Gippsland Climate News

It is actually impossible to plan to ensure a decent future for a community when your government and all its policies were spent denying there is a problem. They spent their time vehemently arguing that we should burn fossil fuels indefinitely. Chester has avoided planning for a decent future by his ‘I’m not as concerned as you’ attitude. To his credit Chester did have a moment where he bravely stood up to extremists in his own party and advocated the acceptance of the dangerously inadequate net zero by 2050 target eventually reluctantly accepted by his government. There are few places in Australia with a better infrastructure for a renewable future with a comprehensive distribution system already in place. However Chester’s government delayed until it belatedly updated legislation to allow offshore wind farms in Australian waters.

His government has long actively thwarted plans for wind, solar and other renewable energy solutions. His government made Australia an International pariah as they acted to delay uptake of renewables. The uncertain future for our regions workers is directly tied to this delay and uncertainty, and to Chester’s own government’s dedication to a fossil fuel future despite the harm this will cause to generations to come. Indeed we are seeing serious impacts already, with intense, widespread fires, frequent intense storms, rain events, floods. Scientists have long predicted these outcomes but Chester’s government has gone against recommended actions at every step.

Chester should acknowledge that as well as the employment of people in the Valley the future of our nation is at risk. We are the 13th largest economy in the world. We also have amongst the highest per capita emissions in the developed world. Our governments have committed us to ongoing mining of fossil fuels and indeed exploration which will feed even more emissions in future. Scientists are predicting that impacts of global heating on Australia will be severe.

This man wasted time when he could make a difference and has left every person not only in Gippsland, but the nation, in a worse place. To now express concern for employees disadvantaged by his government’s inaction is pathetic. There is no justification in delaying the transition to renewables. Those adversely affected by the change must be supported and given a real future as part of addressing the climate emergency. 

*there are a number of critical blogs of Darren’s position on climate. See here and here. The author is a member of EGCAN

Darren Chester* has published a long post on his Facebook page discussing the Integrated System Plan (ISP) recently released by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO). Chester’s response includes a summary of the plan, but his focus quite rightly is Gippsland. One of the key points Chester advocates is a delay in closure of the remaining brown coal power stations as they ‘only’ contribute 7.5% of our national electricity grids emissions and Australia only emits 1.5% of global emissions. He justifies this due to his concern for the workers employed in the fossil fuel industry.

Chester’s argument has sparked my anger. I was one of the East Gippsland Climate Action Network members that met with Chester in 2019, not long before the unprecedented fires that engulfed much of the East coast of Australia. Chester’s response to our anxiety about the rate of global heating and his government’s poor response to action was that he was not as concerned as we were. Of course we probably already had low expectations as Chester has consistently and indeed always voted with his government as they have eliminated the price on carbon, eviscerated every policy that was designed to reduce emissions and stymied effective action by states and industry to tackle the global emergency.

So this man, who was an active opponent of change, is berating the lack of care for people in his electorate who will lose work when the power plants close. Where was his planning and care for a transition when he was in power? Where was his foresight in ensuring new industries were in place to ensure a viable future for the region? Where was his support for a just transition from fossil fuel to a renewable energy led future for our region? Where indeed is his care for the people of Australia as they increasingly suffer the devastating effects of climate change. (to be continued)

*there are a number of critical blogs of Darren’s position on climate. See here and here.

Condensed version first published in the Bass Coast Post

WHAT is the future of renewable energy in the local community? How do we manage the transition to renewables without leaving any of our community behind? These questions are front of mind at Totally Renewable Phillip Island (TRPI) as we start recruiting 100 households on Phillip Island to take part in a 12-month tariff trial using a community battery for virtual storage. Indeed, topical questions of these times, as the Australian Energy Market Operator hit the headlines this month with the unprecedented suspension of the national electricity market.

Back on the Island, the last few months have been busy with great bounds forward in two projects. Both projects are based on Phillip Island and are funded by the Victorian Government under the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning’s Neighbourhood Battery Initiative. They explore neighbourhood batteries as a vehicle for community energy sharing, increased social equity and access to locally produced renewable energy.

TRPI and the Energy Innovation Co-operative has partnered with Mondo, a service provider in community mini-grids and regional energy, to lead an upcoming tariff trial using the Phillip Island Community Energy Storage System Big Battery at Wimbledon. The project is supported by Bass Coast Shire Council. The 5MW battery is currently under construction off site and will be commissioned later in 2022 at the council-owned Gap Road site near Wimbledon Heights.

The tariff trial will look at locally produced household renewable energy in a community-benefit sharing model for social equity. The participants will be involved in co-designing the trial structure with the project partners.

Who can participate? The trial is open to people with houses on Phillip Island (owners, renters, holiday home-owners), people without solar panels as well as people with solar panels, and people from all walks of life – we’re looking for diversity and to enhance social equity in the community’s access to renewable energy.

