The Conversation

Citizen science projects are a way to contribute to science from your own backyard. Shutterstock

Our backyards are home to many scuttling, slithering and scampering creatures, which are often the subject of fascination. But they can also play a key role in tracking the changes in the world around us – for science.

Science is a vital tool to monitor the world, but scientists can’t do it all alone. Ordinary citizens can help by getting involved in a citizen science project.

People are spending weekends with their friends and families learning more about their backyards and gathering data that would otherwise be inaccessible to scientists.

They’re helping to manage invasive species, tree death, diseases and animal health. And it’s a way to take responsibility for the environment, urban areas, farmland and the creatures that visit our gardens.

Here are just a few ways you can get involved too.

Birds in backyards

Bird feeders and water dispensers are a great way to monitor human interactions with wildlife. If you have them, you can see the effect they have on your garden. You may even get a visit from a threatened species.

This project, created by researchers at Deakin and Griffith universities, aims to find out how people influence bird numbers and species diversity, and to measure the impact of food and water provisions. The organisers are looking for volunteers.

Additionally, BirdLife Australia’s Birds in Backyards is a project that collects reports of backyard bird sightings for analysis through the data-collection site Birdata. The site also contains resources on bird-friendly gardening, a bird finder tool (for identifying that pesky bird), forums and events.

Aggressive birds?

You may have heard the story of the bell miner (Manorina melanophrys), its feeding habits, aggressive behaviour and its association with a plant sickness known as eucalypt dieback.

A bell miner hangs from the trees. David Cook/Flickr, CC BY-NC

The Bell Miner Colony Project, which I run, looks at the bell miners’ habitat choice and movements, and investigates whether they really cause dieback. The project, developed two years ago, looks to answer questions about bell miner distribution across the east coast of Australia, and helps with managing forests and gardens.

Most people either love or hate bell miners. I personally love them, so I want to find out what they are really doing on a species scale.

One colony lives in the Melbourne Botanic Gardens and another in the Melbourne Zoo, so they are easy to see and visit. They make a distinctive “tink” call throughout the day, which can be used to monitor density. If you have seen any, please report them.

Tracking ferals

If your area seems to be riddled with pests, Feral Scan is a website for surveying and identifying them. The data is compiled and plotted on a map to create a scanner for previous sightings.

Another website for reporting biodiversity sightings is the Atlas of Living Australia. Any species seen in your backyard or during your travels can be added to the searchable database of sightings from across the nation.

Helping wombats

WomSAT maps and record wombats and wombat burrow locations. So if you’ve seen wombats running around, let them know.

A wombat infected with mange. Upsticksngo/Flickr, CC BY

There is also a call for volunteers in the ACT to help treat wombats with mange infections. Mange is a skin disease caused by mites, which leaves wombats itching until they scab. Volunteers help by applying treatments outside wombat burrows and monitoring the burrows with cameras.

Weed spotting

For those of you who are not into animals, there is a project for detecting new and emerging weeds in Queensland.

Queensland Herbarium teaches weed identification and mapping skills so that you can send your weed specimens and accompanying data to them.

This helps scientists determine where weeds are, how they spread and the best process for large-scale management.

Kathryn Teare Ada Lambert founded The Bell-Miner-Colony Project and is always on the lookout for interesting citizen science projects to get involved in.

One of the flashpoints in Saturday’s Western Australian election is the Perth Freight Link, a policy to improve the access for trucks to the port of Fremantle. This includes an extension to Perth’s Roe Highway, known as Roe 8. The plan has met with years of protests by local government, environmentalists and residents who are concerned about the economic, social and environmental issues associated with the development.

In particular, Roe 8 will cut through the Beeliar Wetlands, home to threatened ecological communities and migratory shorebirds. Labor and the Greens have long opposed this plan and have developed an alternative freight strategy. But this was discarded by the incoming Liberal government led by Premier Colin Barnett in 2008, which reverted to an older plan to extend Roe Highway.

Work has begun on clearing the site. However, a Senate inquiry report released on Tuesday recommended that action be suspended. WA Labor has promised to cancel Roe 8 and the Perth Freight Link project, while the Liberal Party is holding fast on the issue.

The controversy around Roe 8 has highlighted the lack of effective consideration of biodiversity values, not just at the Beeliar wetlands but across the city.

Why intact wetlands are important

In a recent radio interview, Premier Barnett stated that Roe 8 “will not damage the environment of the Beeliar Wetlands other than you will see a major road going between two lakes”.

The proposed extension of the Roe Highway. Man Roads WA

This displays an ignorance of natural systems. Fragmentation is a serious threat to our remaining biodiversity, along with climate change and declining rainfall.

Wetlands aren’t swimming pools with neatly tiled boundaries. Wetlands function because open water areas are linked to their fringing vegetation and woodlands. This is how pollutants are filtered before the water passes into the lake, how turtles maintain sustainable populations by nesting in woodlands, and how they exchange genetic material with turtles in other wetlands.

Nor is it difficult to enable these linkages. Examples include refitting drains to become living streams, and creating wildlife corridors along road verges with natural vegetation and trees.

It is essential that we retain our few remaining natural assets intact and enhance the connectivity between them. In assessing the Roe 8 proposal, the WA Environmental Protection Authority concluded that habitat fragmentation was a major issue of the development and that there was no easy solution to it.

Wetlands have been lost throughout the state. When the WA Environment Protection Authority released its State of the Environment Report in 2007 it noted that more than 80% of the original wetlands on the Swan Coastal Plain had been lost to development since 1829. Furthermore, it reported that wetland loss was continuing at an average rate of about four hectares (two football fields) each day.

