Extracted from Environmental Management News 

Wednesday, 28 January 2009

The Federal Opposition unveiled its own three-pronged climate change strategy - on a "Green Carbon Initiative" involving biosequestration, increasing energy efficiency in buildings and increased investment in new technologies, particularly clean coal. Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull said the Coalition's plan can deliver a hefty 27% emissions reductions by 2020, compared to the Federal Government's 5% target.

"Our Green Carbon Initiative will ensure Australia is able to achieve greater reductions in CO2 than those proposed by [Prime Minister Kevin] Rudd, at relatively low cost and with enormous additional benefits to our own country's environment and productivity," Turnbull said, adding that the Coalition's plan " will create new jobs and new enterprises - without exporting our industries and emissions overseas".  

In a speech over the weekend to the Young Liberals, he said an emissions trading scheme (ETS) " is only part of the solution, one tool in the climate policy tool box, and, in fact, no solution at all without new energy sources and new low emission technologies.

"Whether the ETS is effective will depend on its timing and its design, it will depend on the availability of low-emission technologies and cost effective carbon sinks... [it needs] to be assessed objectively and pragmatically for its effectiveness in reducing emissions without destroying Australian jobs."

He outlined "three gigantic opportunities for CO2 abatement that the Rudd Government has ignored", namely:

• "a comprehensive biocarbon strategy of investing in the health of our landscape, restoring soil carbon by reversing over-grazing and excessive tillage, embedding CO2 in biochar (charcoal fertiliser), tree planting, and revegetation". Turnbull said an increase of "only 0.5% in the soil carbon on 2% of Australia's agricultural land would, according to soil scientist Dr Christine Jones, absorb an amount of CO2 greater than all of Australia's current annual emissions - over 600 million tonnes";
• "dramatically increasing energy efficiency, especially in buildings", most of which would have a "negative net cost". The Opposition says 23% of all emissions in the country originate from buildings; and
• "constructing at least two industrial scale carbon capture and storage power stations deploying industrial scale solar energy and geothermal energy and harnessing the energy of the oceans through tidal and wave power".

Critics said Turnbull's plan was short on detail - Greens Senator Christine Milne welcomed the plan, but said it still protected coalminers, loggers and energy-hungry industries. She said Turnbull was trying to "pull a swifty" by ignoring the impact of the coal industry and logging on carbon emissions.

Others pointed out that the issue of biochar was riddled with uncertainties because the carbon sequestered in soil was difficult to quantify and needed more research, and because it was unclear whether the agricultural sector would take up its use.

Heating biomass in the absence of oxygen, a process known as "pyrolysis", produces biochar - or charcoal - and biofuels for green energy. Biochar can be returned to the soil, increasing the soil's productivity.

Turnbull said improved land management could help harness the latent power in this method. Shadow Environment Minister Greg Hunt has said that if farmers can opt in to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) to obtain carbon credits, it would provide incentives for the widespread adoption of biochar.

Turnbull said the Federal Government's CPRS was an "inferior and much more complex version" of similar proposals that were put forward during the Coalition's time in government. He did not commit to supporting or rejecting the CPRS in the Senate.

"We will have a lot more to say about the design of the Rudd ETS, and its impact on jobs, when we have our own independent economic advice on the White Paper and we see the legislation due to be tabled next month."