Like nearly every other morning I was channel hopping while I ate my breakfast.  I like to go to a variety of news reports and I want to know what people are talking about.  The breakfast shows are a great mix for this but I am bored witless if I stick with just one of them.  The thing is that I need to be in charge of the remote – shared hopping is hard.

I caught a really interesting interview on ABC 2 with Dr James Hansen of Columbia University, an atmospheric physicist who has been studying global warming for many years.

I thought this was important to share because it is different to both extremes of political opinion in this country.

His firm opinion is that we need a price on carbon, or carbon tax and that this needs to rise over time with all the proceeds going to the public and to encourage alternative power generation.

He stated that emission trading is a tax that is merely pretending there is a solution and it will achieve nothing and would be very difficult to wind back.

If we have a carbon tax instead of an ETS, we still need the ability to count the carbon involved so the work some businesses are putting in at present will not be wasted.

The guy made so much sense.

One thing he said is that coal export is like “drug dealing’ to coal addicted countries.

He also discussed nuclear power and that was interesting.  Apparently the reactors that we all worry about are type 1 and 2 but the current nuclear reactors being built are type 3 which automatically detect problems and close down with no room for human error.  Type 4 reactors are under development and will run on the waste from earlier reactors so that there will be no waste to manage.

Would you feel more comfortable if the waste issue was fully resolved for nuclear power?  I know I would.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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The latest Australian electricity production models predict the following energy split by 2030: coal – 43%, gas – 37%, wind – 12%, hydro – 3.5%, geothermal – 1.5% and solar -1%.   This is from ABARE

Apparently the Federal government has also commissioned independent modeling of production prices for different generation sources for electricity.  The data has not been released but apparently the lowest cost is geothermal, “with nuclear, gas, and coal with carbon capture and storage beating all forms of solar”.   And all prices are higher than we are currently paying.

The Australian Solar Energy Society has rejected these findings, because they say the models ignore an expected 50% or more reduction in solar costs over the next 20 years.  This does seem as though it should be considered.

One of the problems with geothermal power in particular is transmission distances between geothermal sources and our current cities.  Electric transmission has huge inefficiencies.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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Could global warming run out of control?

Vast amounts of methane – which is 25 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide – are stored in the permafrost and scientists have long warned that, if it escapes as temperatures rise, it could greatly accelerate global warming.  But so far they have largely looked for this happening on land.

A new study, at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks has found what it describes as “a large but overlooked source of methane gas escaping from permafrost underwater”.

The researchers surveyed the waters above the 772,000 square mile East Siberian Arctic Shelf, north of Russia from 2003 to 2008 and found that some eight million tons of methane was escaping from it every year.  This is about the same as had previously been estimated to be released from all the world’s oceans.  And, the researchers also found that levels of methane in the air over the Arctic are higher than they have been for 400,000 years

Scientists had hoped the permafrost under the shelf would act as an impermeable barrier, sealing in the methane, but it is degrading because the water running down rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean is warmer than in the past.  The sea over the shelf is no more than 50 metres deep, so that the gas reaches the surface as methane, whereas in deeper water it oxidises on the way up turning into the less harmful CO2.

More study needs to be done to see how significant this is but it could turn out to be one more piece of evidence that the effects of climate change are becoming evident faster than anyone predicted.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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Ok let’s face it we are all human and sometimes we make mistakes.  The person who never made a mistake never made anything and you don’t want them around.

The important thing is to admit you “stuffed up”, sort out why you did and fix it.  Be open and honest and don’t blame.

A very few scientists in the IPCC stuffed up, and tried to hide it.  Well that is plain stupid. An error is excusable – the lie is not.  It was found out when some emails were stolen from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in the U.K.

The flow on from this has been ammunition for the climate change skeptics.  Pity about that because the science of climate change is strong and we need to all start doing something practical about it.

The mistake of exaggerating to make the case stronger has actually had the opposite effect as skeptics and ultra conservatives ignor the bulk of evidence and confuse the politics.

There is no doubt regarding the following key points:
The global climate is changing.
Human activities produce heat-trapping gases.
Heat-trapping gases are very likely responsible for most of the warming observed over the past half century.
The higher the levels of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, the higher the risk of potentially dangerous consequences for humans and our environment.

The national academies of science of 32 nations, and every major scientific organization in the United States whose members include climate experts, have issued statements endorsing these points.

You must have been reading the news reports describing the stolen e-mails from climate scientists and the errors in the IPCC reports.  Some aspects of climate change impacts have been overstated, but this does not undermine the conclusions that humans have taken over from nature as the dominant influence on our climate.

