU

Professor Tony Larkum, Plant biologist, University of Technology Sydney

Dr Annie Lau, Geography and environmental management researcher, University of Quensland

Professor Bill Laurance, Tropical environment and sustainability researcher, James Cook University

Associate Professor Fred Leusch, Soil, water and energy researcher, Griffith University

Professor Andrew Lowe, Plant conservationist, University of Adelaide

Dr Fabio Luciano, Medical scientist, UNSW Australia

Professor Justin Marshall, Marine biologist, University of Queensland

Dr Melanie Massaro, Ecologist and ornithologist, Charles Sturt University

Associate Professor John F. McCarthy, Resource environment researcher, ANU

Dr Allison McInnes, Plant biologist, UTS

AssociateProfessor Andrew McKenzie, Landscape planning researcher, University of Canberra

Dr Kathryn McMahon, Environmental researcher, Edith Cowan University

Professor Andrew Millington, Land change scientist, Flinders University

Professor Angela Moles, Evolutionary ecologist, UNSW Australia

Professor Renee Morris, Medical scientist, UNSW Australia

Professor Barbara Norman, Urban planning researcher, University of Canberra

Professor Nikos Ntoumanis, Behavioural medicine researcher, Curtin University

Dr Bradley Opdyke, Climate historian, ANU

Professor Richard G. Pearson, Marine and tropical biologist, James Cook University

Dr Barrie Pittock, Climate scientist, CSIRO

Dr Jason Potas, Medical scientist, ANU

Professor Susan Prescott, Medical scientist, University of Western Australia

Dr Lynda Prior, Climate researcher, University of Tasmania

_Dr Thomas Prowse, Biologist, University of Adelaide

Professor Marie Ranson, Molecular biologist, University of Wollongong

Professor Steve Redman, Medical scientist, ANU

Associate Professor Tracy Rogers, Evolutionary ecologist, UNSW Australia

Professor Chris Ryan, Eco-innovation researcher, University of Melbourne

Dr Oz Sahnin, Climate change researcher, Griffith University

Associate Professor Peter Sainsbury, Climate and health researcher, University of Sydney

Professor David Sinclair, Medical scientist, UNSW Australia

Dr Tom Sobey, Medical scientist, UNSW Australia

Professor Will Steffen, Climate change researcher, ANU

_Professor Peter Steinberg, Marine scientist, UNSW Australia

Associate Professor Christian Stricker, Medical scientist, ANU

Professor Ian Suthers, Marine biologist, UNSW Australia

Associate Professor Sue Taylor, Medical scientist, University of Western Australia

Dr Sebastian Thomas, Sustainability researcher, University of Melbourne

_Dr Andrew Thomson, Solar researcher, ANU

Associate Professor Thomas Thorsten, Marine biologist, UNSW Australia

Associate Professor Ian Tibbetts, Marine Scientist, University of Queensland

Professor David Tissue, Plant ecophysiologist, Western Sydney University

Professor Matthias Tomczak, Oceanographer, Flinders University

Mr Shane Toohey, Medical scientist, University of Western Australia

Dr Gail Trapp, Medical scientist, UNSW Australia

Professor Patrick Troy, Human ecologist, ANU

Professor Tom Trull, Antarctic, oceans and atmosphere researcher, CSIRO

Professor David Tscharke, Medical scientist, ANU

Professor Chris Turney, Antarctic climatologist, UNSW Australia

Dr Tania Urmee, Renewable energy technologist, Murdoch University

Professor René Vaillancourt, Plant geneticist, University of Tasmania

Professor John Veevers, Earth scientist, Macquarie University

Professor Charlie Veron, Marine scientist, Australian Institute of Marine Science

Professor Phil Waite, Medical scientist, UNSW Australia

Dr Elaine Walker, Physics and energy researcher, Murdoch University

Dr Hayden Washington, Environmental researcher, UNSW Australia

Professor David Watson, Water and society ecologist, Charles Sturt University

Dr Scarla J. Weeks, Biophysical oceanographer, University of Queensland

Professor Adrian Werner, Hydrologist, Flinders University

_Mr Peter Weiske, Medical and environmental scientist, ANU

Dr Jonathan Whale, Energy researcher, Murdoch University

_Associate Professor George Wilson, Wildlife management researcher, ANU

Dr Phillip Zylstra, Forests and fire researcher, University of Wollongong

Andrew Glikson 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.

The Appenines region of central Italy has been struck by a deadly earthquake, with a magnitude of 6.2. The quake, which had an epicentre roughly 10km southeast of Norcia, Italy, occurred just over seven years after the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake that killed more than 300 people only 90km away.

The latest earthquake occurred at 3:36 am local time. The number of fatalities is unknown at time of writing but already exceeds 30. Buildings have collapsed in nearby Amatrice and residents are reportedly trapped in rubble.

General tectonic setting of Italy, showing seismicity over the past 10 years from the USGS catalogue. USGS Fracture zone

This earthquake is no surprise. Italy is prone to earthquakes; it sits above the boundary of the African and European plates. The oceanic crust of the African plate is subducting (sinking) under Italy, creating iconic natural features such as the volcano at Mount Vesuvius. These plates are converging at a rate of around 5mm each year.

Both the L’Aquila and Norcia earthquakes were located below the central Appenines, which form the mountainous spine of Italy.

The Earth’s crust under the Appenines of central and western Italy is extending; eastern central Italy is moving to the north east relative to Rome. As a result, this region experiences normal faulting: where one part of the earth subsides relative to another as the crust is stretched.

The fault systems in the central Appenines are short and structurally complex, so the earthquakes are not large by global standards, the largest almost invariably hover around magnitude 6.8 to 7.0. But because the quakes are shallow and structurally complex, and because many of the local towns and cities contain vulnerable buildings, strong shaking from these earthquakes has the potential to inflict major damage and loss of life in urban areas.

This region also seems to be particularly prone to earthquake clustering, whereby periods of relative quiet are interrupted by several strong earthquakes over weeks to decades.

A history of quakes

Both Norcia and L’Aquila feature prominently at either end of a zone of large Appenine earthquakes. This zone has produced many strong earthquakes. The latest Norcia earthquake occurred only around 90km northwest of the L’Aquila earthquake and very close to the epicentre of the 1979 Norcia earthquake, which had a magnitude of 5.9.