Earlier this year TRPI conducted a community survey where over 95 per cent of respondents said YES or MAYBE they would consider donating their excess solar to others in the community to increase social equity. Given the generosity shown by the community to date, we are very interested to see the results of the co-design process and outcomes of the trial.

The Phillip Island Community Energy Storage System (PICESS) will be a permanent installation on the island and will mainly address the need for peak supply during summer and improve the resilience of supply in summer while also being available at other times for other network, market, or community services. This can lead to an improvement in the consistency and reliability of the electricity on the Island. We also plan for this battery to enable new technologies and trials and increase the solar capacity on the island…

TRPI’s vision is for Phillip Island to be carbon neutral and 100 per cent renewable by 2030. These neighbourhood battery initiative projects are stepping stones to a thriving local renewable energy movement. This is an innovative project happening in our shire, with the community actively engaged to have a say in how this model will develop through the region.

Zoë Geyer is co-ordinator of Totally Renewable Phillip Island (TRPI)

The first blog in this column was posted on the 28 November 2012 – nearly ten years ago. The early blogs were mainly part of my political campaigns – running for office and trying to form a ‘climate’ party. This mainly involved letters and press releases to the local media. Gradually news items, opinion pieces including those by guest bloggers, and images, were all added to the mix and by mid-2015 the blog had become a regular twice weekly affair. At 300 to 500 words per blog, I estimate that about 250,000 words have been written in 600 plus blogs.

The aims of blog have not changed. The subject matter has stayed local and restricted to wider Gippsland, and where wider commentary or news has been involved written by local authors. The latter especially applies to book reviews and general comment on climate change. My style has been deliberately folksy and personal where appropriate, accurate, and endeavouring to keep the science as simple as possible. It has attempted to remain positive and hopeful in the long process of combatting the forces of denial and vested interests, although occasionally negative pieces have slipped through, one of which, an early piece on wet bulb temperatures, has had quite a number of readers over the years.

The monthly readership has been between 800-1200 for the last five years with occasional peaks above. My most read blog remains a piece on the CSIRO bushfire predictions in 1987 published before the black summer bushfires took off in Gippsland at over 7000 reads.

Partly due to my workload, and partly relief at having the climate deniers and delayers booted out of Federal government I have decided to reduce the blogs from twice a week to weekly. It will also no longer be as regular with occasional missing weeks, but the struggle goes on. The vested interests, their acolytes and the deniers are still with us, holding positions of power and influence in parliaments, the media and various other organisations; they have not gone away.

The recent election of an ALP government in Canberra seems momentous but in reality it is a small step in the right direction. During World War II Winston Churchill said: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” So, hopefully, it is too with the struggle for real action on the climate emergency.

David Attenborough is known all over the world for his studies of the natural world and amazing documentaries. He has had interest and employment in this area for close to 85 years and shares his observations over that period in this most informative book. The first half of the book is his “witness statement” where he outlines the clear deterioration of the planet as the population increases along with carbon in the atmosphere and biodiversity loss, while the remaining wilderness decreases.

To outline the clearly unsustainable rate at which the planet heads towards a point at which it becomes uninhabitable for humans, David commences his witness statement in 1937 and concludes in 2020. In 1937 the population is 2.3 billion people, atmospheric carbon 280ppm, and the remaining wilderness 66%. In just 83 years to 2020 the population has increased to 7.8 billion, atmospheric carbon to 415ppm, and the remaining wilderness has declined to just 35%. The key factors contributing to the changes are outlined.

David goes on to describe the loss of biodiversity and the critical state of the planet in 2020 where:

* we are cutting down 15 billion trees each year and the world’s rainforests have been reduced by half.

*river systems are degraded, reduced in size and polluted with chemicals, while mangroves disappear.

*nitrates, phosphates, and overgrazing continue to destroy topsoil while fertile land suitable for growing food reduces dramatically each year.

*insects and pollinators decline heavily due to our use of pesticides.

*plastics invade food chains and over 90% of seabirds have plastic fragments in their bodies.

*of all the mammals on the Earth 96% is made up of humans and the animals we raise to eat. Just 4% of mammals are wild animals.

He outlines what lies ahead, which without immediate change does not look pretty.  Then comes his vision for the future which focuses on rewilding the land and the sea, switching to clean energy, planning for peak human, and taking up less space. This would lead us to achieving more balanced lives and making us a species that is more in harmony with the natural world around us.

David concludes by saying “We can yet make amends, manage our impact, change the direction of our development and once again become a species in harmony with nature. All we require is the will. The next few decades represent a final opportunity to build a stable home for ourselves and restore the rich, healthy and wonderful world that we have inherited from our distant ancestors. Our future on the planet, the only place as far as we know where life of any kind exists, is at stake.”

