Climate & Energy Program

Clean energy technology is becoming competitive with fossil fuels, globally. This provides the basis for a new strategic approach to solving the political aspect of the climate threat.
This is a speech given at 'Imagining a Different Future Conference', Hobart, on 8 February 2018, hosted by the University of Tasmania, the University of Utrecht Ethics Institute, the University of Tasmania's Institute for the Study of Social Change, the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (ACE CRC) and the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Science (IMAS).

The Australia Institute’s submission to the NT fracking Inquiry has found that fully exploiting the Northern Territory’s shale gas resources could result in emissions equivalent to sixty times Australia’s total current annual emissions, equivalent to 130 new coal power plants operating for 40 years.

The submission also finds that the inquiry failed to follow its own Terms of Reference to consider the cumulative impacts of fracking, instead basing its risk assessment on a single gas field in isolation.

The Australia Institute’s Climate & Energy Program has released the National Energy Emissions Audit for December 2017 which shows that Australia’s energy emissions hit another record peak in the year to July 2017, before slight reductions to September. The Audit, compiled by renowned energy specialist Dr Hugh Saddler, provides a comprehensive, up-to-date indication of key greenhouse gas and energy trends in Australia.

The cost to households of the electricity they use has been a sensitive political issue in Australia for at least the past six or seven years, and seems certain to remain so. That was certainly the case in 2010-11 when the then Labor government was negotiating passage of its package of carbon pricing/emissions trading legislation, which subsequently came into force on 1 July 2012. The government provided additional funds to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to undertake a national survey of household income, housing and energy use (ABS 2013a, 2013b).