Pirate Congress 2015/Motions/Policy and Platform/Energy, Environment and Climate Change Update

Draft Policy This is a draft policy which may still be under development and is not approved or endorsed by the party. Until such time as it is endorsed by the party, it does not represent the views or intentions of the party.

Preamble

While the environment is perpetually changing, there is a risk that enormous changes imposed in a very short period of time may have a destabilising effect on our planet's ecological balance and life support systems. In the absence of a second planet, it is sensible to apply a precautionary principle in our dealings with the environment. Pirate Party Australia supports efforts to reduce carbon emissions and pollution. We also support investments in our continent's unique environment which will preserve it for future generations.

Human activity has increased the atmospheric concentration of heat-trapping gases to levels not seen for many hundreds of thousands of years, and the rise is accelerating.

Climate change and renewable energy

Research and development and technology export are at the heart of combating global climate change. Global energy markets are approaching a point of deep change. Prices for on-site production and storage of energy will soon 'cross over' with the price of traditional grid power, making renewables cheaper than the status quo for a growing number of global consumers. This will allow consumers to become ‘prosumers’ – energy users capable of independently generating their own power. Pirate Party Australia believes we should accelerate towards a system in which energy markets are democratised in this way. We want to see a freer market in which consumers directly compete with utilities.

Accordingly, Pirate Party Australia will seek to utilise resources currently allocated to the Emissions Reduction Fund and re-invest them in research and development of clean energy and on-site generation. We will also seek to improve the regulatory environment by removing regulations which hinder independent power generation. Consumers should be freer to enter markets, and utilities should be deregulated to enable them to adopt leaner 'probabalistic' power models and new services such as trading platforms between distributed energy producers.

These efforts should build on an existing platform of carbon pricing. Carbon pricing is desirable as long as revenue is matched with equivalent tax cuts in other areas. A carbon price creates or sharpens incentives for efficiency and investment all across the economy, and a fixed price provides the certainty needed to support long-term investment. Pollution is the embodiment of privatised profits and socialised losses, and carbon pricing will ensure coal mining repays some of the costs it imposes on national water reserves, agriculture, and general public health.,.

Pirate Party Australia believes we should act to reduce global emissions as well. We will seek to increase the rate of technology export to developing countries. We will also apply a small carbon price on exported emissions by requiring that coal exporters purchase carbon offsets through the UN Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). CDM offsets offer an exceedingly cheap way to protect forests in developing countries, fund technology exports, and directly destroy highly potent heat-trapping gases such as HFC-23. The low price of these projects means a two dollar levy can fund a full offset of exported emissions at no cost to Australian taxpayers.

Pirate Party Australia remains open to final extensions in other measures including the Renewable Energy Target but believes our domestic climate change policies should ultimately simplify and converge on straightforward carbon pricing supported by R&D and technological improvement. Improved technology will offer magnifying benefits over time. A distributed grid open to 'prosumer' competition will yield lower power prices in the long run due to greater competition, removal of wastefully long power lines and falls in demand spikes which will allow utilities to adopt more efficient models. The communities of the future will be self-sufficient, and individuals will be freer to act directly on climate change when political action falls short. Policies which drive clean technology will create thousands of skilled jobs across our regions, and accordingly represent an important economic reform.

Preserving Australia’s ecology

Management of our environment needs to be more holistic in future. Cases such as the Murray-Darling system show that ecosystems are too deeply interconnected to be managed in different ways across state borders. Future management can be improved through the development of tools such as a national Biodiversity Matrix, which will provide planners and the general public with a unified information source on our land and ocean ecosystems. The broader environmental approvals system itself can be improved by ensuring approvals are overseen by a fully independent authority operating free of political interference.

Pirate Party will also support practical measures to improve biodiversity on the ground. We will seek to both expand national parks and ensure that groups and communities have more avenues to assist with maintenance and management. We will also seek to re-allocate funding allocated to supporting 'green cars' - this funding is no longer required now that the automotive industry is leaving Australia. We will seek to utilise this funding for more direct environmental purposes, including support for community groups engaging in land management and containment of feral animals. We will also seek to expand investment in scientific research to develop longer-term solutions to the feral animal problem.