This is not an easy book to read, the truth never is, but it highlights the Climate Emergency that we are currently in and our need to take immediate action. The humans living in this current decade are in a unique place in history and THE FUTURE IS IN OUR HANDS.

*the Author is from Metung

The big news for the Latrobe Valley has been AGL’s decision not to go ahead with their planned demerger and hiving-off of their coal assets, due to the pressure mounted by the now largest shareholder and software billionaire Mike Cannon-Books. Cannon-Brookes, after having a takeover offer rejected by the AGL board, continued his opposition to the demerger and with his share purchase and getting other large shareholders onside, effectively blocked it. He is now in a position to direct the board along the lines of actions that are compatible with the limiting earth’s warming to the 1.5 degree target of the Paris Climate conference.

This effects Gippsland as AGL are the owners of the Loy Yang A power station and the Loy Yang brown coal mine. The latter provides fuel for both the Loy Yang power stations, covers about 6000 ha, and has a licence to operate until 2065. Recently the AGL board reduced the projected closing date of Loy Yang A from 2048 to 2043. Their website fails to account for the urgency in the climate crisis when stating “Loy Yang is committed to an orderly, respectful, and smooth transition for the Latrobe Valley away from coal-fired power generation” and will give 5 years notice of closure.

Currently Loy Yang A provides about 2 Gigawatts, or 30% of Victoria’s power. Renewables provide about the same and Yallourn and Loy Yang B the rest. 2 Gigawatts is about the size of Star of the South offshore wind, projected to come online in 2028. I have been unable to find out how many people Loy Yang A employs but the smaller “Loy Yang B employs up to 152 full-time staff and another 40 contractors. It is Victoria’s newest and most efficient brown coal-fired power station and can generate approximately 17% of Victoria’s power need”. Sudden closures, even with years notice will have a drastic effect on the Valley.

It is not clear what will eventuate from the Cannon Brooks ‘unofficial’ takeover. Certainly there will be a major expansion of activity in renewable energy – most likely solar and batteries. Planning will be paramount, aiming for a just transition for the workforce, and maximum efficient use of the Valley infrastructure. What is certain is that the closure date of Loy Yang will be brought forward at least to 2035 and possibly a lot earlier.

The astonishing success of the so-called ‘teal’ independents – in reality climate independents – has vindicated the ‘vote climate’ strategy, which I have been advocating for many years. The strategy involves running in ‘safe’ conservative seats and exploiting the ‘preferential’ voting system. To be successful the climate independent must draw a substantial number of votes from the incumbent conservative and reduce their primary vote to well below 50%. Ideally, they should come first or second in the primary vote, which will mean they have also taken a substantial number of primaries off the other parties, and they must then collect almost all of the second preferences of these parties to place them in an absolute two party majority.

My own efforts as a climate independent were puny, admittedly with the much smaller aim of publicising the issue (in which I was moderately successful) and in getting 4% of the vote to get my deposit returned and some funding (which I failed at each attempt). What stands out is that essentially I am a ‘loner’ – mostly I have pursued my economic and political life alone or with a small number of friends – and hardly likely to succeed in elections. A leader is someone who does things first, but also gathers supporters and followers.

The ‘teal’ successes were in urban inner city seats where tertiary educated voters were high, they had prominent, smart, women candidates and pushed policy over party loyalty, often supported by one of the many locally based ‘Voices’ groups. Generally, they had an army of volunteers and many received financial support from Climate 200. By contrast, both Gippsland electorates are large, stretching from the mountains to the sea, with voters correspondingly more dispersed. Only Monash has a ‘Voices’ group and had an independent candidate.

The campaign in Monash by Deb Leonard had some advantages and there was probably some spin-off from the publicity that the city ‘teal’ candidates were getting in the mainstream media. Besides the natural disadvantage of being a spread out electorate, other disadvantages included having a ‘young’ voices group and by comparison, a relatively small number of volunteers, and having the Greens preference against her. As far as I am aware, Deb received no funding from Climate 200. Even so, she managed to receive nearly 11% of the primary vote and came third followed closely by Greens Matt Morgan on just under 10%. The incumbent’s primary vote is now only 35% and the seat of Monash is now definitely marginal.

The winter edition of Environment Connect has the latest on the roll-out of fast charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs). It noted that “Electric vehicle charging stations are being installed in public carparks across East Gippsland. Council has secured federal and state government funding to install seven fast chargers with the rollout to be completed by June 2023. The aim is to support the uptake of electric vehicles and encourage tourism across our region”. Also importantly it noted that all “electric vehicle charging stations installed by Council will source 100 per cent renewable electricity as part of VECO.”

Stage one has fast chargers being installed in Bairnsdale, Omeo, Orbost and Cann River and Stage two adds Lakes Entrance, Buchan and Mallacoota. The seven chargers will be installed progressively over the next year. Further the Shire is negotiating with private providers to set up further fast chargers Bruthen, Paynesville, Lakes Entrance, and Cann River.

