Sender: Geelong Sustainability Group Inc. – ABN 85 007 177 238
Address:
PO Box 4236
Geelong VIC 3220
Web: www.geelongsustainability.org.au
30 September 2015
SUBMISSION FROM GEELONG
SUSTAINABILITY
Recommendations to the Victorian Government in terms of which targets it should adopt in its
Renewable Energy Action Plan, and which aspects it should be conscious of – and amend – in the
proposed Victorian Renewable Energy Roadmap.
Geelong Sustainability would like to congratulate the Victorian government on this most welcomed
Roadmap and the opportunity for the public to comment upon it.
Geelong Sustainability has endorsed the submission by the Victorian Community Solar Alliance, in
which we support the government’s intent to re-establish Victoria as a leader in renewable
energy.
We believe that a Victorian Renewable Energy Target that matches the South Australian target of
50% by 2025 must be seen as a minimum. Calculations by Environment Victoria show that
Victoria could reach at least 30% by 2020 and 50% by 2025.
Environment Victoria writes: “Scotland, a country with a similar size population and economy to
Victoria, has seen a five-fold growth in renewable energy since 2004 (adding 14,000
Gigawatthours of output). If Victoria could match that amount in the next ten years, while also
retiring two old coal-fired power stations, and adding some more rooftop solar, we’d reach a 50%
renewable energy target.”
Matching the 100% target set by the ACT would be demanding in Victoria with a much larger
population. However, in our view it is important to set targets which are bold and ambitious now.
Beyond Zero Emissions’ and Melbourne Energy Institute’s research shows Australia could go
100% renewable in just ten years. Federal government modelling by AEMO shows 100%
renewables could be achieved by 2030.
We would like to propose several further recommendations.
Recommendation 1: Propose more ambitious renewables targets
In Geelong, Geelong Sustainability is part of a local community movement called ReEnergise
Geelong (www.reenergisegeelong.org), which is advocating for 100% renewables by 2030. We
believe the Victorian government could take a similar approach. Targets that double the amount
of renewable energy every five years would communicate a strong but easily understood plan:

12.5% by 2015

25% by 2020

50% by 2025

100% by 2030
Recommendation 2: Shift the target language
Our anecdotal evidence suggests that the public is very confused by the use of percentages when
they are expressed from different base years. For the new Roadmap we hope you will reconsider
the ‘target language’ used. Talking about percentages instead of kilowatthours and tonnes is a
way to hide the true facts behind a smokescreen of relativity.
We recommend that it is time to start using absolute rather than relative terminology.
Emissions: Expressed in tonnes of carbon per capita per year, and
Electricity and renewable energy: Expressed in kilo-, mega- and gigawatthours
We contend that this approach provides a clearer, more honest approach that will better enable
the public to engage with the issues and the challenges ahead of us. We expand further on these
reasons in the Appendix.
Recommendation 3: Strive for bipartisan agreement for the
Roadmap
We have seen the plunge in investment in the renewable energy sector due to federal policy
uncertainty. We strongly urge the state government to seek to quarantine this vitally important
target from domestic politics. We need long term stability based on stable robust legislation in
order to create investment certainty over 20 year horizons.
This is definitely something that the wind industry is hoping for so that the many stalled projects
can recommence creating construction and ongoing green jobs for regional Victoria. Creating
long- term stability and confidence in the renewable energy sector must be a priority.
We urge you to be ambitious – but not so ambitious that you eventually fail creating political
consensus about this important plan.
Recommendation 4: Seek simplicity of messaging for public buy-in
The Roadmap outlines a range of significant steps forward. It covers a complicated and often
controversial area of governance, because it implies change at many levels. What needs to be
worked more on before publishing this Roadmap is simplifying the complexity of it, in particular in
reference to household and community renewable generation. We think it will be important to
create effective engagement models and communication mechanisms.
Geelong Sustainability looks forward to working together with the Victorian Government to
achieve our common goals: the creation of new and sustainable jobs, a cleaner environment and
a safer climate.
Dan Cowdell
President
Geelong Sustainability
APPENDIX
FURTHER BACKGROUND ON TARGETS AND LANGUAGE
“Imagine, two men planning to go on a diet. Guy A is a moderately fit but overweight
bloke weighing, say 100 kilograms. Guy B is morbidly obese, and weighs twice as
much – 200 kilograms. Time passes as they both embark on an agreed commitment
to each shed 25 per cent of their weight. Now the Guy A has reached his ideal target
weight of 75 kilograms. Guy B has lost the same amount, in percentage terms but he
still weighs 150 kilos. He’s still grossly overweight. Clearly, for the sake of his
health, Guy B still has to lose many more kilograms.”
Adapted from Mike Secombe’s article in The Saturday Paper on 22 August 2015, ‘Abbott's smoke and
mirrors before Paris climate summit’
www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/environment/2015/08/22/abbotts-smoke- and-mirrors-beforeparis-climate-summit/14401656002265
At the moment we live in an era of emissions-renewables-confusion like 200 years ago when one
country would be measuring distance in centimetres, another in inches, a third in feet, and so on.
It may look good on paper to be saying “we are reducing emissions by 80 per cent of 2012-levels”,
but since everyone uses different years to compare the levels by, the figure in itself is a piece of
useless information. One is comparing to 2012-13 levels, another is using 2000 levels, another
2005, and so on, which makes it like comparing apples, lemons and strawberries.
An example: If an average Australian citizen emits 16 tonnes of carbon a year, and an average
Chinese citizen emits 4 tonnes of carbon a year, and they both set targets to reduce their
emissions by 50%, it would seem as if they’d be equally ambitious. But if instead the talk would
have been focused on the tonnes only, it would be clear to everyone, that while the Chinese
would be emitting 2 tonnes, the Australian would still be emitting four times more, 8 tonnes.
If instead we only used yearly per capita emissions measures, meaningful comparisons can all of
sudden be made between yearly per capita emissions in a household, a business, Geelong,
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and China.
The suggestion is inspired by the work of Centre for Climate Safety which is pushing for Geelong
Council to stop using a mix of various percentage-figures and years, which they believe has been
used deliberately in politics to create uncertainty, confusion and a ‘smokescreen’ over the entire
renewables- and emissions-debate, because no one understands what means what, compared to
what, and what one figure means in comparison to when the base-years differs.
Talking about percentages instead of kilowatthours and tonnes is a way to hide the true facts
behind a smokescreen of relativity.
Geelong Sustainability believes we should start always using concrete measurements:
Emissions: Expressed in tonnes of carbon per capita per year1
Electricity and renewable energy: Expressed in kilo-, mega- and gigawatthours
The result of the current use of various percentage targets is that the topic becomes difficult to
1
When talking about CO2 emissions, it is usually referred to as Equivalent Mass of CO2 Emmitted, written as ‘CO2e’. But
again, no one knows what the difference between CO2 and CO2e is. So since we need to simplify our language, we
suggest is that in relation with emissions, ‘1 tonnes of carbon’ simply becomes the general way of saying ‘1 tonnes of
CO2e’.
start a conversation around in mainstream media, and that the general population engages even
less in the entire discussions.
If over time the ‘tonnes per capita per year’ as an emissions measure wins over the ‘percentage
reduction from year A to year B’, it opens up a different conversation in society, and it is
comparable across borders from and between residences, businesses, cities and municipalities,
even countries.
Scalability and clarity of ‘emissions fairness’
Alan Barlee, a Centre for Climate Safety volunteer, explained it in this way:
Begin quotation.
“With climate change targets, percentage reductions are at best confusing, and at worst are
deliberately aimed at misleading and delaying critical decisions and remedial action, in order to
protect vested financial and political interests. Optimising the choice of base year, so as to show
the target in the best possible light, compounds this obfuscation. Comparing such targets is clearly
meaningless.
What counts is the absolute weight of greenhouse gas emissions at the start, and the rate of
reduction of this weight to a hopefully safe level. This is because the CO2 being released into the
atmosphere will stay there for many hundreds of years. Its climate impact therefore depends not
on the emissions in any given year, but on the total amount accumulated since 1750, when
atmospheric concentration began to slowly rise – and rapidly from the 1950s. Current annual
emissions from human activity are around 40 billion tonnes.
Faced with compelling scientific evidence, 190 countries agreed in 2010 in Cancun to commit to a
maximum 2°C degree increase in average global temperature versus the pre-industrial 1750-level.
That was seen as the ‘guardrail’ that would give a reasonable likelihood of avoiding runaway
global warming.
In 2014, the United Nations sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) equated
this limit to a cumulative post-1750 carbon ‘budget’ from CO2 emissions only of 800 billion tonnes
– of which the IPCC estimates that around 530 tonnes – or two thirds of the maximum – had
already been emitted as at 2011. This leaves a balance of around 270 billion tonnes that can be
emitted over only 25 years at the present rate – and that is with odds of only two chances in
three of being successful.
If early release of permafrost methane were to rapidly occur as a result of the higher warming
rate occurring at the poles, this would significantly reduce the 270 billion tonne carbon budget.
There is a rational and rigorously consistent alternative to time-wasting proposals and
negotiations around percentage-based targets – one that is both equitable and scalable, and
which recognises the IPCC’s breakthrough carbon budget concept.
The ‘Contraction and Convergence’ (‘C&C’) model was developed by Aubrey Meyer, and is fully
described on the Global Commons Institute website www.gci.org.uk
The core equity criterion underpinning C&C is that each person has an equal right to a healthy
atmosphere, irrespective of his or her nationality, age or wealth. This means that progressively
dated emission targets must be set on an absolute basis that is linked to population, i.e. in terms
of tonnes per person. This is the basis of an equitable ‘contraction’ phase.
However, the real history of emissions is also inequitable as between countries in terms of this
criterion, and is a major stumbling block to achieving an international consensus.
‘Convergence’ recognises that cumulative and current per capita emissions of western nations are
higher than those of developing and emerging countries. C&C requires the former countries to
rapidly contract their emissions, while the model enables countries whose per capita emissions are
below the global per capita average to maintain – or for a while, to even increase – their carbon
emissions until they converge on the falling global average. From that point on, all nations will cut
their per capita emissions at the same rate until they all reach the agreed sustainable long-term
target reduction – likely close to net 100 per cent.
Scalability is inherent in the tonnes per person concept. This formula is equally applicable to
nations, regions, cities, local government areas, villages, families and individuals.
Australia’s current emissions are 16 tonnes per person, which needs to be halved if we are to pull
our weight with other countries. To relate this target to the ‘fashionable’ percentage language,
one reduction profile that would take us where we need to go might be –45% by 2025, –65% by
2030 and –100% by 2050. This is twice as fast as the rate being proposed for the Paris COP21
UN Climate Summit in December 2015 by the Australian government.
It is also important not to assume that renewables replacing fossil fuels will be enough. Electricity
generation in Australia is the largest greenhouse gas contributor, but agriculture and deforestation
among others are also important emitters.”
End quotation.
Source: Centre for Climate Safety, www.climatesafety.info/thesustainablehour87