Pirate Party Australia supports a robust agricultural industry in Australia. We believe the needs of farmers should be prioritised over activities such as coal seam gas (CSG) extraction, which is being undertaken from a position of profound ignorance regarding its impacts on rivers, groundwater, and food security. Given the evidence of fugitive emissions leaks and other unforeseen impacts, a moratorium is necessary until more meaningful evidence is available to demonstrate that extraction can be done safely and without undue impacts on rural communities.

Questions of ecology and energy adjudicate between the rights of current and future generations. Communities and policymakers need access to the most open scientific framework possible to help inform difficult environmental questions.

Policy text

Offset and reduce carbon emissions

• Expand investment in technological improvement and community power.
  • Re-purpose the 'Emissions Reduction Fund' (ERF) to the CSIRO and ARENA to sponsor additional research and development in clean technology and power storage.
    • Ensure technology developed with public funding is made freely available to developing countries.
  • Extend Clean Energy Finance Corporation loans to support community power start-up costs and grid connections.
  • Amend AEMC rules to ensure power purchase agreements, solar services agreements, virtual net metering and other forms of decentralised grids are viable and available.
  • Begin negotiations with states for a merged, national solar tariff.
• Strengthen existing measures and price signals.
  • Restore a carbon tax with pricing set to the 2014-15 level and price increases fixed at CPI + 5% p/a.
    • Provide free permits to coal-generated power stations only where grid stability is at stake.
  • Provide a final extension in the Renewable Energy Target (RET) to 70GwH by 2025.
    • Increase the number of renewable certificates offered for generation at peak periods to encourage baseload renewable generation.
    • Include waste-to-energy in RET certificate allocations.
  • Remove waste levy exemptions applying to coal power.
  • Levy thermal coal exporters $2 per tonne of exported coal.
    • Revenue will be used to to purchase carbon offsets through the UN clean development mechanism.
  • Require transparent disclosure of energy ratings for all buildings.
  • Adopt EU 2020 vehicle fuel efficiency standards including the passenger vehicle target of 95g CO2/Km by 2023.
  • Form a panel of government and industry representatives to develop a plan for roll-out of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations and development of an Australian standard for EV rechargers.
    • Offer assistance to private operators who wish to operate recharging stations through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
    • Create a corporation with joined State and Federal Government ownership to lease recharging sites on public land.

Improve land management to protect biodiversity

• Expand the environmental oversight of the federal government to cover mining approvals, rivers and water areas, and national parks.
  • Provide independent statutory status to areas overseeing environmental approvals.
• Cancel 'automotive transformation scheme' and re-allocate funding to sponsor environmental improvements.
  • Provide $50 million to develop a Biodiversity Matrix to classify nationwide land and ocean ecosystems and species distribution.
    • Information collected will be published, and will inform land use changes, development approvals, and management of biodiversity issues and national parks.
    • The Environment Department will be required to conduct regular updates of threatened species information, with at-risk species listed as “notifiable” in legislation.
  • Provide $50 million in additional funding to the Barrier Reef Trust.
  • Provide $100 million to sponsor endangered species plans and community group projects including sanctuaries and land management initiatives.
  • Provide $50 million to support long-term research and adaptive management aimed at curbing feral cats and foxes.
• Expand and improve national parks.
  • Increase national park thresholds to cover 15% of land in Australia, with a representative sample of at least 80% of regional ecosystems protected in each bio-region.
  • Review national park legislation and remove restrictions on volunteerism and community engagement in improving parks.
  • Amend Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to insert specific requirements for accountability and monitoring of Recovery Plans.
• Protect agricultural and farming land.
  • Grant landowners rights to refuse exploitation of coal and coal seam gas deposits on land they own.
  • Permanently ban extraction and exploration of coal and coal seam gas around prime farming land, water catchment areas and aquifers.
  • Apply a moratorium on new coal seam mines and additional use of existing mines in metropolitan areas, with periodical reviews to assess evidence and present recommendations on the scientific case for lifting or modifying the moratorium.