So why am I talking about this?

Do you know what happens in your business when a mistake happens?  Does it get reported and sorted out?  Or does it get covered up, ignored and repeated again and again.

Are your staff wasting time and money as mistakes get ignored and covered up but the errors go out the door, goods need reworking and your customers get upset.

You will discover that the really big benefit of having an ISO management system in your business is a simple and effective feedback system plus a culture of admitting mistakes and sorting out how to prevent them.

It does not matter whether you are doing ISO 14001 or ISO 9001, when you build a management system; you build a feedback system and culture of admitting and correcting mistakes.

I know some of you worry that this will increase your red tape but this idea is wrong!

I keep it really simple and use communication forms instead of non-conformance or corrective action forms.

I discovered that more people use them when they have a “friendlier” name.  A fisherman sorted me out on that one around twelve years ago when he asked “what the **** is a non conformance form”.  I have called them communication forms and found that really works, ever since.

For more information on how I can help you reduce mistakes and change the culture in your business, go to www.enviroaction.com.au

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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The federal government’s planned emissions trading scheme is now on the parliamentary backburner after the Senate on Wednesday refused to debate the draft laws until May.

I think this is wise because the current proposed scheme gives too much to the polluters and apparently ignores small business among other flaws.

The evidence around the world is that carbon pricing works in the long term

What we need are incentives to waste less energy for investment into renewable energy.

I am not convinced that nuclear energy is the way to go because it builds up yet another form of pollution for future generations to cope with, it takes a long time to implement and it is very carbon intensive to set up.

We need our leaders to rationally discuss how to find the least economically disruptive and fairest possible way to ensure our way of life against the risks of climate change.

We need sufficient incentives for businesses and consumers to change their behaviour in a way that can de-link economic growth from emissions levels, and in an acceptably fair way.

This problem will not be solved with political posturing and televised temper tantrums.

There is a definite global trend emerging and that is: mandatory action so we cannot do the ostrich thing and bury our heads in the sand nor can we have leaders turning into robotic and expressionless creatures repeating the same word-perfect nonsense again and again

27 European Union member states have had emissions trading since 2005, and New Zealand will start one in July this year. Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, 16 US states and four Canadian provinces, and even the US congress, are at various stages of legislating their own cap-and-trade schemes. The Norwegians and Swedes (and the French, Irish and Spanish soon will) have direct carbon taxes for certain economic sectors not covered by the EU’s ETS.

I think that the Coalition’s stand is buying us time to have rational debate but we will need a price penalty to give a firm incentive.  We do need to be flexible, prepared to learn from mistakes and get the policy design right to create incentives for those long-term structural changes.

Recent studies of the EU ETS, suggest that despite some significant flaws in the way the ETS was initially designed, the evidence points to the following conclusions.
1.    The trial phase did significantly reduce emissions.
2.    The trial phase highlighted the importance of government initially auctioning emissions permits to industry. The study noted that where big business received free permits, they gained windfall profits. They reap a reward for no abatement from the free allocation.
3.    Auctioning a high proportion of permits also allows government to realise a double dividend with the revenue. Other taxes can be removed; deficits reduced; workers in strongly affected industries can be compensated and retrained; and public investments in complimentary emissions reductions that are not suitable for carbon pricing can be made.

Europe is in the process of shifting to auctioning of permits for all but those industries exposed to international competition.

The Australian proposed carbon reduction pollution scheme, does propose to start with full auctioning to all but trade-exposed industry and, for some dubious reason some power generators.

We do need to be flexible, prepared to learn from mistakes and get the policy design right to create incentives for those long-term structural changes.

The emerging evidence from the European Union, the lessons from economic theory, not to mention the global policy trend, is that carbon pricing is an indispensable pillar of equitable, effective and economically responsible climate policy for the long term.

Independent senator Nick Xenophon says believes the best way to tackle emissions is through an ETS but it needs to be an efficient scheme with a higher target and believe we could achieve 15 per cent for the same price as the Government’s five per cent cuts.

At present there is a carbon policy vacuum in Canberra.  A recent survey of CEOs shows that business is looking for direction.

Increasingly in Canberra, more intelligent ministers understand that Labour’s emissions trading scheme smells a bit like the insulation scheme in the list of government disasters.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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Singapore is hosting the World Green Building Congress in September and its own commitment is to have 80% of its buildings environmentally sustainable  by 2030.