Why is this happening? There are many reasons, but the principal one is a lack of will by the state government to implement its own policies on wetland conservation. The Bush Forever Plan – which aims to protect a comprehensive and representative system of Perth’s amazing biodiversity – is still incomplete nearly 20 years after it was drawn up. The government’s draft Green Growth Plan proposes a massive downsizing of the urban conservation estate.

In 1997, the Coalition government released a Wetlands Conservation Policy for WA. It proposed many worthwhile measures, including a policy to protect wetlands from encroachment by urban and industrial development. A draft of this policy was released for public comment in 2005, but it has never been completed or implemented.

WA’s current environment minister, Albert Jacob, has revoked the Swan Coastal Plain Lakes environmental protection policy, which provided some protection to important wetlands. Inappropriate development now threatens many significant wetlands across Perth.

The only remaining protection they have is via clearing regulations, which are intended primarily to manage farming operations. Roe 8 was approved despite the fact that it breached the EPA guidelines on assessment. The state Court of Appeal ruled that the EPA and the government were not obliged to follow these guidelines.

Global hotspot Hatchling turtles cross woodlands to reach wetland habitats. Jane Chambers

More broadly, Perth sits in a biodiversity hotspot, one of 25 places globally that together contain nearly half of the world’s wildlife and a third of the plants, but cover less than 2% of the land. They are places with exceptional concentrations of species found nowhere else, which are now seeing exceptional habitat losses. The biodiversity of the Perth region is comparable to that of the whole of Great Britain.

The threat to Perth’s biodiversity is illustrated by the plight of the Banksia Woodlands, which once covered much of the Perth area. In September 2016, the Banksia Woodlands of the Swan Coastal Plain were listed nationally as an endangered ecological community, particularly due to continuing fragmentation.

With such an internationally recognised threatened treasure on our doorstep you might imagine that environmental protection in Perth would be among the best in the world, but you would be wrong. Instead, valuable ecological communities, fauna and flora are subordinated to short-term commercial and political interests.

Why should we care?

For many of us the concept of biodiversity is a pretty abstract one. You can recognise that a rainforest or the Great Barrier Reef is an amazing ecosystem. But how is biodiversity relevant to urban areas?

Access to natural places is essential for human well-being. Contact with nature has been shown to promote faster recovery from surgery, better pain control, fulfilment of emotional needs, lower self-reported stress, positive moods, increased vitality, reduced depression, prosocial behaviour and healthier family units. Psychological benefits are also higher in areas with greater biodiversity.

You inherently know this to be true. Visualise walking down a crowded city footpath, with traffic banked up among tall city buildings. Now visualise walking down a tree-canopied path with birds singing and the sunlight dappled through leaves. Feel your shoulders drop?

Why are areas of high biodiversity more effective? Because, unlike parks, natural ecosystems have diversity that changes constantly – birdsong and flowers that change with the season, a turtle heading off to nest, or the appearance of tadpoles sprouting legs and becoming frogs. This provides a new experience every time we visit.

If that’s not enough, natural areas like wetlands also provide a suite of “ecosystem services” that benefit the urban environment.

They improve aesthetics and amenity, increase property values, provide recreational opportunities, remove pollutants from air (by trees) and water (by wetlands and streams), reduce noise and wind, protect us from storm events through flood control, provide climate control (tree canopies reduce temperatures), and offer habitat corridors so you can enjoy birds and wildlife in your backyard.

For our cities to grow sustainably we must have increased density of housing, but we must also ensure quality of life by including quality public open space. Natural ecosystems need to be sympathetically integrated into urban development, to benefit people and wildlife.

Jane Chambers is a member of the Beeliar Group of Professors for Environmental Responsibility.

Philip Jennings is affiliated with the Wetlands Conservation Society and the Cockburn Wetlands Education Centre and the Beeliar Group of Professors for Environmental Responsibility.

It is wet season in Bali, Indonesia, a popular tourist destination for Australian, Russian, German, Chinese and Japanese visitors.

As the rain pounds down on banana leaves and rice fields, the rivers fill up and irrigation systems overflow. With it, the water masses bring trash in bulk: anything from food wrappers and plastic bags to bottles and other domestic waste.

To tackle the issue of marine pollution, several organisations got together in Nusa Dua – a popular tourist destination – and other locations across Bali to stage the largest beach clean-up the island has seen.

Around 12,000 volunteers collected 40 tons of garbage at 55 locations, according to the One Island, One Voice campaign page.

While the beach clean-up was a hugely successful awareness campaign and a great promotion which highlights the efforts done around the island, it is only a drop in the ocean of global marine pollution.

Plastic pollution in Indonesia

In recent years, Bali has seen growing environmental problems such as pollution and freshwater scarcity. Popular tourist destination Kuta beach is regularly covered in waste. Most of this is plastic that washes ashore during the rainy season.

The island’s garbage dumps are reportedly overflowing,. This makes solid waste management a pressing issue. Substantial groundwater resources are predicted to run dry by 2020, threatening freshwater resources.

On top of that, Indonesia is the world’s second-biggest marine polluter after China, discarding 3.22 million metric tons of waste annually. This accounts for 10% of the world’s marine pollution.

The effects marine pollution has on ecosystems and humans are beginning to be well documented. Marine scientists have found harmful consequences of marine pollution to sea life, ecosystems and humans.

Plastic can kill ocean mammals, turtles and other species that consume it. It can also poison food and water resources, as harmful chemicals leach out of the plastic.

It poses threats to human health as well. Plastics leach cancerous toxins. After being consumed by marine species, they enter the food chain, eventually ending up in fish we eat.

Marine plastic pollution is a global problem and Indonesia’s beaches present pressing examples to study the socio-economic effects this has on coastal communities.

