Thread by @docbaty

We’ll begin today’s reading of the @SatPaper with this article by @secco - thesaturdaypaper.com.au/share/13577/Va…

Taylor’s office spent $1 billion on ‘sham’ carbon projects

[The reason I’m going to harp on about this is because next week’s Budget will contain more money for shit projects.]

"Analysis by a former chair of the government’s carbon pricing integrity committee shows almost all the money spent on emissions reduction has gone to projects that did not contribute to reductions."

[Minister Taylor is just one of a number of cabinet members who don’t seem to know how to do the basics of their portfolio. Whether it’s Colbeck not caring about the Aged, or Joyce not grasping infrastructure, they’ll all of a type.]

"One of the Morrison government’s major programs to combat climate change, the Emissions Reduction Fund, has wasted more than a billion dollars of public money on projects that don’t actually reduce net emissions, according to detailed new expert analysis."

"Three-quarters of projects awarded lucrative carbon credits by the government yielded no environmental benefit, according to Professor Andrew Macintosh, ... the director of research at the ANU law school. He described Australia’s carbon market as a “sham”."

[Why should we care about the ERF? Aside from the massive expenditure of public money, it is meant to be a key mechanism by which hard-to-abate industries - such as agriculture - can close the gap between their emissions reduction efforts and net-zero.]

[Emitters can buy credits earned by others who *are taking carbon out of the atmosphere* and offset their vestigial emissions. As we’ll see, there are issues with both sides of that plan… @TheAusInstitute has some really good explainers on their youtube channel.]

"“People are … getting credits for growing trees that are already there,” he says. “... And they are getting credits for operating electricity generators at large landfills that would have operated anyway.”

"Most relevantly to this story, though, he [Macintosh] was chair of a body called the emissions reduction assurance committee (ERAC) from 2013 to the start of 2020."

"On the basis of detailed analysis conducted by Macintosh and his six-member team of economists and ecologists, those standards are low and declining. The government’s Emissions Reduction Fund, he says, amounts to a fraud against both the environment and taxpayers."

[You & I should care about the way the government spends our money. A billion dollars could build a few more schools; 3 large teaching hospitals; cover the cost of increasing social support benefits and lift 100,000 people out of poverty… it matters that it’s wasted.]

"Macintosh concedes he is himself somewhat “implicated”. He says early mistakes in the design of the scheme left loopholes that were exploited by carbon traders and others. But when those mistakes were identified, the government resisted acknowledging them."

[As with the water trading markets, the Government has been loathe to close market design flaws that allow some people to make a lot of money. Especially if those people happen to support the Coalition; and why wouldn’t they.]

“…"“beyond a simple cover-up to what I suggest is more an overt distortion of the scheme to facilitate the issuance of credits for abatement that are either not real or not additional”.”

[For 9 years the Coalition has put its effort into accounting tricks.]

"Macintosh says... Angus Taylor, and the Gov't are engaged in a greenwashing exercise, creating millions of carbon credits of dubious integrity that can then be sold to big carbon polluters ... which can then be claimed as offsets against their emissions."

"In the face of rapidly increasing demand for credits, Macintosh says, the federal government “has made a decision to lower the integrity standards of those credits in order to increase supply”."

[There is an intellectual rot at the heart of this government, whereby an inherent dishonesty pervades everything they do. Our institutions of oversight - like the ANAO - need to be strengthened to protect against future leaders of this ilk.]

"There are various methods by which ACCUs may be generated – 38 in all – but three project types account for 75 per cent of the ACCUs issued under the ERF."

"The 1st is “avoided deforestation”, which simply means not cutting down trees…

The 2nd is called “human-induced regeneration” (HIR).... The idea was that where land had been cleared, landholders could destock it, and the native forests would grow. "

"The third method involves proponents harvesting methane – a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide – from large landfill sites and burning it to create electricity."

[It’s worth reading the articles for the detailed problems with each method, but suffice to say: they are many and varied. These three methods account for 75% of all carbon credits issued.

Note: the link at the beginning of the thread is unlocked.]

"“We analysed 119 projects in NSW and Qld,” Macintosh says. “Roughly half of them experienced either no change in forest cover or a decrease in forest cover since they started. Yet those projects … received in the order of 8-8.5 million carbon credits.””

#satpaper

[I realised I haven’t been putting a hashtag in the thread, so apologies to those who have it muted.]

#SatPaper

"A report by The Australia Institute, released to The Saturday Paper this week, echoes Macintosh’s critique of the CER. “Its role in both development and administration has raised conflict of interest concerns and calls for an official audit,” it says.”

#SatPaper

"The report focuses on a particularly contentious new method of awarding carbon credits for projects employing carbon capture and storage (CCS), a technology that has never been successfully applied, despite billions of dollars devoted to its development by this government."

[Future historians of the Australian policy landscape may well look back on this period of government as a textbook example of the extent to which politicians will contort themselves in order to satisfy large donors. Today it serves as a warning about political donation laws.]

[Here’s the link again for convenience: thesaturdaypaper.com.au/share/13577/Va…

This current government does not deserve another term in office. Many of the politicians serving don’t deserve another term in Parliament. Whilst there may be exceptions, they’re lost in the glare of incompetency.]