You are hereStand up for renewable energy! Let's move beyond fossil fuels.
Stand up for renewable energy! Let's move beyond fossil fuels.
1-2pm, Sat 24th September
240 St Georges Terrace
Perth
On September 24, people around the planet are walking, cycling, skating, moving - taking part in Moving Planet, to demand the changes to move us away from fossil fuels, for a safe climate future.
Join us outside Woodside Petroleum’s Perth offices, and move with us into the city, to symbolise our call to move beyond fossil fuels and towards renewable energy.
We are calling for
• 100% renewable energy by 2020
• no gas hub in the Kimberley
• no fracking in WA
• phasing out coal, oil and gas.
100% renewable energy by 2020
Environment think-tank Beyond Zero Emissions has produced a peer-reviewed, detailed, fully costed plan that shows Australia could move away from fossil fuels and get 100% of our stationary energy from renewables within 10 years. About 60% of the energy would come from concentrating solar plants – new technology that is already up and running in Spain and USA. Heat from the sun melts salt at high temperature, providing energy storage that keeps steam turbines producing power day and night. About 40% would come from wind power. The remainder would come from existing hydro and a small amount of biomass. It will cost less than the combined expense of the military budget and the government subsidies given to big fossil fuel polluters.
See the report.
By moving to 100% renewables, we could slash emissions to zero from the sector that now produces over a third of Australia’s greenhouse gases. [1]
No gas hub in the Kimberley
The proposed gas hub at James Price Point in the Kimberley will release up to 39Mt CO2-e a year [2] – more than half WA’s total emissions in 2009, and the same emissions as all of New Zealand. This is without even considering the eventual combustion of the fuel after it's exported. The hub and associated infrastructure threaten immediate damage to the James Price Point region, and will be used as a stepping stone to destructive mining for coal and coal seam gas and other developments in the pristine Kimberley. It is opposed by Traditional Owners because of its potential impact on country and culture.
See more here and here
No fracking in WA
The community is waking up to the dangers of hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" of coal seam and shale beds for gas. Fracking involves high pressure pumping of water mixed with sand and pile of chemicals, many of them toxic, into rock formations, to split the rocks and push out the natural gas, allowing it to be collected. But the gas-water-toxin mix can leak into aquifers and contaminate groundwater, and the natural gas can leak through the fissured rocks directly into the surface water and air - where it acts as a greenhouse gas 100 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a 20-year span. Water contamination has already been reported in Queensland, and across the east coast, affected and threatened communities are forming a growing grassroots movement to demand protection of agricultural land, regional and urban drinking water and a halt to fracking. [3]
In WA, fracking is underway in the Canning Basin (which extends from the west Kimberley into the North East Pilbara) and the Perth Basin (on- and offshore in the southwest beyond Geraldton and Margaret River), with more planned. The WA government is offering industry incentives to expand.
See more here, here and here.
Our water, soil and air are too important to risk. We support a ban on fracking in WA.
Phase out coal, oil and gas
Australia is adding more than our fair share to global warming, with greenhouse gas emissions per person among the worst in the world, and set to rise for the foreseeable future unless we take strong action. Global warming from human activities is already changing the climate, and threatens to make the earth unrecognisable unless we take urgent action. For a high-emissions country like Australia, that means reducing our greenhouse gas emissions to around zero in about ten years [3,4]- an immense challenge, but one we can rise to.
Extraction and use of fossil fuels accounts for around half of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions. And the eventual emissions from the coal, oil and gas exported from Australia are than all our domestic greenhouse gas emissions combined. New research suggests global warming from gas may be worse than coal (when the full life cycle, including leakage in production and transport, are taken into account). [5] To be serious about tackling climate change, we must move beyond fossil fuels and embrace a fully renewable energy future - with its associated new clean jobs, and improved impact on air and water quality.
Instead of this, treasury modeling shows that under the government’s carbon price, Australia's total greenhouse gas emissions will increase well past 2030, and be nearly the same level as today by 2050. The production of electricity from gas will expand, and coal will not have been phased out, as late as 2050. Electricity sector emissions are predicted to remain roughly static for the next 10-15 years, the time when what we do will matter most. Most tellingly, coal and gas production are projected to rise substantially - gas, doubling by 2020 and both coal and gas more than doubling by 2050. [6]
The federal government is locking us in to ongoing high emissions from the energy sector – when we can and should go towards zero as fast as possible.
Tell the WA and Australian governments: we're ready to move beyond fossil fuels. Renewables can do it. It's time to step up.
Footnotes
1 http://www.climatechange.gov.au/~/media/publications/greenhouse-acctg/national-inventory-by-economic-sector-2009.pdf
2 Department of State Development, Government of WA, Browse Liquefied Natural Gas Precinct - Strategic Assessment Report Part 1 - ES - Executive Summary - Draft for Public Review (December 2010) – Downloaded from
http://public-consult.epa.wa.gov.au/portal/browse-lng/es_-_executive_summary?pointId=75291
3 http://climatecodered.blogspot.com/2011/05/commissions-call-for-carbon-budget.html
4 http://www.wbgu.de/wbgu_sn2009_en.pdf
5 see http://safeclimate.org.au/node/440
6 http://www.treasury.gov.au/carbonpricemodelling/content/report/09chapter5.asp
This action is organised by Safe Climate Perth, and is part of our preparations for the United March on CHOGM. See out for more info about the protest in Perth when the Commonwealth Heads of Government meet. We'll be uniting for justice and climate action, not racism and war.