Most vulnerable to marine pollution left out of global discussions

Last month, The Economist held the fourth Oceans Summit in Bali.

The summit was attended by state leaders such as Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla, representatives of major global economic organisations such as Citigroup managing director Michael Eckhart, and celebrity and entrepreneur Adrian Grenier.

Speakers and panels discussed a number of topics, including the “blue economy” and how companies and governments can participate in this marine-based sustainable industry.

During the summit, the Indonesian government announced it will pledge US$1 billion to curb ocean waste by 70% by 2025. It’s an ambitious objective, which shows dedication and commitment to a plastic-free future.

But not all voices are heard in this global debate. Many Bali-based environmental organisations engaged in education programs were not represented at the summit. Those economically most vulnerable to pollution – such as beach vendors, fishermen and others employed in the marine tourism trade – appear to be left out of the conversation.

Marine pollution and tourism

The Indonesian government plans to boost tourism and increase national visitors from 9.7 million in 2015 to 20 million by 2020. Such increases in visitor numbers and population will raise consumption and waste production, further pressuring the island’s infrastructure and ecosystems.

With tourism as the island’s largest economic sector, many Balinese people depend on foreign visitors to earn an income. Some tourism operators are concerned that if the plastic problem increases it will damage this industry. They fear tourists will stop coming to Bali if it is too polluted.

Marine communities may also suffer negative socio-economic consequences, as fishermen can lose their livelihood and tourism operators lose their customers.

While some tourism operators understand that clean beaches are key in attracting international tourists, the expected growth is likely to further stress Bali’s environment.

What is being done?

Efforts by activists, community groups and NGOs to clean beaches play a key role in protecting Bali’s environment. But they are only a temporary fix and don’t tackle the causes of this global problem.

Such groups are leading the fight against over-development and pollution through protests, clean-up events and educational programs.

Campaigners from Bali-based environmental youth group “Bye Bye Plastic Bags” advocate for an island-wide ban on plastic bags. They also spoke at the Ocean Summit.

And while they convinced Bali’s governor to commit to make the island plastic-bag-free by 2018, continued development of legislation, regulation and industry guidelines is needed to save Indonesia’s waterways from drowning in waste.

Thomas Wright does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Every year tens of millions of Christmas Island red crabs migrate from the island’s dense forest to the cliffs to spawn. It’s a phenomenon that literally stops traffic and draws tourists from around the world to the tiny Australian territory.

But while there are still tens of millions of red crabs on the island, in recent years their numbers have dipped by around a third as they compete for space with (and struggle to fend off) a recently introduced pest: the yellow crazy ant.

The ants are having a significant impact on the island’s biodiversity, which relies on the red crab to maintain the forest understorey and keep the forest floor clean.

So what can be done to save Christmas Island’s biodiversity from yellow crazy ant supercolonies?

For the past few years a team of scientists have been hatching a plan to introduce a parasitical wasp to the island to cut the ant’s food supply. And in December they got the ball rolling on the delicate process of tipping the scales back in the crabs’ favour.

La Trobe University’s Matt Smith speaks with Peter Green, Head of the Department of Ecology, Environment and Evolution at La Trobe, about the impact of the yellow crazy ant and how his team’s plan to save the Christmas Island red crab is working in the first few months of its implementation.

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Peter Green receives funding from the Department of Environment and Energy.

Australia’s population growth and economic activity continue to pose major environmental challenges, according to a comprehensive five-yearly stocktake of the country’s environmental health.

The federal government’s State of the Environment 2016 report (prepared by a group of independent experts, which I chaired), released today, predicts that population growth and economic development will be the main drivers of environmental problems such as land-use change, habitat destruction, invasive species, and climate change.

These main pressures are broadly the same as those listed in the first ever State of the Environment report in 1996.

Yet since the last report in 2011, there have been some improvements in the state and trend of parts of the Australian environment. Our heritage (built, natural, and cultural) and marine environments are generally in good condition, as is the Australian Antarctic Territory. However, the Great Barrier Reef was affected significantly by Cyclone Yasi in 2011 and record high sea surface temperatures in 2015-16, resulting in extensive coral bleaching and die-off, particularly across the northern regions.

Pressures and changes

The new report shows that some individual pressures on the environment have eased since the 2011 report, such as those associated with air quality, poor agricultural practices and commercial offshore fishing, as well as oil and gas exploration and production in Australia’s marine environment.

During the same time, however, other pressures have increased, including those associated with coal mining and the coal-seam gas industry, habitat fragmentation and degradation, invasive species, litter in our coastal and marine environments, and greater traffic volumes in our capital cities.

Climate change is an increasingly important and pervasive pressure on all aspects of the Australian environment. It is altering the structure and function of natural ecosystems, and affecting heritage, economic activity and human well-being.

We continue to lose agricultural lands through urban encroachment. Over the past five years land-clearing rates stabilised in all states and territories except Queensland, where the rate of clearing increased.

Coastal waterways are threatened by pollutants, including microplastics and nanoparticles, which are largely unregulated and their effects poorly understood.

Since 2011, the coast has experienced several extreme weather events, including cyclones, heatwaves and floods. Climate-related pressures of sea level rise, more frequent severe storms, and subsequent erosion and recession of the shoreline are expected to become increasingly significant for coastal regions in the future.

Population growth in our major cities, along with Australia’s reliance on private cars, is leading to greater traffic volumes, which increase traffic congestion and delays as well as pollution.

Australia’s biodiversity is continuing to decline, with some exceptions, and new approaches are needed to prevent accelerating decline in many species. Since 2011, the list of nationally threatened species and ecological communities has lengthened, with the addition of 30 new ecological communities, and 44 animal and 5 plant species. Two species have been reported as probably extinct: the Bramble Cay melomys and the Christmas Island forest skink.