The fast chargers will be 50kW direct current and charge a vehicle within an hour. They will be located in pairs in public car parks. Each charger will have dual plugs – CCS2 and CHAdeMO – that will fit most EVs. “Council has secured federal and state government funding to install seven fast chargers.”

No mention is made in the article of how customers will be charged or whether they will be free as they are in many locations. Using charging from commercial chargers via paypal is still a miniscule amount compared with the current price of petrol. For those not familiar with EVs (most of us?) it should also be noted that they can be trickle charged anywhere there is a 15 amp plug – every caravan park in Australia.

Following on from a U3A lecture on the ‘carbon bomb’ threat posed in future world plans for the development of oil and gas it occurred to me that there are a number of other future ‘possibilities’ and to a large extent these were mutually exclusive. Needless to say the ‘carbon bomb’ future is thoroughly depressing. Two others that I have in mind are the renewables superpower revolution as outlined by Tony Seba (many of his videos on youtube worth a watch) and Paul Gilding’s climate contagion.

Gilding’s ‘climate contagion’ is where economic collapse occurs when the “climate emergency meets financial contagion’ and he is convinced it will occur before 2025. The four preconditions he lists for the contagion to occur are “1. Clean technology is available, scalable, superior and investable. 2. Physical climate change is obvious and accelerating. 3. Public engagement and political momentum are rapidly turning [and] 4. The financial markets are primed”. The recent ‘climate election’ in Australia is a good example of turning ‘public engagement and political momentum’, as is the board turmoil in AGL our largest coal generator. If ‘climate contagion’ eventuates the ‘carbon bomb’ will have been avoided, but will probably usher in political instability and reaction in its wake.

Tony Seba concentrates on Gilding’s point one – the clean technology revolution and argues that this will take place solely by market forces and have occurred by 2030. Seba (and his think tank RethinkX) adds that with government assistance the transformation will happen more quickly and is essentially a message of hope though it too involves the complete disruption of the fossil fuel industry.  Based on a number of factors that converge to encourage exponential growth in solar and wind energy and batteries the clean technology disruption is inevitable. I hope to present the Seba solution in more detail in a later blog.

Essentially we must change rapidly to 400% wind and solar and batteries to cover our stillest, cloudiest, shortest winter days. But for most of the year there will be superabundant energy at very low cost. Whilst there may be delays (and disruptions) to the clean technology future it is what the earth needs, and most of those fossil fuel proposals in the development pipeline – the carbon bomb – will be stranded assets.

2014 Speech to Candidate’s Forum at the Riviera Christian Centre, Bairnsdale

The 2013 heatwave has been calculated as 2000 times more likely to have occurred because of climate change. The heatwave of January 2014 caused an extra 167 fatalities. Now we can say that these events have been heavily influenced by climate change and that therefore some of these fatalities have been caused by the warming. We don’t know how many but eventually sophisticated science and statistics will be able to put an exact number on each event. We can safely assume that in the last 15 years some hundreds of our fellow countrymen have been killed by the effects of climate change. Compare this with terrorism in Australia. The last terrorist attack in our country was in 1915, nearly 100 years ago, when there were 4 fatalities.

Which leads me to the role of the media. Sometimes we could get the impression from our papers, radio and TV that the whole of Australia is under constant terrorist attack, or that the Essendon Football Club is the most important thing on earth, whereas the real threat of climate change is barely mentioned, or worse, often scandalously attacked. The role of the media in many aspects is a betrayal of us all. They have been persuaded by their 40 pieces of silver and many of our politicians have also taken their share. The role of vested interests in persuading the public and influencing the political process and the highest politicians in the land is also a betrayal. Perhaps it is time, figuratively speaking, that these ‘moneylenders were cast from the temple.”

Sometime in the 15th or 16th century the English divine Thomas Norton coined the maxim “Hope for the best but plan for the worst”. This is what we do in many aspects of our life. In 2003 and 2006/7 we had two massive Alpine bushfires – both heavily influenced by climate change. In each of these events my family house at Ensay was directly threatened and I worked hard each day preparing for the possible bushfire attack. I was planning and preparing for the worst. That essentially is what everyone must do with regards climate change – “Hope for the best but plan for the worst”.

I will briefly touch on a few of the possible solutions to this enormous problem. Firstly if your church saves energy and money it is heading in the right direction. I note the many solar panels on the Uniting Church on the Great Alpine Road. Second it is your moral imperative to make sure that your church funds are not invested in coal. Some churches are already part of the so-called divestment movement. Finally we have to persuade our politicians that this is an urgent problem, above party politics, needing immediate and appropriate attention. You can do this by casting your first vote for me before marking the rest of your ballot paper and send a direct message to the major parties in Spring St.