Friday, December 17, 2010

How green is gas?

This is an op-ed piece I submitted to the Newcastle Herald on 1 December (not yet published as at date of this posting).

Gas is often portrayed as a clean energy source that could play an important role in a transition from dirty fuels such as coal and oil to a renewable energy economy.

This portrayal is now being seriously questioned.

The clean energy claim is primarily based on the fact that natural and coal seam gas (which is mostly methane) produces much less carbon dioxide than coal or oil when burned for fuel.

Origin Energy – Australia’s largest natural gas producer – states in its 2010 Sustainable Energy Report that its gas-fired Darling Downs Power Station in Victoria emits less than half the greenhouse gases of a typical coal-fired power station with the same capacity.

The NSW Department of Industry and Investment website states that “changing from electricity to gas for applications such as water heating, space heating and cooking could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a factor of four.”

Locally, this claim was repeated verbatim in a recent media release from the Hunter Business Chamber on the eve of a visit to Newcastle by Advent Energy CEO, David Breeze, to promote his company’s exploratory gas drilling 55km off Newcastle’s coast.

Given the massive expansion of the gas industry now hitting the Hunter Valley, such claims deserve closer inspection.

Like coal and oil, natural and coal seam gas is a non-renewable fossil fuel. Methane, which can leak in the extraction and transport of gas, is itself a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The amount of carbon dioxide currently produced by the burning of natural and coal seam gas is already a significant contributor to total greenhouse gas emissions, and this is expected to rise considerably over the next few decades.

In a recently published conclusion to a full carbon footprint assessment of the greenhouse impact of gas extracted from shale formations in the United States, Robert Howarth, Professor of Ecology and Environmental Biology at Cornell University, urges “caution in viewing natural gas as a good fuel choice for the future”.

Professor Howarth says that “using the best available science, we conclude that natural gas is no better than coal and may in fact be worse than coal in terms of its greenhouse gas footprint when evaluated over the time course of the next several decades.”

The “clean fuel” claim for gas is also linked to the fact that it does not produce the range of chemicals and particulates associated with burning coal or oil.

However, a full production-cycle analysis reveals an environmentally darker side to gas, dramatically portrayed in the film Gasland, a nominee for this year’s documentary Oscar.

Modern gas extraction uses the controversial technique of “fracking”, involving high pressure hydraulic fracturing of the geological substrata (usually either coal or rock seams) that contain the gas.

Fracking uses large quantities of water and a chemical cocktail. The technique has raised a range of concerns about ground and water contamination, air pollution, subsidence, and the handling of waste. Off-shore operations present a slightly different set of concerns, mostly related to the impact on the marine environment.

The current surge in the development of the gas industry occurred earlier in the United States than here. This week, the New York State Assembly voted for a moratorium on further gas exploration to allow safety and environmental concerns about fracking to be properly investigated.

Communities and environmentalists in the Hunter are calling for the same approach here, before the region is locked in to yet another industry with dubious environmental credentials.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Laman Street trees saved by people power!

Outside city hall before last night's council meeting

Friends of the Laman St trees doing their thing last night

What a great feeling to be able to celebrate an all-too-rare victory for the community and common-sense at a Newcastle Council meeting last night, when councillors voted to save Laman Street's majestic avenue of giant figs from the chainsaw.

The current council is dominated by conservative "independents" (they call themselves this, despite accepting donations from vested interests, such as developers), many of whom were long ago - and all-too-willingly - captured by the council administration.

On 17 August, the council decided (by a 5-7 vote) to remove all 14 of the Laman Street figs "as soon as possible", refusing to consult any further with the community on a range of options for the future of the trees that the community had never had an opportunity to scrutinise and discuss.

In the ensuing period, the community learned that the council intended to circumvent the normal requirements of the NSW Environmental Planning and Assessment Act by using a section of the Roads Act intended to allow roads authorities to remove trees for road works or to remove a traffic hazard.

As far as I have been able to establish, this strategy had never been previously mentioned by council officers, and came to light just before the chainsaws were about to move in. To stop the imminent removal of the trees, the Parks and Playgrounds Movement lodged an injunction.