What’s more, because climate change will increase the existing threats, the capacity of the environment to adapt to climate change will be improved if other existing threats are addressed or ameliorated.

Grounds for optimism

For some parts of the Australian environment, at least, effective policy and management have contributed to improved outcomes for the environment and people.

Since 2011, Australia’s conservation estate has increased in size. The National Reserve System has grown significantly, largely through the addition of new Indigenous Protected Areas.

Early indications are that environmental watering in the Murray–Darling Basin, driven by the 2012 Murray–Darling Basin Plan, along with the effects of natural floods, have contributed to ecological benefits.

The formation of the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority in 2012 has resulted in greater focus on industry compliance and increased levels of preparedness for unplanned events.

Technology is also changing the way in which environmental managers and policy-makers can access and use information to support decision-making and environmental management.

The new digital platform for the State of the Environment has delivered improved transparency and access to environmental data, making it more accessible to decision makers (including the private sector) and the public, but there remain data gaps to be filled.

There have been significant improvements in knowledge about the environment. In recent years, citizen science has expanded, resulting in improved observations of the environment that, in turn, provides knowledge to support more effective management.

However, we need to accelerate the process of improving environmental information, data and analysis between government, the private sector and civil society. The move towards a national system of environmental economic accounts is a promising development.

Challenges ahead

It is clear that some parts of Australia’s environment are not yet being managed sustainably, including invasive species and litter in our coastal and marine environments. There are several key challenges to the effective management of the Australian environment, including:

• Lack of a national policy establishing a clear vision for the long-term protection and sustainable management of our environment

• Poor collaboration and coordination of policies, decisions and management arrangements across sectors and between both public and private sector managers

• Insufficient resources for environmental management and restoration, and a lack of understanding of cumulative impacts.

State of the Environment 2016 is fundamentally different from its predecessors – with innovations that make it interactive and easier to track change over time.

Its consistent format provides environment policy makers and hands-on environmental managers with better visibility of changes, vital to understanding the condition of our environment and making informed decisions about its future.

It is grounded in the best available information and analysis, and builds on 20 years of experience in national reporting on the environment.

Meeting these challenges will require integrated policies and actions that address both the drivers of environmental change and their associated pressures.

Meeting this challenge will require scientists, governments, communities and businesses to all work together, and there are promising moves in this direction. For example, the Reef Life Survey brings together scientists, managers and citizen scientists to monitor shallow-reef biodiversity in nearly 90 locations around Australia. The appointment of a Threatened Species Commissioner in July 2014 is also helping to bring a national, collaborative focus to conservation efforts to address the growing number of native species in Australia facing extinction. Such efforts need to be encouraged and expanded.

William Jackson receives funding from the Australian Government Department of the Environment and Energy as Chief Author of Australia State of the Environment 2016.

Australia's electricity grid is no longer fit for purpose. Tatters ❀/Flickr, CC BY-SA

The public debate over the problems of electricity supply displays a curious disconnect. On the one hand, there is virtually universal agreement that the system is in crisis. After 25 years, the promised outcomes of reform – cheaper and more reliable electricity, competitive markets and rational investment decisions – are further away than ever.

On the other hand, proposals to change the situation range from marginal tweaks to politically motivated mischief-making. The preliminary report of the Independent Review into the Future Security of the National Electricity Market, released last year, canvasses such options as the introduction of capacity markets for reserve power, which have done little to resolve problems overseas.

Meanwhile, the Turnbull government has used recent failures to score points against renewable energy (hated, for obscure historical-cultural reasons, by its right-wing base) and to promote the absurd idea of new coal-fired power stations.

A sorry state

This debate might make sense if the system had worked well in the past. In reality, however, the National Electricity Market (NEM) never produced lower prices or more reliable power for households.

In the early years of the NEM, reductions in maintenance spending concealed this failure. When new investment became necessary in the early 2000s, the result was a dramatic upsurge in prices. This was primarily because the NEM regulatory system allowed rates of return on capital far higher than those needed to finance the system under public ownership.

Until the 1990s state governments owned and controlled Australia’s electricity grids from power stations to poles and wires. The expansion of interconnections between state networks created the possibility of a truly national network. The Commonwealth and the states could have jointly owned such a network, following the highly successful model of Snowy Hydro.

The creation of the NEM broke this system into pieces. Ownership of generation was separated from transmission, distribution and retail, while maintaining effectively separate state systems. The only national component was at the regulatory level, where two separate national regulators (the Australian Energy Market Operator and the Australian Energy Regulator) overlap with the continuing regulatory operations of state governments.

Most state governments have sold their electricity enterprises wholly or partly. Victoria and South Australia fully privatised their systems by the early 2000s. NSW partially privatised its network business after 2015. Queensland privatised the retail sector but maintained public ownership of the network and some electricity generation.

Contrary to the hopes of the market designers, breaking up these integrated systems has delivered no benefits, while incurring huge costs. Power prices have continued to rise.

These costs have been on display, in dramatic form, in recent system failures in South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania. Everyone has blamed everyone else, and no real change has emerged.

The tragedy is that all this could have been avoided if we had seized the opportunity in the 1990s to build a unified national grid, with a single authority running transmission networks and the interconnectors between them. This would still allow competition in generation, but would abandon the idea of market incentives in the provision of network services.

Electricity networks are considered to be natural monopolies. Unlike other industries, where it makes sense for lots of businesses to compete and drive costs lower, the cost and importance of supplying electricity means it make sense for one business to control the market.

Given this status, this authority should not be a privatised firm or even a corporatised government enterprise. Instead, it should be a statutory authority with a primary mission of delivering energy security at low cost.

