As 2024 kicks off, here's some changes, ideas, trends, suggestions and findings that I found intriguing in 2023 – and which could be significant in 2024.
They include a sign of some political common ground on green industry incentives, a potential farewell to NGER data secrecy, a suggested nature levy if ACCU prices rise above $40, and Climate Change Authority comments on taking 'the road to net negative'.
Here they are, in no particular order.
Potential common ground on green transition production incentives.
The introduction of production incentives to support the transition to net zero emissions "should be an immediate priority", according to a House of Representatives report on developing advanced manufacturing in Australia, released in November with no dissenting comments.
Incentives can take the form of tax rebates tied to production levels (known as production credits), noted the report from the House Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Resources.
One potential beneficiary of such a regime could be SunDrive Solar, which already has ARENA and CEFC backing for its innovative, highly efficient copper-based solar cell technology.
The report noted that SunDrive is seeking to establish an advanced manufacturing facility in Australia or offshore, and says phase one would create up to 500 direct advanced manufacturing jobs, scaling to more than 5,000 over time.
But without some kind of production incentives regime the company might build its facility offshore, such as in the US.
The company proposed a production credits regime linked to the production of PV solar modules on a per watt basis. It also provided an interesting factoid that made it into the report, telling the inquiry that:
"Australia has pioneered solar photovoltaics for 30 years; and 80% to 90% of today's commercial solar technology was invented in Australian laboratories. This technology generates approximately $50 billion in revenue globally each year, using Australian IP, but almost none of this value is currently captured on our shores."
Another potential beneficiary of any production incentives regime could be green steel production.
Using the ACCU scheme to take the road to net negative.
Exactly one year after the Chubb review was released, the Climate Change Authority in December published its appraisal of the ACCU scheme.
The Authority's report has got a chapter heading that I was thrilled to see – "Chapter 5: The road to net negative". Yep folks, the Authority is talking about how we could be more ambitious than just reaching for net-zero, which is a conversation we definitely need to have.
Moving to net negative will require a dramatic scaling up in engineered forms of removal, like direct air capture with carbon storage, and mineral carbonation, it points out, describing engineered removals as "the way of the future for offsets markets".
The report also backs a range of significant changes to the ACCU regime, building on the Chubb recommendations.
Making more NGER data accessible to the public.
A total of 2,400 facilities would finally have their NGER-reported scope 1 and 2 emissions made publicly available, starting with FY24 data, under a Climate Change Authority recommendation in its NGER report, also released in December.
The requirement would be imposed by requiring facility-level disclosure if facilities emit at least 5,000 tonnes of greenhouse annually, and it would equate to facility-level public disclosure by about 57% of facilities that report through NGER.
The 57% of facilities between them would account for 99% of NGER-reported emissions.
Huge potential for fossil gas to biomethane switch.
I was amazed by one statistic contained in an update to Victoria's Gas Substitution Roadmap, which came out in December – its claim that biomethane could potentially supply up to half of the state's existing industrial fossil gas use.
The update also noted that most of Victoria's industrial gas users are located within 20 kilometres of a potential biogas source – around 70% are within 20 kilometres of a landfill site and about 80% are within 20 kilometres of a wastewater treatment plant.
Many landfill sites currently use their biogas to generate electricity but could convert to producing biomethane instead to supply industrial demand, and many wastewater treatment plants have the potential to upgrade their biogas to biomethane, it pointed out.
About 70% of Victoria/s wastewater treatment plants are located near the existing gas network and could be connected to export biomethane into the network, it added.
The update also noted fairly strong support among stakeholders for a renewable gas target, encompassing a certificate trading scheme. The GreenPower scheme is already operating a pilot renewable gas certification pilot scheme.
More details on Victoria's strategy will emerge in mid-2024, when the state government releases a renewable gas policy direction paper.
Time for a nature levy on sequestration?
EY's excellent recent report on nature and climate proposed a new "balanced approach" to carbon and nature in Australia's carbon policy framework that would deliver huge benefits in terms of restoring native habitat.
The report says this could be achieved through the introduction of a levy on all carbon sequestration to fund a top-up payment that would help pay to restore habitat that has high conservation values.
The levy could be imposed at a rate of 50% on any portion of carbon payments above $40/tCO2e, the report suggested, with the money allocated to a biodiversity fund that would support environmental plantings projects in priority areas.
The levy funds would be used to incentivise the ACCU activity known as "environmental plantings" (reforestation using mixed-species native vegetation) in priority locations. While they are slower to sequester carbon, environmental planting projects are likely to provide a wider range of valuable ecosystem services.
The report said this would deliver over seven times more native habitat at an
opportunity cost of 20% less carbon in 2050, relative to the existing carbon policy approach.
This area of habitat restoration would reduce extinction risk by 8%, while still delivering substantial financial gains to landholders, the report said.
A worrying evaporation of support for nearby renewables infrastructure.
Most Victorians are still willing to support renewable energy infrastructure in their local area, such as solar farms (69% ), wind turbines (62%), new transmission lines (64%), and large batteries (64%), according to Sustainability Victoria's State of Sustainability Report, released in December.