The ensuing case in the Land and Environment Court turned on the interpretation of the wording of s.88 of the NSW Roads Act. The council argued that the Act allowed them to ignore normal planning requirements, and the PPM argued that it didn't.

Eventually, the Court found in favour of the council's interpretation. The judge noted the contrast in the wording of that section of the NSW Act with the equivalent provision in the Victorian Roads Act, which would not allow a council to circumvent normal planning requirements to remove trees where there was no genuine immediate need to do so.

Because of the clear public interest nature of the case, the judge determined that each side should bear its own costs. The council's legal costs were around $150,000.

The Land and Environment Court decision on the interpretation of the NSW Roads Act (which has not been tested by appeal) was a landmark decision, indicating a need to change the NSW legislation to clarify that it is an emergency power, and to stop roads authorities from misusing it to get rid of trees where there is no genuine urgent need.

However, the legal proceedings did provide valuable time for further discussion between the community and councillors on the future of the Laman St trees, and eventually enough councillors were persuaded to change their minds about the need to immediately remove them, and to put in place a risk management and monitoring regime aimed at preserving them.

Of course, the intervening period has also demonstrated incontrovertibly - in the courtroom of nature and reality - that there really was no need to immediately remove the trees on the spurious risk grounds argued by the council, since not a single tree has fallen over or damaged anyone or anything during that time.

The original decision was an over-reaction, driven by an administration in panic mode, whipped up by a risk-aversion industry that itself often poses the greatest risk to valuable community assets.

I recall in my time as a Newcastle councillor in the 1990s that it was once seriously proposed to construct a chainmesh fence along all the elevated sections of Newcastle's coastline to prevent the risk of accidental or deliberate falls. Common sense prevailed, and the idea was quickly scotched.

In the case of the Laman St trees, it's taken longer for common sense to prevail. On the night it decided to axe the trees as soon as possible, the council voted against an alternative motion (from Greens councillor Michael Osborne) to consult with the community on all the available options, which had never previously been scrutinised or discussed by the community. It's a pity that the council's refusal to do this at this crucial moment in the decision-making process ended up causing so much community anxiety and costing Newcastle ratepayers around $150,000.

All this could have been avoided if the council had been prepared to engage more positively and genuinely with the community on the future of the trees, rather than preemptively ramming through a decision that hardly anyone in the community supported, and that pandered to an extreme and bureaucratically driven form of risk aversion.

It remains to be seen whether senior council staff will accept the new decision of the elected council, and change their approach to a more cooperative engagement with the community.

Congratulations to the councillors who eventually came through for the community.

For the record, last night's vote to save the trees was:

For:
  • Graham Boyd (Independent),
  • Sharon Claydon (Labor),
  • Shayne Connell (Independent),
  • Tim Crakanthorp,
  • Mike Jackson (Labor),
  • Nuatali Nelmes (Labor),
  • Michael Osborne (Greens), and
  • John Tate (Independent).
Against:
  • Bob Cook (Independent),
  • Mike King (Independent),
  • Brad Luke (Liberal), and
  • Scott Sharpe (Independent).
(Councillor Aaron Buman (Independent) was absent, but previously voted for removing the trees).

The biggest congratulations go to the amazingly talented and committed group of grassroots community campaigners who came together so effectively to save this wonderful asset (you know who you are).

Friday, December 10, 2010

Media Release: Greens candidate signs on to Unions NSW Better Services Agreement

Newcastle Greens
Thursday, 9 December, 2010
Greens candidate signs on to Unions NSW Better Services Agreement