This failure was not confined to electricity. Our telecommunications network was also privatised in the 1990s, with the promise that competition would deliver better services. In reality, investment and innovation stagnated. It got to the point where the government was forced to re-enter the market with the National Broadband Network (NBN).

As the NBN example suggests, unscrambling the egg of failed reform will be a complex and messy business. It will have to be done gradually, perhaps beginning with South Australia and Tasmania, the states worst affected by recent disasters. But there is no satisfactory alternative.

Public appetite, lack of political will

An obvious question is whether renationalising the electricity network is politically feasible. While the political class on both sides views privatised infrastructure as an unchallengeable necessity, the general public has a very different view. With only a handful of exceptions, voters have rejected privatisation whenever they have had a chance to do so.

The question of reversing past privatisations is more difficult, and there is less evidence. However, none of the privatisations of the reform era, even those that took place decades ago, commands majority support in Australia.

The question has been addressed by pollsters in Britain, which provided the model for Australia’s energy reforms. The results show overwhelming public support for renationalisation, even though the electricity industry has been in private ownership for decades. Even a majority of Conservative voters support public ownership.

The issue will have its next electoral test in Western Australia, where the Barnett government is proposing to sell its majority interest in its electricity distribution enterprise Western Power. While nothing is ever certain in politics, current polls suggest the government is headed for defeat.

John Quiggin has worked on the issues of privatisation and electricity reform for many years, and has acted as a consultant to unions, state governments and community groups. He received no funding for the work on which this article was based.

President Donald Trump is making it less likely the United States will meet the emissions targets it agreed at the 2015 Paris climate conference. These targets are themselves insufficient to meet the Paris Agreement’s overall goal of keeping global warming well within 2℃.

But there is another possibility for those who want action. The idea is called “claim the sky” and it would involve a global movement, working together with the most affected countries, to claim ownership over our atmosphere.

Trump has promised to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, appointed the former chief executive of oil giant Exxon as his secretary of state, and is planning huge changes to Obama’s Clean Power Plan and the Environmental Protection Agency.

It is true that the cost of renewables like solar and wind energy is dropping rapidly. It’s therefore conceivable that economic factors alone will drive the shift away from fossil fuels. But if nothing more is done, and America and other countries continue to dish out billions in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, it may take far longer than necessary to achieve the goals of Paris, if they can be met at all.

Claim the sky

“Claiming the sky” could help reduce emissions more quickly. At the same time it would assist with adaptation, poverty reduction and public perception, and counter policies of the Trump administration and other countries that support fossil fuels.

It involves establishing a trust to collect fees when damage is done to the atmosphere. That money can then be used to reduce poverty, rebuild communities and restore the atmospheric commons.

After all, the atmosphere is a community asset that belongs to all of us. The problem is that it is an “open access” resource – anyone can emit carbon dioxide with very little direct consequence for themselves, despite the huge cumulative consequences for everyone.

Charging companies and individuals for the damage their emissions cause – for example through a carbon tax or trading system – would encourage lower emissions. However, despite some interesting regional experiments, implementing such a system at a global scale has proved to be next to impossible.

Global civil society could change this, if it claims property rights over the atmosphere. By asserting that we all collectively own the sky, we can begin to use the legal institutions that uphold property rights to protect our collective property, charging those who damage it and rewarding those who improve it.

A public trust

The Public Trust Doctrine is a legal principle that holds that certain natural resources are to be held in trust as assets to serve the public good. Under this doctrine it is the government’s responsibility to protect these assets and maintain them for the public’s use. The government cannot give away or sell off these public assets. The doctrine has been used in many countries in the past to protect water bodies, shorelines, fresh water, wildlife and other resources.

Several court cases have confirmed this responsibility. Just before the Paris talks, a Washington state judge ruled that the government has “a constitutional obligation to protect the public’s interest in natural resources held in trust for the common benefit of the people”. Earlier in 2015, a New Mexico court recognised that the state has a duty to protect the state’s natural resources – including the atmosphere – for the benefit of residents. The same year, a court in the Netherlands ordered the Dutch government to cut the country’s emissions by at least 25% within five years.

The time has come to expand this principle to cover all of the natural capital and ecosystem services that support human well-being, including the atmosphere, oceans and biodiversity.

Creating a trust

Holding climate polluters accountable for their damage is more straightforward than it might seem. Just 90 entities are responsible for two-thirds of the carbon emitted into the atmosphere.

I and several colleagues wrote an open letter asking nations to establish an atmospheric trust on behalf of all current and future generations. The proceeds could fund restoration projects or expedite the transition to non-nuclear, renewable energy. In addition, governments could charge for ongoing damage via a carbon tax or other mechanisms.

Many of us already know or have experienced the benefit of a trust. There are private land trusts, such as the Nature Conservancy in America, or water trusts like the Murray-Darling’s Environmental Water Trust in Australia. The Alaska Permanent Fund and the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund are examples of trusts that put aside royalties from fossil fuel extraction for public benefit.

Just as governments individually levy fines in the event of an oil spill or other environmental damage within their borders, the creation of a trust is an opportunity to do this on a wider scale. The trust will maintain transparency through the internet, publishing financial carbon accounts of projects funded by polluters.

In addition, all governments need not agree in order to create the atmospheric trust. As all governments are co-trustees in the global atmospheric asset, a subset of nations could create the trust and bring the claims.

But given that governments have not acted on their own, pressure from civil society will be required to compel them to act and to counteract the inevitable corporate resistance. In other words, a concerted effort to “claim the sky” as a public trust on behalf of all of global society, in combination with the solid legal framework provided by the Public Trust Doctrine, may just do the trick.

