Group items tagged

"The significance of having a carbon budget should not be underestimated. International studies, such as those by the International Energy Agency, say the global budget (and by inference national budgets) could be rapidly exhausted unless the scale of action is increased. They generally agree that to meet the science, between two-thirds and four-fifths of the world's fossil fuel reserves will need to be left in the ground."

"In its draft form, the fought-over paragraph declared that, to have the best chance of not exceeding the international target for global warming of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, society can burn no more than about 1 trillion tons of carbon, in the form of fossil fuels, and spew the resulting gases into the atmosphere. More than half that carbon budget has been used already. Moreover, the draft made it clear that if countries want to be safe and take account of other gases that are warming the planet, the carbon budget would be even less than a trillion tons. At the rate things are going, we will exceed the budget in 30 years or fewer."

"From his own patch of turf in Coburg, Emilio Fuscaldo can see south all the way to the skyscrapers. The grass is on his roof. It's one of only a few residential green roofs in Melbourne. Mr Fuscaldo is the founder of Nest Architects; his motives were both private and public. ''It's incumbent on architects to practise what we preach. I wanted to show that you can devote a large percentage of your budget to sustainability,'' he says. ''You can compromise on other things, such as kitchens, cupboards and tiles, and still achieve a beautiful result.''"

"Australia is belatedly waking up to the implications of the carbon budget, although the concept has been around for years. It simply says that if the increase in global temperature resulting from human carbon emissions is to be contained to a level which will prevent dangerous climate change, the world, henceforth, can only afford to emit a limited amount of greenhouse gases. According to the latest science, that limit will be exceeded if we burn more than 20 per cent of the world's proven coal, oil and gas reserves. This is confirmed in recent reports from the International Energy Agency and Australia's Climate Commission."

"So we have a system of regulation that encourages the network service providers to over-egg their expenditure proposals, and should it ever be demonstrated that the regulator has given them too little in some part of their budget, they get to come back during the regulatory period and apply, successfully, for more. From the network service provider's point of view it's a case of heads I win, tails you lose."

"The 'Pathways to Deep Decarbonisation in 2050: How Australia can prosper in a low carbon world' report, released 23 September 2014, presents an illustrative deep decarbonisation pathway for Australia - just one of many possible pathways - developed using a combination of well-established modelling tools to identify feasible and least-cost options.  This work finds that Australia can achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and live within its recommended carbon budget, using technologies that exist today, while maintaining economic prosperity. Major technological transitions are needed in some industries and many activities, but no fundamental change to Australia's economy is required. The technologies required for decarbonisation are currently available or under development. The analysis shows that deep decarbonisation requires neither substantial lifestyle changes nor large changes in Australia's economic structure."

"Remember carbon capture and storage? Five years ago, the idea of grabbing the carbon dioxide from coal and gas power plants and burying it deep underground was considered an essential technology for curbing the world's greenhouse-gas emissions. A diagram of how various sorts of carbon capture might work. (Congressional Budget Office) But carbon capture hasn't fared well in the years since. Since 2008, world governments committed at least $25 billion to fund large-scale demonstration projects, the Financial Times reports. And we have remarkably little to show for it so far."

"Food writer Hilary McNevin is half way through the Live Below The Line challenge, feeding herself and her two children for $30 over five days. It's been challenging and confronting, but most of all an eye-opening learning experience."