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Anyone who has consulted the Federal Parliament’s website to find out what the Safeguard Mechanism (Crediting) Amendment Bill 2023 is all about, now that it has been amended by The Greens, good luck. As with all legislation it will keep lawyers in business. I found explanations by so called journalists wanting. Perhaps they didn’t take the trouble to understand it. I have to say that I think the ABC provided the clearest explanation; at least that I found. Oh for the days when the ABC could be relied upon to provide objective factual commentary. Remnants remind us of what has been and what could be again, if the place were cleaned out and replenished with informed and self-reflective journalists and commentators.
The Safeguard Mechanism catches any entity or company (“facility” in the Bill) whose operations emit more than 100,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2-eq) per year. CO2-eq theoretically converts all greenhouse gas emissions to the equivalent of CO2 in terms of their estimated global warming effect. Apparently 215 facilities are caught right now in the Mechanism, but this of course could change.
Coming into effect on July 1, the Clean Energy Regulator will establish baseline emissions for each facility which they will have to better by at least 4.9 percent each year until 2030. Bear in mind that the 4.9 percent is a constant number deducted from the initial baseline. So a baseline of 100 kilotonnes becomes 95.1 in year one; 90.2 in year two; 85.3 in year three and so on. In other words, the percentage reduction becomes more burdensome as the years roll on.
This is all my understanding, as will be anything else I say on the facts of the matter; of which I’m still not entirely clear. Facts matter. Hence, I’m open to correction. At the same time, my argument about the effects of the legislation is in line with the argument of Adam Bandt and his merry Greens, and I can only assume that they are armed with accurate knowledge of their amendments to the Bill.
The most influential amendment is the placing of a hard and progressively reducing cap on aggregate emissions of those facilities falling under the Mechanism. This is some of what Bandt has said about it:
Coal and gas have taken a huge hit …The Greens have introduced a hard cap on emissions, meaning real pollution must actually come down and the coal and gas corporations can’t buy their way out of the cap with offsets. This puts a limit on coal and gas expansion in Australia.
The Mechanism allows the purchase of Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) or the purchase of safeguard Mechanism credit units (SMCs) by those exceeding their individual cap in any year. SMCs are gifted to those facilities which do better than their individual cap, which they can on-sell to their recalcitrant fellows. The Greens don’t like the idea of so-called polluters, particularly coal and gas producers, paying to pollute by buying either ACCUs or SMCs. They see the overall cap as inhibiting these “offset” transactions and stymying the development of new coal and gas projects. And they’re absolutely right.
Chris Bowen has a problem. Lamely, he is reportedly maintaining that coal and gas projects can still go ahead as the rate of emissions reduction, as a result of the Safeguard Mechanism, will exceed the target and leave 17 megatonnes of CO2-eq free for the use of future polluters. The target, incidentally, is to reduce the present 140 megatonnes of aggregate CO2-eq emissions per year — by facilities in the Mechanism — to 100 megatonnes by 2029-30; and to see to it that no more than 1233 megatonnes in total is emitted between July 2020 and July 2030.
Bowen is desperately dissembling. Clutching at straws. He’s given the store away to The Greens and he knows it. How will anybody be able to assess just how much “free” additional CO2-eq can be emitted by that new “dirty” coal mine at any tick of the clock? It is plainly ridiculous.
Back to real life and The Greens.
We’ve secured a pollution trigger that, for the first time in history … will require the Climate Change Minister to test a new or expanded project’s impact on the hard cap …The Minister’s action or lack of action would be subject to legal enforcement.
Legal enforcement. Ah, there’s the rub. A rub which will deter new projects from starting never mind stop them when they’re afoot. As it is, in May 2021, Australian Federal Court judge Mordy Bromberg sided with a group of eight female teenagers who were intent on stopping a particular mining development because it would contribute to climate change. While his decision was reversed, it was undoubtedly ominous and predictive.
Late last year, Queensland Land Court President Judge Fleur Kingham came down against an application by Clive Palmer to develop a thermal coal mine in the Galilee Basin in Queensland. Why? In part, because the coal when exported and burnt overseas would contribute to climate change.
Now imagine what the courts will do when green and/or indigenous litigants, represented by the likes of the well-funded Environmental Defenders Office (EDO), come armed with the amended Safeguard Mechanism Act with its hard cap on emissions. It’s all over, Red Rover. Energy poverty and related deprivations ahead. Get used to it.