As US Senator Bernie Sanders has said, “When millions of people stand up and fight back, we will not be denied.” It is time to claim our right to the atmospheric commons and a stable climate.

We need a broad coalition of individuals and groups to claim publicly that the atmosphere belongs to all of us and our descendants, and to demand that polluters pay for damage done and for restoring and maintaining our climate.

The fossil fuel era is coming to an end. The industry is making a last-ditch attempt to sell off its assets before these become stranded, aided by government policies and subsidies. This will cause severe and lasting damage to our atmospheric commons.

But if we can claim the sky, create an atmospheric trust and bring damage claims against the biggest polluters, we can further tip the economic scales against fossil fuels and toward renewable energy sources. We can speed up the transition to the 1.5-degree world that the Paris Agreement aims for, and that current and future generations of humans claim as our common asset.

Robert Costanza does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Australia’s summer is officially over, and it’s certainly been a weird one. The centre and east of the continent have had severe heat with many temperature records falling, particularly in New South Wales and Queensland.

For much of the country, the heat peaked on the weekend of February 11-12, when many places hit the high 40s. That heatwave, which mainly affected NSW, was quickly attributed to climate change. But can we say whether the whole summer bore the fingerprint of human-induced climate change?

Overall, Australia experienced its 12th-hottest summer on record. NSW had its hottest recorded summer.

The NSW record average summer temperatures can indeed be linked directly to climate change. We have reached this conclusion using two separate methods of analysis.

First, using coupled model simulations from a paper led by climatologist Sophie Lewis, we see that the extreme heat over the season is at least 50 times more likely in the current climate compared to a modelled world without human influences.

We also carried out an analysis based on current and past observations (similar to previous analyses used for record heat in the Arctic in 2016 and central England in 2014), comparing the likelihood of this record in today’s climate with the likelihood of it happening in the climate of 1910 (the beginning of reliable weather observations).

Again, we found at least a 50-fold increase in the likelihood of this hot summer due to the influence of human factors on the climate.

It is clear that human-induced climate change is greatly increasing the likelihood of record hot summers in NSW and Australia as a whole.

When we look at record summer heat, as represented by average maximum temperatures, we again find a clear human fingerprint on the NSW record.

The Sydney and Canberra heat

So what about when we dig down to the local scale and look at those severe heatwaves? Can we still see the hand of climate change in those events?

As climate varies more on local scales than it does across an entire state like NSW, it can be harder to pick out the effect of climate change from the noise of the weather. On the other hand, it is the local temperature that people feel and is perhaps most meaningful.

In Canberra, we saw extreme heat with temperatures hitting 36℃ on February 9 and then topping 40℃ for the following two days. For that heatwave, we looked at the role of climate change, again by using the Weather@home model and by comparing past and present weather observations.

Both of these methods show that climate change has increased the likelihood of this kind of bout of extreme heat. The Weather@home results point to at least a 50% increase in the likelihood of this kind of heatwave.

For Sydney, which also had extreme temperatures, especially in the western suburbs, the effect of climate change on this heatwave is less clear. The observations show that it is likely that climate change increased the probability of such a heatwave occurring. The model shows the same, but the high year-to-year variability makes identifying the human influence more difficult at this location.

A sign of things to come?

We are seeing more frequent and intense heatwaves across Australia as the climate warms. While the characteristics of these weather events vary a great deal from year to year, the recent heat over eastern Australia has been exceptional. These trends are projected to continue in the coming decades, meaning that the climate change signal in these events will strengthen as conditions diverge further from historical averages.

Traditionally, Sydney’s central business district has had about three days a year above 35℃, averaged over the period 1981-2010. Over the decades from 2021 to 2040 we expect that number to average four a year instead.

To put this summer into context, we have seen a record 11 days hitting the 35℃ mark in Sydney.

It is a similar story for Canberra, where days above 35℃ tend to be more common (seven per year on average for 1981-2010) and are projected to increase to 12 per year for 2021-40. This summer, Canberra had 18 days above 35℃.

All of these results point to problems in the future as climate change causes heatwaves like this summer’s to become more common. This has many implications, not least for our health as many of us struggle to cope with the effects of excessive heat.

Some of our more unusual records

While the east battled record-breaking heat, the west battled extreme weather of a very different sort. Widespread heavy rains on February 9-11 caused flooding in parts of Western Australia. And on February 9 Perth experienced its coldest February day on record, peaking at just 17.4℃.

Back east, and just over a week after the extreme heat in Canberra, the capital’s airport experienced its coldest February morning on record (albeit after a weather station move in 2008). Temperatures dipped below 3℃ on the morning of February 21.

The past few months have given us more than our fair share of newsworthy weather. But the standout event has been the persistent and extreme heat in parts of eastern Australia – and that’s something we’re set to see plenty more of in the years to come.

Data were provided by the Bureau of Meteorology through its collaboration with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science. This article was co-authored by Heidi Cullen, chief scientist with Climate Central.

Andrew King receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

David Karoly receives funding from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science and an ARC Linkage grant. He is a member of the Climate Change Authority and the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.

Geert Jan van Oldenborgh receives funding from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) and the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN).

Matthew Hale receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Increasing carbon dioxide is impacting some of our favourite foods.

Climate change and extreme weather events are already impacting our food, from meat and vegetables, right through to wine. In our series on the Climate and Food, we’re looking at what this means for the food chain.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is increasing. Everything else being equal, higher CO₂ levels will increase the yields of major crops such as wheat, barley and pulses. But the trade-off is a hit to the quality and nutritional content of some of our favourite foods.