But the area’s earthquake history can be traced back over seven centuries. During this period, this region has been hit by at least six earthquakes that have caused very strong to severe shaking. Amatrice, so badly damaged in the most recent quake, was severely damaged in 1639. A few decades later, in 1703, roughly 10,000 people were killed in Norcia, Montereale, L’Aquila and the surrounding Appenine region in three magnitude 6.2-6.7 earthquakes.

Parts of Norcia were subsequently built upon the surface rupture created in the 1703 earthquake. Another earthquake in 1997 killed 11 people.

In this most recent event, an estimated 13,000 people would have experienced severe ground shaking, probably lasting 10-20 seconds.

The estimated damage of this latest earthquake will almost inevitably exceed US$100 million, and may top US$1 billion. Amatrice appears to be among the populated areas that were most severely affected.

What lies ahead?

The region now faces a prolonged and energetic aftershock sequence; over the first 2.5 hours following the mainshock, at least four earthquakes of around magnitude 4.5 were recorded in the region by the US Geological Survey. More than 10,000 aftershocks were recorded following the L’Aquila earthquake in 2009.

We note that within the region, there is excellent and continuously improving scientific information about the hazard. But the knowledge of the hazard has not always translated well into measures that directly reduce economic loss and fatalities in earthquakes.

Following the L'Aquila earthquake, six scientists were convicted of manslaughter for failing to inform the public adequately of the earthquake risk. Although the charges were subsequently dropped, this marked a major development in the way blame is apportioned after large natural events, particularly with regard to effective hazard communication.

Numerous vulnerable buildings remain, and the recovery process is commonly plagued by long disruptions and inadequate government funding to recover rapidly. Both the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake and this most recent quake highlight just how important it is to translate hazard assessments into improving the resilience of infrastructure to strong shaking. The focus should remain on linking science, engineering and policy, this is often the biggest challenge globally.

Mike Sandiford receives funding from the Australian Research Council into earthquake related research.

Brendan Duffy and Mark Quigley do 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.

Antarctica's ice sheets will continue to melt long after this century. Antarctica image from www.shutterstock.com

The Paris climate agreement set a “safe” global warming limit of below 2℃, aiming below 1.5℃ by 2100. The world has already warmed about a degree since the Industrial Revolution, and on our current emissions trajectory we will likely breach these limits within decades.

However, we could still come back from the brink with a massive effort.

But let’s take a closer look at that warming limit. If we accept that 1.5-2℃ of warming marks the danger threshold, then this is true whether it applies tomorrow, in 2100, or some time thereafter. What we need is to stay below these limits for all time.

Put it this way: we wouldn’t be satisfied if the brakes on a new car only worked on the day of purchase, or for two weeks after that – we expect them to keep us safe throughout the car’s lifetime.

The trouble is, limiting warming to well below 2℃ forever is a much harder job.

Millennia matter

Whatever warming we manage to prevent this century, the world will continue to respond to climate change after 2100.

Looking beyond 2100 is often considered irrelevant, given that electoral timescales only operate over several years, and individual development projects over several decades.

However, it is highly relevant to major infrastructure developments, such as overall city planning. Throughout Europe and Asia, the foundations of most city infrastructure date back centuries, or even millennia. Not incidentally, so do most of the supporting agricultural and fisheries traditions and transport routes.

Even the more recent developments in the Americas, Africa and Australia have fundamental roots that date back hundreds of years. Clearly, we need to think beyond the current century when we think about climate change and its impact on civilisation.

The short and the long of it

The climate system is made up of many different components. Some of these respond rapidly to changes, others over much longer timescales.

The components that respond rapidly to the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions include changes in cloud, snow and sea-ice cover, in dust content of the atmosphere, land-surface changes, and so on. Some work almost instantaneously, others over decades. Together these are known as the “transient” response.

Slow-responding components in the climate system include ocean warming, continental ice-sheets and exchanges of carbon between lifeforms, oceans, the sea floor, soils and the atmosphere. These work over many centuries and are known as the “equilibrium” response.

Large amounts of energy are needed to warm up such a large volume of water as the global ocean. The ocean has taken up more than 90% of all the extra heat caused by greenhouse gases emitted since the Industrial Revolution, especially into the upper few hundred metres.

However, the ocean is so vast that it will continue to warm from the top down over many centuries to millennia, until its energy uptake has adjusted to Earth’s new energy balance. This will continue even if no further emissions are made.

Ice sheets on Antarctica and Greenland respond to climate change like an accelerating heavy freight train: slow to start, and virtually unstoppable once they get going. Climate change has been building up since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, but only in recent decades have we started to see marked mass-loss increases from the ice sheets.

The ice-sheet freight train has at last come up to speed and now it will keep on rolling and rolling, regardless of what immediate actions we take regarding our emissions.

Looking to the past

Carbon dioxide levels have reached 400 parts per million (ppm). To find out what this means for the coming centuries, we have to look between 3 million and 3.5 million years into the past.

Temperature reconstructions suggest the world was 2-3℃ warmer than before the Industrial Revolution, which is similar to the expected equilibrium response for the future.

Geological data from the last 65 million years indicate that the climate warms 3-5℃ for every doubling of CO₂ levels.

Before the Industrial Revolution, CO₂ levels were around 280 ppm. Under all but the most optimistic emission scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the first doubling (to 560 ppm) is approached or crossed between the years 2040 and 2070.

While we don’t know exactly how high sea level was 3.5 million years ago, we are confident that it stood at least 10 metres higher than today. Most studies suggest sea-level rise around 1m higher than today by 2100, followed by a relentlessly continued rise by some 2m per century. Even a rise of a metre or more by 2100 is murderously high for global infrastructure, especially in developing countries.

Today, some 600 million people live at elevations within 10m of sea level. The same area generates 10% of the world’s total GDP. It is estimated that a sea-level rise of 2m will displace almost 2.5% of the global population.

Even the more immediate impacts of sea-level rise are enormous. In 136 of the world’s largest port cities, the population exposed to flooding is estimated to increase by more than three times by 2070, due to combined actions of sea-level rise, land subsidence, population growth and urbanisation. The same study estimates a tenfold increase in asset exposure.