But there is no cause for complacency, because those levels of support are between 10 and 20 percentage points lower than was recorded in 2017, according to the report, which was based on a survey of more than 2,500 Victorians.
"Careful and well-planned community engagement processes are vital, as once lost, social licence is extremely difficult to regain," the report cautioned.
The survey also found that people generally either aren't familiar with or don't understand the term "circular economy". When asked about the phrase, 46% of Victorians said they have never heard of it, and a further 26% had heard of it but don't really understand it.
The green energy superpower and grid planning disjunct.
Practically everyone wants Australia to become a major exporter of green energy and commodities.
So why isn't there more talk about the fact that AEMO's draft 2024 Integrated System Plan anticipates only a 15% chance of a "green energy exports" scenario coming to fruition by 2050?
The low likelihood is based on voting by AEMO's "Delphi panel" of anonymous experts – a panel which seems to have plenty of energy expertise, but possibly not much large energy users/new industries expertise.
AEMO says that close to 10,000 km of transmission would be needed by 2050 under the Step scenario, adding that "if Australia is to pursue the more transformational 'green energy exports', then more than twice as much transmission would be needed, delivered at a much faster pace".
But does that really have to be the case?
The final modelling results of the Net Zero Australia study, which came out last April, found that onshoring iron production and more aluminium production, would require significantly less new renewable energy generation capacity and transmission infrastructure than the alternative of not onshoring them, and instead focusing only on exporting green ammonia.
By 2060, a rapid electrification with imposed local production of iron and aluminium would requires approximately half the transmission infrastructure of the rapid electrification with no onshoring, the study found.
The waste targets fail.
A little-noticed report prepared for DCCEEW by waste consultancy Blue Environment said nearly all federal and state waste reduction and resource recovery targets are unlikely to be met.
Goals that are unlikely to be attained include the existing national target for 2030 of 80% resource recovery, the report noted.
The main purpose of the report was to develop new emissions projections for the waste sector, and it recommends that estimates of future landfill emissions shouldn't be based on the assumption that existing waste targets will be achieved.
The finding won't be a surprise to anyone in the waste industry, but it's an important reminder that much more policy grunt work is needed in the waste and resource recovery sector.
A welcome sign that this work might be done emerged at a November meeting of federal, state and territory environment ministers, which agreed that the federal government "will step up as the new regulator of packaging standards", and will mandate how packaging is designed, as well as minimum recycled content requirements.
Growing interest in long-distance CCS.
2023 was a year in which some people started to think seriously about the prospect of sequestering carbon on behalf of emitters located a long way away – including from overseas.
At the state level, South Australia this year passed legislation that introduces a levy regime, meaning the state government will receive payments if CO2 from other countries is stored in South Australian geology.
Interestingly, the proposed South Australian regime would also impose a rental fee on CO2 sequestered after being captured from a Direct Air Capture (DAC) project in the state, if the DAC project is capturing CO2 under contract from a large emitter based overseas.
That's not a theoretical prospect – AspiraDAC is developing a modular, solar-powered DAC demonstration project that will store CO2 at the Santos Moomba site in South Australia.
At the federal level, legislation that paves the way for CO2 to be imported for sub-sea sequestration, was passed in November, with bipartisan support and cross-bench opposition.
The environmental policy that time forgot.
My nomination for 2023's most overlooked piece of environmental policy infrastructure is the National Pollutant Inventory.
It's a scheme that has so much potential, but continued to be neglected and under-funded in 2023. Hopefully that will change this year!
All that was achieved.
2023 was a big year, and it's easy to forget all that was achieved.
Three jurisdictions either introduced or passed legislation to enshrine new climate targets (NSW, Victoria and WA) and one more (Queensland) signalled its intention to do so.
Two states (Victoria and Queensland) introduced bills to enshrine new renewables targets.
At the federal level, legislation to finally turn the Safeguard Mechanism into a useful policy passed and came into force, and a blockbuster Bill to establish a statutory market for trading biodiversity certificates was passed.
The federal government also announced the expansion of its Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS), which underwrites new renewable generation and storage, doing so a day after announcing the results of the first CIS pilot auction, conducted in NSW.
The NSW EPA released a new climate change policy and action plan, and in doing become a role model for other state regulators, demonstrating how they can contribute to climate change action (with Victoria's EPA currently a laggard).
The NSW EPA has also partnered with Infrastructure NSW to develop Protection of the Environment Policy (PEP) for sustainable construction, which will promote promoting low-carbon design and construction, and increased use of remanufactured waste in NSW public infrastructure projects.
Showing that it is keen to follow NSW's lead, the South Australian parliament Passed a Bill that paves the way for its EPA to pay closer attention to climate change in its decision-making, including through the development of an environment protection policy on climate change.
The development of sector-based decarbonisation strategies advanced in WA (with the release of a sectoral emissions strategy), Tasmania (advances on waste and transport), and at the federal level (six sector strategies to be developed).
The ACT government has introduced a Bill that would make the right to a healthy environment a human right.
The ACT parliament also passed a Bill that bans new housing from being connected to gas networks (with Victoria announcing a similar ban that will take place from the start of next year).
2024 is bound to be another big, exciting year, perhaps most notably with the introduction of an EPBC reform Bill.