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The activist environmental think tank, The Climate Institute, has just published an interesting paper on its website that is based on a range of interviews with government officials, the private sector, academia, industry groups and “other stakeholders.”
It is part of a world-wide effort by the Global Climate Network and other surveys have been run in China, India, Brazil, South Africa, the United States, Germany and Nigeria. The international report can be found at www.ippr.org.uk – and they are both well worth reading.
What appeals to me about them is that, for once, they are quite unemotional and provide a useful broad-brush view of decarbonisation prospects and problems that run far wider than our own frogpond.
One of the core recommendations here and overseas – echoing a report in Australia earlier this year by the Academy of Technological Science & Engineering, on which I posted at the time – is that urgent attention needs to be given to an increase in low-carbon R&D spending. It is seen as a principle barrier to decarbonisation. The Global Climate Network wants to see a major “international technologies initiative” to accelerate research.
ATSE, as it happens, has been out and about again in recent days, calling for a greater focus on co-operation across research disciplines, arguing that current structures do not always accommodate the need for an inter-disciplinary approach.
Here, as well as in Brazil and South Africa, Global Climate Network interviewees complain of a lack of government strategy to cover R&D from invention to deployment.
Australian interviewees see the Rudd government’s emissions trading scheme as providing little impetus for technologies still in the earlier stages of development. The government might grumble that it has allocated $14 billion over eight years for decarbonisation initiatives – $4.8 billion for energy efficiency drivers, $2.5 billion towards carbon capture and storage activity and $2.3 billion to kickstart some demonstration projects, mainly solar – but I think the overall point holds well.
Not surprisingly, there is a global view that a major R&D obstacle is the lack of finance, especially in the wake of the economic slump. Financiers, all complain, are highly risk averse now and the Australian respondents note that there is very little venture capital or speculative finance currently available. The latter, also not surprisingly, want to see a strong local price on carbon as a driver for the investors in clean-tech. They shouldn’t hold their breath, however, because there is no political appetite in the government or the opposition for a high-priced emissions trading scheme.
As The Climate Institute says, faced with rapidly-growing demand for energy in the current environment, there is a tendency for governments, suppliers, investors and financiers to favour technologies that are known and understood rather than those still untested.
Local interviewees told the institute that the upcoming Rudd government’s energy white paper is a crucial opportunity for federal cabinet to get its act together and present an integrated strategy for clean technology.
Considering how the Australian environmental movement likes to badmouth CCS, it is also interesting to note the international report’s interviewees saying that it and the related integrated gasification combined cycle approach to coal-burning power technology are “indispensible” in the suite of decarbonisation policies.
The local version acknowledges that commercial demonstration of CCS was highlighted by a number of interviewees as an area for Australian leadership if this country wants to sustain and grow coal exports.
American interviewees stressed something that is also highly relevant here – the need to resolve liability questions around the storage of carbon dioxide.
All in all, and in a pleasant contrast to the polemics that disfigure the debate so much of the time, these two reports are good value reading as perspectives on the opportunities and barriers to decarbonisation initiatives and the more useful because they draw together views from a number of countries.