Back to the future

The eventual equilibrium (long-term) level of warming is up to twice the transient (short-term) level of warming. In other words, the Paris Agreement’s response of 1.5-2℃ by 2100 will grow over subsequent centuries toward an equilibrium warming of 2.3-4℃, even without any further emissions.

Given that we have already reached 1℃ of warming, if the aim is to avoid dangerous warming beyond 2℃ over the long term, we have to avoid any further warming from now on.

We can’t do this by simply stopping all emissions. This is because there is still some warming to catch up from the slower transient processes. To stop any further warming, we will have to reduce atmospheric CO₂ levels to about 350 ppm. Doing so requires both stopping the almost 3ppm rise per year from new emissions, and implementing carbon capture to pull CO₂ out of the atmosphere.

Global warming would be limited to 1-1.5℃ by 2100, and 2℃ over the long term, and in addition ocean acidification would be kept under control. These are essential for containing the impacts of climate change on global ecosystems.

This is the real urgency of climate change. Fully understanding the challenge can help us get to work.

Eelco Rohling receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). He is Professor of Ocean and Climate Change at The Australian National University (ANU) and the University of Southampton (UK), and a member of ANU's Climate Change Institute (CCI).

Australia's treeless alps are vulnerable to the spread of woody shrubs. Alps image from www.shutterstock.com

Australia’s ecosystems are already showing the signs of climate change, from the recent death of mangrove forests in northern Australia, to the decline in birds in eastern Australia, to the inability of mountain ash forests to recover from frequent fires. The frequency and size of these changes will only continue to increase in the next few years.

This poses a major challenge for our national parks and reserves. For the past 200 years the emphasis in reserves has been on protection.

But protection is impossible when the environment is massively changing. Adaptation then becomes more important. If we are to help wildlife and ecosystems survive in the future, we’ll have to rethink our parks and reserves.

A weedier world

Climate change is predicted to have a substantial effect on our plants and animals, changing the distribution and population of species. Some areas will become unfavourable to their current inhabitants, allowing other, often weedy, species to expand. There will likely be widespread losses in some ecosystems as extreme climate events take their toll, either directly by killing plants and animals, or indirectly by changing fire regimes.

While we can model some of these changes, we don’t know exactly how ecosystems will respond to climate change.

Australia has an extensive natural reserve system, and models suggest that much of this system is expected to be altered radically in the next few decades, resulting in the formation of totally new ecosystems and/or shifts in ecosystems.

Yet with rapid climate change, it is likely that ecosystems will fail to keep up. Seeds are the only way for plants to move, and seeds can only travel so far. The distribution of plants might only shift by a few metres a year, whereas the velocity of climate change is expected to be much faster.

As a result, our ecosystems are likely to become dominated by a low diversity of native and exotic invasive species. These weedy species can spread long distances and take advantage of vacant spaces. Yet the exact nature of changes is unknown, particularly where evolutionary changes and physiological adaptation will assist some species but fail others.

Conservation managers are concerned because with increasing weediness will come a loss of biodiversity as well as declines in the overall health of ecosystems. Plant cover will decrease, triggering erosion in catchments that provide our water reservoirs. Rare animal species will be lost because a loss of plant cover makes them more susceptible to predators. A cascade of changes is likely.

From conservation to adaptation

While climate change threats are acknowledged in reports, we continue to focus on conserving the state of our natural environments, devoting scarce resources to keeping out weedy species, viewing vegetation communities as static, and using offsets to protect these static communities.

One way of preparing for the future is to start the process of deliberately moving species (and their genes) around the landscape in a careful and contained manner, accepting that rapid climate change will prevent this process from occurring quickly enough without some intervention.

Overseas plots covering several hectares have already been established that aim to achieve this at a large scale. For instance, in western North America there is a plot network that covers 48 sites and focuses on 15 tree species planted across a three-year period that covers temperature variation of 3-4°C.

In Australia, a small section of our reserve system, preferably areas that have already been damaged and/or disturbed, could be set aside for such an approach. As long as these plots are set up at a sufficiently large scale, they can act as nursery stock for the future. As fire frequency increases and exceeds some plants' survival capabilities, the surviving genes and species in these plots would then serve as sources for future generations. This approach is particularly important for species that set seed rarely.

Our best guesses about what will flourish in an area in the future will be wrong in some cases, right in others, but ongoing evolution by natural selection in the plots will help to sort out what really can survive at a particular location and contribute to biodiversity. With a network of plots established across a range of natural communities, our protected areas will become more adaptable for a future where many species and communities (along with the benefits they provide) could otherwise be lost entirely.

As in the case of North America, it would be good to see plots set up along environmental gradients. These might include from wet to dry heading inland, and from cold to warm heading north-south or with changing altitude.

One place to start might be the Australian Alps. We could set aside an area at higher altitude and plant low-altitude grasses and herbs. These may help current plants compete against woody shrubs that are expected to move towards our mountain summits.

Lower down, we might plant more fire-tolerant species in mountain ash forests. Near the coast, we might plant species from further inland that are better at handling drier conditions.

The overall plot network should be seen as part of our national research infrastructure for biodiversity management. In this way, we can build a valuable resource for the future that can serve the general community and complement our current ecosystem monitoring efforts.

Ary Hoffmann receives funding from the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network and the Australian Research Council. He is a member of the IUCN Climate Change Specialist Group.

Gas is back on Australia’s agenda in a big way. Last week’s meeting of state and federal energy ministers in particular saw an extraordinary focus on gas in the electricity sector.

While the meeting promised major reform for the energy sector, the federal energy and environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, highlighted the need for more gas supplies and “the growing importance of gas as a transition fuel as we move to incorporate more renewables into the system”.

Gas is certainly a lower-carbon energy source than coal, but gas prices have soared as Australia begins shipping gas overseas.

So what might this mean for energy and climate policy?

Rising gas

In 2013-14 natural gas-fired generation rose to account for 22% of Australia’s electricity generation, although the figure falls to 12% in the National Electricity Market (NEM), which excludes Western Australia and the Northern Territory, both of which use a large amount of gas.

