... the intent of the Hockey/Cormann letter is more insidious. It attempts to forbid the CEFC to invest in any “mature” technology, which it identifies as “extant wind” and rooftop solar, but which could arguably include energy efficiency initiatives (such as LED lights and insulation), large scale solar PV, small hydro, land fill gas and waste to energy, and numerous others technologies.

By potentially restricting the CEFC’s mandate to “big solar” – particularly parabolic troughs and molten salt storage – and as yet undeveloped technologies, such as wave and tidal energy, as suggested by environment minister Greg Hunt, the Government is not just confusing the CEFC’s role with that of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, but also making its task of achieving double the government bond rate return impossible. It is asking it to take on the riskiest technologies and put all its eggs in just a few baskets. The experienced finance team on the CEFC board, including chairperson Jillian Broadbent, will tell them that that is just nonsense.

But it’s not really the details that count. It is the big picture and the optics that matter in global financial flows. The Abbott Government has long declared its interest in technologies that are “on the horizon” – hence the interest in wave and tidal – and its horror of technologies that are being deployed in scale now and threaten the primacy of fossil fuels. And having tried everything else to stop renewable energy, it has now turned its focus on big financial institutions. The message it wants to make to domestic and international banks is clear: Don’t finance that stuff down here.

The contradictions are endless.

The Abbott Government argues that it does not want the CEFC involved because it only wants to see projects that would make economic sense in the “normal course of events”. But it doesn’t apply this criteria to its proposed $5 billion fund – dubbed the “dirty energy finance corporation” – to support infrastructure for coal mines and coal generators in northern Australia.

read more: https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/tonys-abbott-coalition-war-on-wind-and-solar-will-never-stop,7942

When people speak of natural disasters in Tokyo, they usually mean the major earthquake that seismologists say will eventually strike the Japanese capital. But for the local government, weather-related disasters are as much if not more of an immediate worry. The city’s coastal location puts it in the path of the Asia-Pacific region’s most violent typhoons – and there has been a measurable increase in the strength of rainstorms in recent years.

Tokyo’s rainfall in 2014 was abou80t 20% above normal, but the kind of storms that have struck the capital lately are different than they were in the past. Many are caused by huge cumulus clouds that form quickly and in succession when moist air from the ocean comes up against the warm air trapped among tall, closely packed buildings. Locally, these sudden, intense downpours are called “guerrilla” storms, because they seem to attack out of nowhere.

Two years ago, four workers who were reinforcing storm sewers drowned when such a storm hit unexpectedly. The main problem in these situations is that Tokyo is covered with concrete and has many levels of underground infrastructure: there is no ground soil to absorb water. The city has two sewer systems, one for runoff and one for sewage, and when rainfall exceeds 50mm/hour the water is diverted automatically into the sewage channels, which fill up and have to be diverted into the sea, meaning raw sewage ends up in the environment without being treated. Last year, during one storm, Taito Ward in eastern Tokyo received 150mm in one hour.

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jul/07/tokyo-guerrilla-rainstorms-japan-resilience

The world is stepping up action on climate change, with Australia’s major allies and trading partners setting strong emissions reduction targets.

• The United States aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28% below its 2005 level in 2025 setting a path towards deep, economy-wide emission reductions of 80% or more by 2050.
• The European Union has a reduction target of 40% by 2030 relative to 1990 levels.
• By 2030, China aims to lower carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 60% to 65% from the 2005 level, and the world’s largest emitter aims to peak its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, possibly earlier.
• Australia is expected to submit its emissions reduction target by mid-2015.

Australia is a crucial global climate change player.

• Australia is one of the largest emitters per capita and the 13th largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, ahead of 182 other countries.
• The emissions from Australia’s coal resources alone, if developed, would consume two-thirds of the world’s remaining carbon budget.

Australia’s domestic climate change policies are receiving more international scrutiny than ever before.

• China, the US and other big emitters have questioned the credibility of Australia’s climate change targets and direct action policies.
• Australia was singled out as the first developed country to take a legislative step backwards from action on climate change with the repeal of the carbon price in a recent report on global climate change legislation.
• Australia was lambasted as a ‘free-rider’ on other nation’s efforts to tackle climate change in a report by former UN chief Kofi Annan.

Australia must cut its greenhouse gas emissions much more deeply and rapidly to contribute its fair share in meeting the climate change challenge.

• A 2030 target of a 40-60% reduction below 2000 levels (or a range of approximately 45 to 65% below 2005 levels) is the bare minimum for Australia to be both in line with the science and the rest of the world.

read more: http://www.climatecouncil.org.au/halfway-to-paris-how-the-world-is-tracking-on-climate-change

The decision to stop the Clean Energy Finance Corporation from investing in wind and roof-top solar is just the latest in a line of attack by this Government against renewable energy, writes Greg Jericho.

The Abbott Government may be many things, but a friend of renewable energy is clearly not one of them, and it will take more than Greg Hunt professing his love for it to convince anyone otherwise.

The decision to stop the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) from investing in wind and roof-top solar is just the latest in a line of attack by this Government against renewable energy, and it comes as global temperatures continue to set new records.

The first five months of this year has been the warmest start to any year on record. According to NASA, the average global air and sea temperature from January to May was 0.77C above the mean temperature from 1951 to 1980...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-15/jericho-the-war-on-wind-is-part-of-a-much-bigger-fight/6620394