Oh Peter,
Never Fear
For Our Chinese asset
Commandant Dan
As just returned and belted up with
The grand new deal
He’ll get the CCP to run the Gas and the Coal
Be gone with the rules and controls you see
Cause he’ll be selling it to the Chinese
But we little Aussies….
We’ll just scrape the skin off our knees
Day zero lives to play another day, however year zero is on its way.
The good news is that the Greens day of reckoning is nearing its end game.
It hard to convince people that something bad is good, even Pol Pot had trouble getting people to believe him that destroying their lives is a necessary good as is unhappiness.
–
Energy poverty ,when using less is incentivised with paying more- Ah there’s votes in that.
Double-speak! The mechanism is not safeguarding anything; the name serves to render it innocuous. It’s obvious function is to safeguard the path to destruction of jobs, industries and poverty.
Before we know it we will all be collecting wood and dung to fuel our backyard stoves to cook food.
In fact, it should be called the ‘industrial endangerment bill’.
If not the population endangerment bill.
A nation’s plight indeed Peter. And in NSW we have Bowen’s Blight augmented by Matt Kean’s Biodiversity Offset Scheme which almost doubles the cost of land development and public works like dam and railway construction.
Thanks Peter for this interesting explanation. I am very intrigued by the court cases you mentioned at the end where projects were stopped because they would contribute to CO2 emissions even when emitted over seas. It is a well established fact that very large amounts of CO2 is emitted in the raw material extraction, processing, manufacture, transportation and installation of solar and wind “farms”.
If you doubt this then see this Video from Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute which explains the situation –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgOEGKDVvsg
Considering the precedents you have explained already exist how could the courts allow these so called renewables to proceed.
Of course they will proceed because hypocisy is one of lifes certainties but it certainly would demonstrate how corrupt the whole climate issue is.
Yes Stephen. My cousin’s husband is an engineer who has spent the last decade building wind farms. He is not a fan but a job is a job. He says a typical pad for a 3 -4 MW turbine would contain 2500 tonnes of concrete; 500 tonnes of cement. Then there is the steel in the tower. According to a report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (Table 30), depending on make and model wind turbines are predominantly made of steel (66-79% of total turbine mass); fiberglass, resin or plastic (11-16%); iron or cast iron (5-17%); copper (1%); and aluminum (0-2%). Typically the total weight of the turbine and tower is about 200 tonnes per MW so a 3 MW turbine weighs 600 tonnes including 400 tonnes of steel. To replace Liddell power station will require 700 3 MW turbines which only operate for 30% of the time so 2000 turbines widely distributed joined by 1000s of km of transmission lines. Add to that horrendous figure the life of the turbine is 20 years compared to Liddell which started generating in 1963.
Bowen also wants to shut Eraring, a 3000 MW power station in 2025. The man is an idiot. They are not concerned about the environment but are determined to send Australia broke and back to the stone age. Pol Pot would be proud.
It is obvious that we are being nudged closer and closer to the charge of BLASPHEMER (as so exquisitely enunciated by John Cleese in the Life of Brian stoning sequence) for constantly shooting big holes in the “AGW Climate Catastrophe” fulminations.
Well, we are there now:
https://notrickszone.com/2023/04/02/swiss-politician-calls-on-making-climate-denial-a-criminal-offence-obstructs-effective-measures/
Couldn’t happen, you think ? Yeah, right …
Oh , what a “nudge ,nudge , wink wink ” relationship Labor and the Greens have ! Greens doing the heavy lifting while Labor pose as a legitimate party ! On a more microcosmic note , Peter as I posted on an earlier article here , the very paradigm of the free west is about to change , If the UK is any guide . They are busily trying to force home owners and landlords to pay fortunes to get their properties up to green “code” , as our own green ratings for new builds , are in place , and the 15 minute cities, ULEZ diktats may surely be copied by our activist , “me too” local councils . That energy companies haven’t fought tooth and nail for their own survival is staggering , let alone “conservative” govts going to bat for them , common sense apparently not in their quiver.
And in regard to the silent scream-when will the scales fall from the eyes of our social climate engineers ,who consider the whole world their oyster.
Our political elite wants to drastically slash emissions while also running a Big Australia mass immigration program. As Terry McCrann has argued, this is lunacy on steroids. It will be hard enough to reach net zero with 26 million; getting there with a population of 50 million by 2050 will be impossible.