Among the NEM states, South Australia relies the most on gas-powered generation. This means that gas generators generally set the state’s average electricity price, which has usually been higher than those in the eastern states. Average electricity prices in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland tend to be set more often by coal power generators than by gas.

Over the past couple of decades, the construction of interstate transmission lines has helped to smooth out the different prices among states by allowing exports from those with excess, and cheaper, power to those with shortfalls or more expensive power. On balance, the process has helped to provide more affordable and reliable power across the country.

For some years views of the role and future of gas in Australia have been mixed.

But in the United States, abundant natural gas at low prices prompted industry and politicians to welcome gas as a bridge between today’s coal-intensive electric power generation and a future low-carbon grid. The share of natural gas-fired electric generation capacity more than doubled from 19% in 1990 to 40% in 2014, while the share of actual generation from natural gas rose from 12% to 28% over the same period. Last year it accounted for a third of all US electricity generation.

Soaring prices

Yet in Australia, the renewable energy target has forced our energy supply towards renewable energy, namely wind and solar. Together with the absence of a carbon price and the high price of gas produced by the lucrative export market, there have been few reasons for growth in the role of gas to generate power in Australia. This all changed last month.

In July the average wholesale electricity price in South Australia was A$229 per megawatt-hour, compared with around A$60 in the other NEM states. The state’s spot price soared to A$8,898 on the evening of July 7. Low wind output, the darkness of night, high cold-weather electricity demand and the absence of coal plants after several shutdowns all handed strong pricing power to a few gas generators.

The price volatility attracted much alarm, although the Australian Energy Market Operator noted there were no system security or reliability issues, nor departures from normal market rules and procedures. Climate Councillor and former Origin Energy executive Andrew Stock concluded that “increasing reliance on high-priced gas is not a viable solution to reduce power prices or to tackle climate change”.

He argued that more gas power would push up prices even more, increase reliance on the state’s ageing obsolete gas-fuelled fleet and increase greenhouse emissions, including risks of fugitive methane emissions.

On the side of gas, Origin Energy chief executive Grant King pointed out: “South Australia’s electricity demand was met in full. The reality is that, while spot prices ran up, 99.99% of customers in South Australia did not pay one more cent for their electricity. So, from a reliability and affordability point of view, the market delivered.”

Similarly, Tristan Edis from the advisory group Green Markets noted: “In reality the wholesale electricity market as it is currently designed is doing precisely what you would want it to do to accommodate increasing amounts of renewable energy while also ensuring reliable supply of electricity.”

What energy system do we want?

The role of gas is now a conundrum, particularly if, as seems to be the case, Australia’s energy ministers see gas playing a bigger role in shoring up the electricity market.

How this would work is far from clear. Current energy and climate change policies combined with relatively high gas price forecasts suggest that the proportion of gas in the power generation mix is unlikely to rise significantly.

Yet gas plants that can provide backup for intermittent renewable sources such as wind and solar may very well be needed. How much will be needed, for how long and how it will be paid for will depend on how quickly a superior mix of generation and storage technologies with very low emissions emerges and what policy mix drives the transition.

One consequence of these changes must be recognised. Whatever mix of wind, solar and gas power begins to replace our coal-dominated supply sector will cost more. Without a carbon price, electricity is generated from existing sources at less than A$50 per megawatt-hour, while wind, solar and gas all cost at least more than A$80 per megawatt-hour.

In responding to the real or perceived recent crises in South Australia (and Tasmania), our political leaders need to abandon wishful thinking and laying blame to focus on delivering and explaining the energy system that we want and need.

Tony Wood owns shares in companies including in energy and resources through his superannuation fund.

New water policies could cause even more harm to the already damaged Tukituki River. Phillip Capper/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Balancing the environment with development is tricky. One way for policymakers to include the value of ecosystems in development is to set limits for pollution and other environmental impacts, known as environmental bottom lines (EBLs). These can be a helpful way of embedding into an economy the value of ecosystems. They also help protect natural assets in order to maintain a sustainable cash flow.

Unfortunately, bottom lines also risk developments meeting limits without actually helping the environment. Bottom lines form a significant part of environmental policy in New Zealand, in particular in the areas of freshwater and greenhouse gas emissions.

Bottom lines should not have as much influence in New Zealand policy as they do. So how can we make better policy that actually helps the environment?

Setting a low bar

The New Zealand government is reviewing its National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management and is emphasising the need to maximise an economic return on fresh water as a commodity.

In addition, the statement identifies various bottom lines for local councils (such as maximum acceptable concentrations of pollutants and/or minimum water quality attributes), as well as mechanisms to protect minimum flows.

The combination of listing bottom lines while looking for the best economic return can lead to perverse outcomes. For example, the proposed Hawke’s Bay Ruataniwha Water Storage Scheme would protect water supply for intensifying farming, but increases the risk of worsening the already ecologically crippled Tukituki River.

The bottom-line philosophy is so entrenched that environmental groups recently celebrated a ruling that developers could not pollute a river so badly that it would kill off organisms. A bare minimum standard must be met, but it is not something we should aspire to celebrate.

On the other hand, many regional councils are trying to do better than this by specifying goals for improving water quality in certain areas. The Rotorua Lakes and Lake Taupo are examples of central and local government working together to improve conditions.

Lake Taupo Sids1/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

But without clear central government support, those councils that want to go beyond the bottom line and make more significant environmental improvements may end up facing legal action brought by those suffering real or imagined erosion of their property rights.

The same is true of greenhouse gases, particularly those related to transport development. The current benefit-cost approach to investment in roads is not assessed against national emission reduction targets. This leads (as one example) to nationally signficant road projects being approved without accounting for transport emissions increases.

While better roads increase fuel efficiency and so lower emissions per vehicle, they also generate more car use, meaning a net increase in emissions. Road transport emissions have increased 72% between 1990 and 2014.

True, the government has voiced support for electric cars and use of biofuels and also funded more public transport, walking and cycling, which will help reduce emissions. But overall the lack of joined-up thinking and a bottom-line approach – we will pollute, but only this much – protects economic growth rather than the environment.

While water quality and greenhouse emissions are less bad than they might have been with no policies at all, the bottom-line concept implies that ecosystems can be maintained at some measurable minimum acceptable standard, with the option of improvement when conditions allow.