In our research at the Australian Grains Free Air CO₂ Enrichment (AGFACE) facility, we at Agriculture Victoria and The University of Melbourne are mimicking the CO₂ levels likely to be found in the year 2050. CO₂ levels currently stand at 406 parts per million (PPM) and are expected to rise to 550PPM by 2050. We have found that elevated levels of CO₂ will reduce the concentration of grain protein and micronutrients like zinc and iron, in cereals (pulses are less affected).

The degree to which protein is affected by CO₂ depends on the temperature and available water. In wet years there will be a smaller impact than in drier years. But over nine years of research we have shown that the average decrease in grain protein content is 6% when there is elevated CO₂.

Because a decrease in protein content under elevated CO2 can be more severe in dry conditions, Australia could be particularly affected. Unless ways are found to ameliorate the decrease in protein through plant breeding and agronomy, Australia’s dry conditions may put it at a competitive disadvantage, since grain quality is likely to decrease more than in other parts of the world with more favourable growing conditions.

Increasing carbon dioxide could impact the flour your bread. Shutterstock Food quality

There are several different classes of wheat – some are good for making bread, others for noodles etc. The amount of protein is one of the factors that sets some wheat apart from others.

Although a 6% average decrease in grain protein content may not seem large, it could result in a lot of Australian wheat being downgraded. Some regions may be completely unable to grow wheat of high enough quality to make bread.

But the protein reduction in our wheat will become manifest in a number of ways. As many farmers are paid premiums for high protein concentrations, their incomes could suffer. Our exports will also take a hit, as markets prefer high-protein wheat. For consumers, we could see the reduction in bread quality (the best bread flours are high-protein) and nutrition. Loaf volume and texture may be different but it is unclear whether taste will be affected.

The main measure of this is loaf volume and texture, but the degree of decrease is affected by crop variety. A decrease in grain protein concentration is one factor affecting loaf volume, but dough characteristics (such as elasticity) are also degraded by changes in the protein make-up of grain. This alters the composition of glutenin and gliadin proteins which are the predominant proteins in gluten. To maintain bread quality when lower quality flour is used, bakers can add gluten, but if gluten characteristics are changed, this may not achieve the desired dough characteristics for high quality bread. Even if adding extra gluten remedies poor loaf quality, it adds extra expense to the baking process.

Nutrition will also be affected by reduced grain protein, particularly in developing areas with more limited access to food. This is a major food security concern. If grain protein concentration decreases, people with less access to food may need to consume more (at more cost) in order to meet their basic nutritional needs. Reduced micronutrients, notably zinc and iron, could affect health, particularly in Africa. This is being addressed by international efforts biofortification and selection of iron and zinc rich varieties, but it is unknown whether such efforts will be successful as CO₂ levels increase.

Will new breeds of wheat stand up to increasing carbon dioxide? What can we do about it?

Farmers have always been adaptive and responsive to changes and it is possible management of nitrogen fertilisers could minimise the reduction in grain protein. Research we are conducting shows, however, that adding additional fertiliser has less effect under elevated CO₂ conditions than under current CO₂ levels. There may be fundamental physiological changes and bottlenecks under elevated CO₂ that are not yet well understood.

If management through nitrogen-based fertilisation either cannot, or can only partly, increases grain protein, then we must question whether plant breeding can keep up with the rapid increase in CO₂. Are there traits that are not being considered but that could optimise the positives and reduce the negative impacts?

Selection for high protein wheat varieties often results in a decrease in yield. This relationship is referred to as the yield-protein conundrum. A lot of effort has gone into finding varieties that increase protein while maintaining yields. We have yet to find real success down this path.

A combination of management adaptation and breeding may be able to maintain grain protein while still increasing yields. But, there are unknowns under elevated CO₂such as whether protein make-up is altered, and whether there are limitations in the plant to how protein is manufactured under elevated CO2. We may require active selection and more extensive testing of traits and management practices to understand whether varieties selected now will still respond as expected under future CO₂ conditions.

Finally, to maintain bread quality we should rethink our intentions. Not all wheat needs to be destined for bread. But, for Australia to remain competitive in international markets, plant breeders may need to select varieties with higher grain protein concentrations under elevated CO2 conditions, focusing on varieties that contain the specific gluten protein combinations necessary for a delicious loaf.

Glenn Fitzgerald receives funding for this research from The Grains Research Development Corporation and the Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources, Victoria.

Farmers face falling crop yields and growing food demand. Shutterstock

Climate change and extreme weather events are already having impacts on our food, from meat and vegetables, right through to wine. In our series on the Climate and Food, we’re looking at what this means for the food chain.

While increases in population and wealth will lift global demand for food by up to 70% by 2050, agriculture is already feeling the effects of climate change. This is expected to continue in coming decades.

Scientists and farmers will need to act on multiple fronts to counter falling crop yields and feed more people. As with previous agricultural revolutions, we need a new set of plant characteristics to meet the challenge.

When it comes to the staple crops – wheat, rice, maize, soybean, barley and sorghum – research has found changes in rainfall and temperature explain about 30% of the yearly variation in agricultural yields. All six crops responded negatively to increasing temperatures – most likely associated with increases in crop development rates and water stress. In particular, wheat, maize and barley show a negative response to increased temperatures. But, overall, rainfall trends had only minor effects on crop yields in these studies.

Since 1950, average global temperatures have risen by roughly 0.13°C per decade. An even faster rate of roughly 0.2°C of warming per decade is expected over the next few decades.

As temperatures rise, rainfall patterns change. Increased heat also leads to greater evaporation and surface drying, which further intensifies and prolongs droughts.

A warmer atmosphere can also hold more water – about 7% more water vapour for every 1°C increase in temperature. This ultimately results in storms with more intense rainfall. A review of rainfall patterns shows changes in the amount of rainfall everywhere.