They have a study that shows a fuel switch from electric storage heaters to gas continuous flow heaters may result in carbon emission reductions of up to 86% at the national level.

Green buildings has a triple benefit
Lower greenhouse emissions,
Lower fuel bills for occupants
And considerably more comfort for occupants

This really is the path to sustainability

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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A visiting German expert says that South Australia could be powered by 100 per cent renewable energy  and this is no fantasy.

Dr Harry Lehmann, from Germany’s Federal Environment Agency, has more than 25 years of experience in sustainable energy policy.

He helped convince his own government that a future powered by 100 per cent renewable energy was not only possible, but desirable, considering the rising cost of fossil fuels.
His theme is that energy will be more expensive in the future, whatever scenario you take and if you stick to fossil fuels there will be even higher energy costs.”

He suggests a combined power plant linking and controlling wind, solar, biomass and hydropower installations to balance out short-term fluctuations in supply and demand.

The mix of technologies serves to silence critics who claim renewable energy is unreliable.

He said it reminds him of the days when the people didn’t believe that an aeroplane could fly, “As long as you don’t see that it flies, you don’t believe the science behind it. And that’s the same with renewables.”

Premier Mike Rann said SA was on track to achieve a goal of 33 per cent renewable energy by 2020, with close to half the nation’s wind power capacity and 20 per cent of residential grid-connected solar panels.

Dr Lehmann said it would be possible to achieve 100 per cent renewables by 2050 if planning started now.

I love the concept.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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In the next week or so the government will reintroduce its emission trading or carbon pollution reduction bill back into parliament.

My personal feeling is that it is deeply flawed.  I believe we do need a price on carbon but we also need to take other direct measures to reduce emissions and improve the environment.

•    We need a scheme that takes into account small to medium business and all households.
•    It needs to offer real incentives to reduce our energy and resources waste and
•    it needs to be simple to administer and flexible enough to fit in with what ever carbon trading arrangements are finally agreed internationally.
•    It also needs to correct some of the major errors that are in the Kyoto Agreement – like protecting deforestation which is urgently needed around the world.

Australia’s top climate adviser Ross Garnaut has rubbished both the ETS and the opposition’s schemes.

He says the amount of compensation the government plans give to polluters is an “abomination”.

Professor Garnaut has rejected the idea of compensating business owners for greenhouse gas pollution but the federal government’s carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS or ETS), coming up for its third attempt to het through before parliament, includes billions of dollars in compensation to Australia’s major polluters

Energy generators have had too much of a say in the climate change policy debate, Prof Garnaut said. And “Having being promised very large amounts of money, the generators no doubt felt a sense of entitlement and have struggled very hard for it every since.”

He said “I thought debates over governments taking huge decisions about resource allocation ended with the fall of the Soviet Union.”

One hopes that they will all actually sit down and talk to come up with some sense instead of the inflexible standoff we have at present.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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Australian Government Ministers have repeatedly and incorrectly declared that burning liquid natural gas (mostly methane, CH4, and related hydrocarbons) is “clean energy”.

I am not sure I agree and it raises some interesting viewpoints which I will summarise as dot points:
•    Collecting methane from landfill and using it makes total sense – far better than releasing it to the atmosphere
•    If the gas in coal seams is going to escape it makes sense to use it and as burning 1 Kg of coal will produce 24MJ vs one Kg of natural gas which produces 53.6MJ so it is more efficient than coal and would be a sensible replacement to keep the employment going in those areas
•    The energy required to create bio fuel from food products, like corn, soy bean or algae, must be more that what it takes to extract natural gas when you take into account all the fertiliser, tractor fuel, transport and of course the water and water pumping.
•    Whether bio fuel can be called a clean energy source is dubious.  Especially as it depletes food stocks and is responsible for mass clearing of tropical rain forests to make way for more plantings.
•    Biofuel made from algae grown on sewage is the only one that makes sense to me

As we have plentiful natural gas in Australia it makes sense to use this as an interim and booster fuel source while we get real renewable energy developed.

Coal, oil and natural gas are true carbon sequestration and extracting this, then trying to find a new and safe way to sequester carbon does seem a tad insane.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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When soil is not fertilised using superphosphate, which kills earthworms, they do a wonderful job aerating the soil and increasing carbon storage in soils.

This post is an add-on to” its all about pollution” where I discussed the impact of chemical fertilisers.

This will be more important if farmers end up being paid to store carbon in soil as suggested by the Coalition in Australia.

We need our earthworms in both our home gardens and in agriculture.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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