Signing up to the Unions NSW Better Services Agreement, Thursday 8 December 2010
The Greens candidate for Newcastle, John Sutton, today signed the five point “Better Services Agreement” developed by Unions NSW, pledging support for a strong public sector, public ownership of public assets, better long term planning for services and infrastructure, workers rights, and government for the common good.
Mr Sutton was the first Greens candidate in NSW to sign the agreement, at a Unions NSW launch outside Newcastle Trades Hall Council at lunchtime today.
In signing the agreement, Mr Sutton congratulated Unions NSW for the campaign, and said he expected that all Greens candidates who had the opportunity to sign the Agreement in the run-up to the March state election would do so.
“The Greens see the principles behind the commitments in this agreement as fundamental to a healthy, democratic civil society.
“People in Newcastle and the Hunter know what it means to have to fight for adequate services and infrastructure, and for governance for the common good.
“Under successive Labor and Coalition governments, our community has suffered through decades of struggles over the privatisation of institutions and services such as the State Bank, GIO, the TAB, FreightCorp, electricity, prisons, and the NSW Lotteries.
“Unfortunately, the community can tick off precious few wins in that list.
“To their great credit, our local community won a long fight to stave off the privatisation of the Wallsend Aged Care facility by the current Labor government.
“Many of our public buildings and lands have been sold off or commercialised. Who can forget the sudden whim to privatise the Newcastle bus depot by the NSW Premier, John Fahey, in the ‘90s. And today, we have the former Royal Newcastle site as a sad recent example that this kind of threat to public land is still current, under both Labor and Coalition governments.
“Right now, the Labor government is pushing a major plan to privatise public assets along Newcastle’s coast, under the guise of a coastal ‘revitalisation’ strategy.
“After the March election, we face the prospect of government under the Coalition, which has already made rumblings about privatising Sydney Ferries (raising the obvious question of what would happen to our own Stockton ferry) and Sydney’s desalination plant (again raising obvious questions for the Hunter, given the local debate about desalination in the wake of the Tillegra Dam decision).
“The Better Services campaign provides an excellent opportunity to focus public attention on such issues as we approach the March state election, and I’m proud to be such an early signatory to it,” Mr Sutton said.

Click here to see the Five Point Better Services Agreement.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Media Release: New coal proposal shows need for new approach

Newcastle Greens
Thursday, 2 December 2010
New coal proposal shows need for new approach
The proposed development of new coal export facilities at the former BHP steelworks site would make Newcastle an even worse climate offender, and would further compromise the Hunter’s ability to diversify the regional economy away from its unsustainable reliance on coal, according to The Greens candidate for Newcastle, John Sutton.
As a Greens councillor and environmentalist, Mr Sutton initiated the Hunter’s first climate-based campaign to phase out the coal industry during the 1990s.
“It’s sadly ironic that news of this new proposal has emerged at the same time as the UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun, while hundreds are gathering at Lake Liddell in the Hunter to protest against further coal mining and exports, and while inner-city Newcastle residents are expressing strong concerns about the impact of coal freight on local air pollution and amenity, and the Mayfield community is up in arms about potential local traffic impacts from another proposed development on the former BHP site.
“In recent discussions about their proposed Mayfield container terminal, the Newcastle Port Corporation has admitted that coal already consumes so much of our rail network capacity that only 20% of the freight generated by its proposed container terminal development could be transported by rail, with the remaining 80% forced to use trucks. This would apply equally to the Buildev coal development on the adjacent site.
“This is a perfect example of how the current open slather approach to coal mining and exports is directly restricting our ability to create a more resilient, diverse and sustainable local economy,” Mr Sutton said.
“From both a local and global perspective, it’s just not good enough anymore for governments to simply abrogate their responsibility to the whims of the market-place.
“Our local, regional and global communities are now asking when is enough enough, and demanding government action to curb the runaway expansion of the coal industry.
“The Greens have long called for a just transition, comprising a gradual and planned phasing out of the coal industry, and associated economic restructuring and community redevelopment programs to assist affected local and regional communities to build a twenty-first century climate friendly economy.
“The Greens believe that it’s both more ethical and practical to do this in a planned, phased and systematic way, because the longer this transition is delayed, the more disruptive it will be when the need for change inevitably imposes itself.
“Starting the process now will allow us to take greater advantage of the economic and social opportunities that a transition economy offers.
“Rather than wasting precious time and resources on a proposal for new coal facilities at the former BHP steelworks site, the state government should immediately reject the proposal, and develop – in full consultation with the community - an integrated plan for the site based on sustainable job-rich industries that will contribute to a more diverse local and regional economy,” Mr Sutton said.