Unless matched with clear timelines and goals to improve ecological health, the result is a continued trading down of ecosystem assets in order to boost economic ones.

Positive developments

An alternative to the bottom-line mindset would be to implement environmental policies that call for net positive ecological outcomes – so-called “positive development”.

This integrates ecological decline and improvement into economic decision-making. The human and ecological history of a place would be accounted for. You would look not only at whether the materials for, say, a building came from sustainable sources, but whether you were contributing to improving ecosystems.

For example, protecting and enhancing biodiversity is done in Australia and New Zealand to offset development impacts. The preference is not just to minimise harm, but to improve things.

In the same way that economic investments need to demonstrate a positive financial outcome, so positive development will require a demonstration of how human activity will contribute to improving ecological health – water quality, biodiversity, local and global air quality, and so on.

Attached to resource consents, it could mean failure to demonstrate net ecological benefit means no permit. This shifts things from, say, just rehabilitating a mine site to requiring demonstrated improvement in its post-mining ecological value, or contributing to improving ecological values elsewhere.

As explained by Janis Birkeland in her 2008 book Positive Development, this approach goes beyond reducing use of materials, carbon and energy (the kind of outcomes attached to such initiatives as green buildings), to requiring improvements in total ecological health over the life cycle of a proposed development.

Applied to water quality, it would require developers to show how they would improve water quality and associated ecological values, rather than merely meeting minimum defined standards. And in terms of climate change, it would require proof that transport funding would result in a decline in emissions, rather than simply limiting the rate of increase.

What is needed is a government that is willing to go beyond requiring that development minimises harm to requiring that it does actual good.

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

Scalloped hammerhead, a species that is listed as endanged by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Mark Priest, CC BY-SA

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) recently raised over A$200,000 to buy shark fishing licences in Queensland’s waters. They estimate the licences, for operating nets in and around the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, could have been used to catch 10,000 sharks each year.

Retiring these licences is a new development in Australian shark conservation, but may also limit locally caught seafood.

But do Australia’s sharks need saving, or can we eat them? It depends on where you look.

Sustainable sharks

Sharks in general are much more vulnerable to overfishing than other fish. Compared to most fish, sharks have far fewer offspring over their lifetimes. As a result, shark populations cannot tolerate the same levels of fishing that fish can sustain.

Globally, there is great reason for concern over the status of sharks. About a quarter of all sharks and rays are threatened with extinction. The high value of shark fins in Asian markets drives a large and often unsustainable shark fishery that reaches across the globe.

Australia has an important role to play in combating this trend. Many species that are globally threatened can find refuge in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which has an extensive system of protected areas and comparatively low fishing effort. Despite this potential safe haven, some species in Australia still rest on an ecological knife edge.

A white-tip reef shark in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Christopher Brown

For example, the great and scalloped hammerheads (which the WWF says will benefit from the licence purchase) are both by-catch species in the Australian fishery and are listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as endangered.

Australian fishermen don’t head out to catch hammerheads intentionally; most people do not consider the meat palatable. However, their hammer-shaped head is easily entangled in nets. Therefore hammerheads may be highly susceptible to any increase in fishing pressure.

Commercial fishers are legally required to have a licence. By buying the licences, WWF can limit the number of active nets in the water.

However, not all shark species are as vulnerable to fishing as the iconic hammerhead. Several shark species in Australia are well-managed. For instance, the spot tail shark is fast-growing and has many young, making it relatively resilient to fishing pressure. Many Australians regularly enjoy these species with a side of chips.

Species targeted by Queensland’s shark fishery are likely sustainable. The latest fishery assessment published by the Queensland government in 2014 found that catches of most shark species were well within safe limits.

Supporting our local shark fisheries is therefore far better than importing shark from overseas where fisheries may be poorly managed.

But it is not all good news in Australia. Both the assessment and an independent review found that while Queensland’s shark catch likely is sustainable, we need to be cautious about allowing any increases.

Importantly, Queensland’s 2014 shark assessment relies on very limited data. A crucial fishery observer program was cut in 2012. The limited data mean that regulations for Queensland’s shark catches are set conservatively low. Any increase in catch is risky without an assessment based on higher-quality data.

Scientists use tag-and-release programs to track the movements and population size of sharks. But more direct fisheries data are needed. Samantha Munroe A win for fishers and fish

Buying up licences in an uncertain fishery may be an effective way to prevent the decline of vulnerable species. Although buying licences is a new move for marine conservation groups in Australia, elsewhere it has proven an effective strategy for conservation and fisheries.

For instance, in California the conservation group Nature Conservancy bought fishing licences for rockfish, some species of which are endangered.

The Nature Conservancy now leases those licences back to fishers that promote sustainable fishing methods. The fishers themselves can charge a higher price for sustainable local catches of fish. What started as a move purely for conservation has had benefits for those employed in fisheries.

The lesson here is that conservation organisations can be the most productive when they work with, not against, fisheries. The recent shark licence purchase in Australia could be a great opportunity for fishers and conservation organisations to work together to maintain healthy ecosystems and fisheries.

But if Australians are serious about protecting sharks, there are other steps we still need to take. Queensland should reinstate the fishery observer program so we have reliable data to assess shark populations. For instance, currently we don’t know how many sharks are caught as by-catch in other fisheries.

A lemon shark seeks its fish prey in the shallow waters on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Lemon sharks are caught by our fisheries, but are not a target species. Megan Saunders

Shark control programs designed to protect bathers are also a threat to endangered shark populations. However, data on deaths from shark control in Queensland were not accounted for in the government’s catch limits.

Accounting for these missing deaths could make a serious dent in our sustainable catch, an independent review found.

There is an opportunity to address these issues in Queensland’s upcoming fisheries management reform. Have your say here.

If conservation groups can work with fisheries, a more consistent and sustainable shark-fishing strategy may emerge. Australians can continue to be proud of our efforts to protect marine life, but can still enjoy shark for dinner.

Christopher Brown receives funding from The Nature Conservancy and the Australian Research Council. He is affiliated with the Australian Marine Sciences Association and the Society for Conservation Biology.

Samantha Munroe receives funding from the Save Our Seas Foundation and the Australian Research Council. She is also a member of the Oceania Chondrichthyan Society.

Better, cleaner buildings could deliver a quarter of Australia's greenhouse gas reductions. Buildings image from www.shutterstock.com

Energy upgrades in Australia’s buildings could deliver a quarter of Australia’s 2030 emissions reduction target. Improving energy performance through improved building design, heating and cooling systems, lighting and other equipment and appliances could also deliver more than half of our National Energy Productivity Target.

Progress has been slow, however, and our research shows that delay leads to lost opportunities and billions in wasted energy costs.

The new federal environment and energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, has an opportunity here to demonstrate the potential of his new merged role. Today in Canberra, Australia’s energy ministers are meeting for the first time since the election through the COAG Energy Council.

One item on the agenda will be the National Energy Productivity Plan (NEPP). It aims to improve energy productivity 40% by 2030. This involves increasing the economic value produced from each unit of energy consumed.

The NEPP contains a number of good measures relating to buildings. However, without stronger governance arrangements, more transparency and stronger and clearer public communication and engagement, there is a risk that these policy measures will simply slip between the cracks of multiple agencies, portfolios and jurisdictions in the building sector.

What can better buildings achieve?

Our research found buildings could help meet our climate and energy goals, as you can see in the charts below.

We found that improving energy efficiency in buildings could deliver 10% of our emissions target. Distributed energy (primarily rooftop solar) could achieve an extra 18%.

Potential contribution of built environment opportunities to 2030 national emissions target (MtCO2e) ClimateWorks Australia, May 2016

The energy efficiency improvements could reduce energy use by 202 petajoules, or half of what would be needed to achieve the energy productivity target.

Potential contribution of built environment energy efficiency opportunities to 2030 National Energy Productivity Target (PJ) ClimateWorks Australia, May 2016 The cost of delay

Despite the massive opportunity to reduce emissions from the building sector, overall progress to date has been slow.

Market leaders, particularly in the commercial office market, have achieved a radical change in their energy productivity and are recognised as global leaders in sustainable buildings. There are many examples of very high-performing or net-zero-emission buildings around Australia.

However, the market as a whole has improved its energy performance only 2% over the past decade for commercial buildings, and 5% for residential buildings. We are not currently on track.

Our report found that continuing to delay action to reduce emissions from buildings means we would lose a substantial amount of cost-effective options to improve energy performance. Many emissions reduction opportunities exist only for a certain period of time. For example, installing inefficient equipment instead of more efficient options effectively locks in excessive emissions for many decades into the future.

Just five years of delay could lead to A$24 billion in wasted energy costs and more than 170 million tonnes of lost emissions reductions by 2050. This is a very substantial loss, considering the current national emissions target aims to reduce emissions by 272 million tonnes by 2030.

Without additional action buildings would eventually consume more than half of Australia’s “carbon budget” by 2050. That would leave less than half for all other sectors of the economy, including emissions-intensive industries, transport, land and agriculture.

Cost of delay (MtCO2e) ClimateWorks Australia, May 2016 Stronger policy

To realise the emissions reduction potential in the building sector, strong policy will be required to tackle the barriers to better energy performance for buildings. Our report recommended five key solutions as part of an integrated policy suite.

First, develop a national plan to co-ordinate policy and emissions-reductions measures to extend gains made by market leaders across the entire building sector.

Second, introduce mandatory minimum standards for buildings, equipment and appliances aligned with the long-term goal of net zero emissions.

Third, develop incentives and programs to motivate and support higher energy performance in the short to medium term.

Fourth, reform the energy market to ensure it supports cost-effective energy efficiency and distributed energy.

Finally, we need a range of supporting data, information, training and education measures to enable informed consumer choice and support innovation, commercialisation and deployment of new technologies and business models.

Implementing these policy measures would set Australia on a pathway to zero-carbon buildings and unlock the large potential for buildings to deliver improved health outcomes and more liveable and productive cities.

Unblocking barriers

Unfortunately, the opportunity to reduce emissions from buildings is blocked by strong barriers that require co-ordination between the Commonwealth, states and territories.

To address the complexity of this task, the NEPP needs stronger governance arrangements, including a specified target or targets for buildings, to complement the overall 40% NEPP target, and more regular public reporting (there is no public review until 2020).

Stronger and clearer communication and engagement around the target and buildings’ energy performance within it would also help provide confidence and drive innovation and activity among households and businesses.

In addition, we need better co-ordination between the members of the Energy Council, and between the council and other government forums and agencies.

For example, the National Construction Code, which regulates minimum standards for new buildings and major refurbishments, is a critical policy lever. However, the code is overseen by the Building Ministers Forum, not the Energy Council, while a range of different state and territory bodies oversee enforcement of the standards.

There are similar issues around harmonising of different energy performance ratings across jurisdictions, co-ordinating training and accreditation of professionals throughout the building design and construction sector, and energy market reform to establish a level playing field for energy efficiency and decentralised renewable energy.

Co-ordination of these issues should be a major focus for the Energy Council. The new minister for environment and energy – as the minister responsible for delivering on both our national emissions reduction targets and on the productivity plan – is now in a unique position to lead these efforts. We encourage the COAG Energy Council to support him in this.

Eli Court is Implementation Manager at ClimateWorks Australia which receives funding from philanthropy and project-based income from federal, state and local government and private sector organisations. ClimateWorks received funding from the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council for the Low Carbon, High Performance report referenced in this article.

Mark July 7th as a red letter day in Australia’s tortuous path to decarbonisation - a day of special significance and opportunity.

The causes and consequences of the wild gyrations on the South Australian electricity wholesale market that day, will be scrutinised for months, worrying regulators, politicians, businesses and commentators alike. The events, and how we interpret them, will have ongoing implications for future business investment decisions, for the survival of struggling businesses such as Arrium, and for how we meet the challenge of decarbonisation.

The events of July 7th will, no doubt, sharpen the minds of our energy ministers who are meeting Friday (18th August) in Canberra at the COAG Energy Council. Thankfully, recent statements by the Federal Minister Josh Frydenberg lend hope to the idea that rationality will trump ideology in any COAG outcome. However recent history suggests it will take some time before the bipartisanship emerges essential to realising the opportunity of our red letter day. Ever the optimist, I remain hopeful.

And in that hope, Dylan McConnell and I have prepared a rather lengthy analysis of those events in a report titled Winds of Change - An analysis of recent changes in the South Australian electricity market, available at this link. Here I summarise some key points we consider in that analysis.

What happened July 7th

July 7th was a calm, cold winter day across South Australia, as it was exactly one year before.

Demand for electricity reached a high of over 2183 megawatts in the early evening well above the typical South Australian average of around 1300-1400 megawatts. The calm conditions meant the output of the 1575 megawatts of installed wind capacity fell to almost zero by mid afternoon and contributed no more than 13 megawatts throughout the high demand evening period. With upgrades on the Heywood interconnecter into Victoria severely limiting the ability to import power, gas generators and a little bit of diesel were all that were available. With Engie’s Pelican Point station effectively mothballed (having earlier on-sold its gas supply into the gas market), AGL (Torrens A an Torrens B) and, to a lesser extent, Origin (Osborne and Quarantine stations) were in a pivotal supplier positions at various stages across the day, meaning they were needed to meet demand. The capacity bid into to the market topped out at 2413 megawatts.

The relevant data is captured in the images below. The first shows the dispatch by fuel type over the period 6th July through to 8th July. The second shows the dispatch by generator/wind farm averaged across 7th July. The third shows the contributions made by interconnector, and different fuels, along with wholesale prices for the period midday through to 11 pm on 7th July.

South Australian electricity market dispatch coloured by fuel type for the period 6th July - 8th July, 2016.

Dispatch by power station and fuel type averaged across the day for July 7th 2016 in South Australia. Stations dispatching less that 10 megawatts are not shown. Other is distillate.

Time series for South Australia on July 7th 2016 from midday onwards. The top panel shows shows the 5-minute dispatch price (note logarithmic scale). Panel b show interconnector flows, with V-SA representing Heywood and V-S-MNSP1 representing Murraylink. The dark line and shaded region shows the net imports, which averaged 151 MW over the period. Panels c, d and e show the output of gas-fired generators, wind and distillate generation during this period. In all panels, vertical tick marks at the top of each panel show period where the 5-minute price exceeded $9,000/MWh

Across the day, SA dispatch prices (that are resolved at the 5-minute interval) exceeded $10,000 per megawatt hour (MWh) on 24 occasions, and the volume weighted price price for the day was just above $1400/MWh. The peak settlement price (resolved at the 30-minute interval) of just below $9,000/MWh occurred between 7:00pm and 7:30pm. For reference the average wholesale price in South Australia is about $60/MWh

Settlement prices were above $2000/MWh for most of the afternoon and evening. In the extreme trading interval between 7:00pm and 7:30pm wind was dispatching only 13.5 megawatts and other generators displayed erratic dispatch patterns. For example, the output from the AGL Torrens Island plants reduced by 90 megawatts soon after 7 pm while the prices remained near the price cap of $14,000/MWh.

To provide a reference frame, it is useful to compare the events of this year, with the same period of last year, as shown below. The comparison is made all the more useful because July 7th in both years were similarly calm, with negligible wind generation, and a very similar demand profile since both were weekdays (peak demand on July 7th 2015 of 2133 megawatts). However, in 2015, Alinta’s brown coal Northern Power Station in Point Augusta was still operating, contributing around 300 megawatts, and the Heywood interconnect was fully operational allowing imports to average around 530 megawatts, and up to 620 megawatts at peak. Together, they meant that for what were essentially equivalent conditions, some 600 megawatts less gas was needed on July 7th in 2015, compared to the same day a year later.

For the period midday through 11:00pm prices on July 7th 2015 averaged only $112/Mwh, with only one 5 minute price spike reaching above $500/MWh

South Australian electricity market dispatch coloured by fuel type for the period 6th July - 8th July, 2015. Dispatch by power station and fuel type averaged across the day for July 7th 2016 in South Australia.

Time series for South Australia on July 7th 2015 from midday onwards. The top panel shows shows the 5-minute dispatch price (note logarithmic scale). Panel b show interconnector flows, with V-SA representing Heywood and V-S-MNSP1 representing Murraylink. The dark line and shaded region shows the net imports, which averaged 151 MW over the period. Panels c, d and e show the output of gas-fired generators, wind and distillate generation during this period.

The key notable difference between the winters of 2015 and 2016 was the price of gas, which had literally gone through the roof, by 375% for the day of July 7th (335% for the week). But that was nothing compared to the wholesale electricity price outcomes which had gone stratospheric, rising some 2000% over the intervals considered here.

Market power

Our wholesale energy-only market is deliberately structured so that scarcity events are valued way above the cost of fuel, which typically would amount to only a few $‘00/MWh for even the most expensive diesel or gas generator. This ensures that enough generation capacity is available to meet scarce high demand periods. For example a gas peaking generator may be needed only a few days a year, and so needs to recoup prices in the $'000’s/MWh for the times it is dispatching in order to cover its long run costs.

To avert risks and ensure supply, participants normally engage via the contract market, rather than directly through wholesale market. A variety of standard contracting arrangements are available. The one that reduces risks of extreme price spikes is the cap contract typically set with a strike price of $300/MWh. The cap contract provides a form of insurance to mitigate exposure to high price events, where the buyer pays a contract price to the supplier independent of the wholesale price outcome, and in return gets refunded for any wholesale price events above $300/MWh.

The importance is that it is rumoured that some large energy users in South Australia were either uncontracted or under-contracted on their supply this year. Any energy intensive business exposed to the wholesale market on July 7th would have been in for one almighty shock.

The extent of contracting varies across the regions that make up the National Electricity Market (NEM), with South Australia reportedly with lower liquidity than other regions. That is consistent with issues to do with market power, or perceptions thereof, and there are certainly strong indications that market power is becoming a big problem in South Australia.

As noted above, key generators were in the positions of pivotal supply on July 7th - by our estimates, AGL for around 87% of the day and Origin for 11%.

There are very good reasons for prices to rise during scarcity events, but how much they rise is dependent on competition. Pivotal suppliers are able to exercise market power to extract so called monopoly rents, and there is certainly some circumstantial evidence that suggests as much, perhaps partly motivated by a desire to force buyers back onto the contract market. Who knows?

A useful index for market concentration is the Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI). As the sum of the squares of the market percentage shares, it can rise to 10,000 for 100% concentration. The ACCC sets an HHI index at 2000 to flag competition concerns. The UK’s Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (OFGEM) regards an HHI exceeding 1000 in an electricity market as concentrated and above 2000 as very concentrated. With a current HHI value of 1243, the OFGEM considers the UK wholesale electricity market somewhat concentrated. According to the Australian Energy Regulator, the regional NEM markets had HHI indices in the range 1700-2000 in 2015. With the closure of Alinta’s Northern and the mothballing of Engie’s Pelican Point station, the effective HHI index in South Australia in July this year was probably around 3300-3400, making it exceedingly concentrated.

It is important to note that the market concentration in South Australia is consequence of a sequence of events, some dating back as far back as 2000 when the state government put its generation assets up for sale. Then minister Rob Lucas refused a request from Origin to split the two gas fired generating stations at Torrens Island (Torrens A and Torrens B), on advice from Morgan Stanley deciding to sell them as a bundle to TXU. One can only surmise the combination was worth more than the sum of the parts, presumably because it would give its new owner greater power. South Australians may now be paying the dues owed on that decision.

But other factors have also conspired. AGL, who acquired Torrens island from TXU in 2007, was not responsible for Alinta’s decision to close Northern in May, or Engie’s mothballing of Pelican Point earlier in the year.

However, by virtue of these events AGL has found itself in a position of unprecedented market power. How it and other participants responded will no doubt be examined in exruciating detail in coming months, not in the least because AGL could find itself with similar power if Hazelwood or Yallourn were to exit Victoria.

What we can see is that margins on South Australian gas generation units have increased dramatically in recent times rising from about $17/MWhr to two to three times that, in a measure called the spark spread. As the figure below shows despite the gas market price rises affecting all regions, South Australia was the only region to show an anomalous rise in the gas margin. A rise in margins with a rise in volumes, is not the trade off one expects in an efficient market.

Top panel - illustrates the spark spread for gas generation in South Australia. The margins for Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia are compared in the bottom panel, since February 2015. Prior to June 2016, the spark spread was relative constant and broadly consistent across the three regions, with the exception of the late summer and early autumn period when Queensland spark spread was elevated by a factor of about four. Prior to June 2016, the South Australian spark spread averaged $17/MWhr. That value is comparable to the spark spread in other, completely unrelated jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom. We assume a typical Combined Cycle Gas Turbine with an assumed thermal efficiency of 50%, analysis by Dylan McConnell.

So what should we make of this?

A number of interdependent factors are playing out in the evolving South Australian electricity sector. The aggregate effect manifest dramatically on July 7th reflects a complex interplay between legacy issues (including existing asset ownership), the increasing penetration of wind generation, competing developments in the gas market, and the absence of coordination of transitional arrangements.

The rise in wind generation in South Australia since 2006 has impacted in several ways. It has put downward pressure on wholesale prices, which declined in real terms in the period 2008 through 2015 (while also generating net Large-scale Renewable Energy Target certificates to the annual value of about $120 million). It is of note that over the last five years the wholesale market prices in South Australia have been pretty much on par with those in Queensland, which has no wind assets.

However, in so doing, wind generation has contributed to decisions to close brown coal generators, and increased South Australian dependence on imports and, in times of low wind output, gas. As one of the largest stations on the NEM in terms of its capacity relative to regional demand, the closure of Northern Power Station in May, 2016, has tightened the demand-supply settings, and that has reset the wholesale price clock upwards.

The dramatic increases in gas prices in the winter of 2016, driven by dynamics in the export market have added at least $140-$200 million to the annual cost of South Australian electricity supply. It is important to note however, due to its historic reliance on gas generation, South Australia has always been exposed to movements in gas prices even without the investment in wind. In pure energy terms, gas generation has been declining over the last decade, due in significant part to the addition of wind to the generation mix.

Despite the closure of the Northern Power station, gas dispatch has remained at near record low levels in seasonally-adjusted terms. What has changed dramatically since Northern’s closure is the concentration of market power. While there are legitimate reasons for power station owners to increase prices to reflect scarcity value, our analysis suggests that recent increases in wholesale prices have been well in excess of the reasonable market response, and reflect the extraction of monopoly rents. Such ‘opportunism’ has been encouraged by poor coordination of the system adjustments, such as mid-winter upgrades to Heywood interconnector.

Multiple options exist that address both of these issues to greater or lesser extent. OCGT is a cheap option to increase capacity and supply in peak periods, but does not improve competition or supply outside these periods and is still partially dependent on gas prices. Storage options can both increase capacity in peak periods, and increase competition through daily arbitrage opportunities. CST further reduces the consumption and reliance on gas, while providing capacity. Additional interconnection (above and beyond the current 190 MW expansion of Heywood) may also prove to be a viable solution.

In the longer term, South Australian experience points to the need to diversify low emissions generation and storage portfolios. As we necessarily decarbonise the national electricity system and increase renewable energy penetration, technologies such as storage and solar thermal will become increasingly necessary to provide for both peak capacity and reliability of supply.

The South Australian experience provides a salutary forewarning of the havoc that can ensue from lack of coordinated system planning in times of transition. It bears on the question of disorderly exit that will be faced in all markets requiring substantial decarbonisation, in part because of the scale of the fossil power stations that are displaced.

Finally, South Australia highlights the potential benefits for system wide oversight of transitional arrangements to avoid market power issues. The recent price rises in South Australia would have been much less extreme had Northern’s closure not occurred prior to completion of the upgrade to the Heywood interconnect at a time when Pelican Point was effectively mothballed, and demand was rising to meet the winter peak. As it transpired, the coincidence of all these factors contributed to a rapid and unprecedented rise in the concentration of market power.

And for the COAG meeting need we emphasize that the benefits of market competition can only be realised if markets are competitive.

For the full details see our report “Winds of Change - An analysis of recent changes in the South Australian electricity market” available here, for which any credit should go to coauthor Dylan McConnell.

Disclosure

Mike Sandiford receives funding from the Australian Research Council for geological work.