Maize yields are predicted to decline with climate change. Shutterstock Falling yields

Crop yields around Australia have been hard hit by recent weather. Last year, for instance, the outlook for mungbeans was excellent. But the hot, dry weather has hurt growers. The extreme conditions have reduced average yields from an expected 1-1.5 tonnes per hectare to just 0.1-0.5 tonnes per hectare.

Sorghum and cotton crops fared little better, due to depleted soil water, lack of in-crop rainfall, and extreme heat. Fruit and vegetables, from strawberries to lettuce, were also hit hard.

But the story is larger than this. Globally, production of maize and wheat between 1980 and 2008 was 3.8% and 5.5% below what we would have expected without temperature increases. One model, which combines historical crop production and weather data, projects significant reductions in production of several key African crops. For maize, the predicted decline is as much as 22% by 2050.

Feeding more people in these changing conditions is the challenge before us. It will require crops that are highly adapted to dry and hot environments. The so-called “Green Revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s created plants with short stature and enhanced responsiveness to nitrogen fertilizer.

Now, a new set of plant characteristics is needed to further increase crop yield, by making plants resilient to the challenges of a water-scarce planet.

Developing resilient crops for a highly variable climate

Resilient crops will require significant research and action on multiple fronts – to create adaptation to drought and waterlogging, and tolerance to cold, heat and salinity. Whatever we do, we also need to factor in that agriculture contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).

Scientists are meeting this challenge by creating a framework for adapting to climate change. We are identifying favourable combinations of crop varieties (genotypes) and management practices (agronomy) to work together in a complex system.

We can mitigate the effects of some climate variations with good management practices. For example, to tackle drought, we can alter planting dates, fertilizer, irrigation, row spacing, population and cropping systems.

Genotypic solutions can bolster this approach. The challenge is to identify favourable combinations of genotypes (G) and management (M) practices in a variable environment (E). Understanding the interaction between genotypes, management and the environment (GxMxE) is critical to improving grain yield under hot and dry conditions.

Genetic and management solutions can be used to develop climate-resilient crops for highly variable environments in Australia and globally. Sorghum is a great example. It is the dietary staple for over 500 million people in more than 30 countries, making it the world’s fifth-most-important crop for human consumption after rice, wheat, maize and potatoes.

‘Stay-green’ in sorghum is an example of a genetic solution to drought that has been deployed in Australia, India and sub-Saharan Africa. Crops with stay-green maintain greener stems and leaves during drought, resulting in increased stem strength, grain size and yield. This genetic solution can be combined with a management solution (e.g. reduced plant population) to optimise production and food security in highly variable and water-limited environments.

Other projects in India have found that alternate wetting and drying (AWD) irrigation in rice, compared with normal flooded production, can reduce water use by about 32%. And, by maintaining an aerobic environment in the soil, it reduces methane emissions five-fold.

Climate change, water, agriculture and food security form a critical nexus for the 21st century. We need to create and implement practices that will increase yields, while overcoming changing conditions and limiting the emissions from the agricultural sector. There is no room for complacency here.

Andrew Borrell receives funding from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and is an associate investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis.

Cows don't do well in the heat. Shutterstock

Climate change and extreme weather events are already impacting our food, from meat and vegetables, right through to wine. In our series on the Climate and Food, we’re looking at what this means for the food chain.

During the recent heatwave in New South Wales, which saw record-breaking temperatures for two days in a row, 40 dairy cows died in Shoalhaven, a city just south of Sydney.

Climate change doubled the likelihood of this kind of record-breaking heatwave. And even the higher minimum temperatures we’ve recently experienced may soon be the “new normal” for this time of the year.

Farmers that already find it difficult to make a profit will need to adapt to these changing conditions, ensuring they mitigate the effects on their livestock. This could take the form of more shade and shelter, but also the selection of different breeds to suit the conditions.

What’s happening?

Cattle are vulnerable to changes in rainfall patterns (variability and extremes), temperature (average and extremes), humidity, and evaporation. These climactic changes can affect livestock directly, and also indirectly through pasture growth, forage crop quantity and quality, the production and price of feed-grain as well as spatial changes in disease and pest distribution.

The greatest risks stem from extreme events such as heatwaves and droughts, as they are less predictable and much more difficult to adapt to than gradual changes.

Dairy cows are particularly affected by heatwaves, which can not only reduce milk production, but, as the NSW heatwave illustrated, cause illness or death. Further, the effects on milk production and the protein content of the milk can last for several weeks.

Similar to humans, instances of high relative air humidity and little wind worsen the negative effects of high temperatures on livestock. When this occurs, the animals cannot easily offload excess heat through transpiration. This is compounded when there is little or no cloud cover, as the cattle are exposed to more solar radiation.

Milk production is also impacted by night-time temperatures and the timing of the heatwave. When night-time temperatures are high, cows cannot offload excess heat. If a heatwave occurs after the cows’ peak of lactation, milk production is less likely to recover and the impact is even worse.

The response of cattle to heat stress also depends on the breed. This can differ as a result of, among other things, differences in metabolic rate, sweating rate, coat texture and colour. Researchers have even identified a “slick hair gene”, responsible for producing cattle with shorter, slicker hair that reduces their vulnerability to direct radiative heat. The full benefits of the slick gene still require more research as a strategy for animals to cope in future climates.

Sheep are generally less affected by high temperatures than dairy cows. However, heatwaves with temperatures beyond 40℃ can cause heat stress. Hot days may have short-term impacts on rams’ fertility, and recently shorn sheep are at risk of sunburn if they are exposed to direct sunlight.

Factors that are unique to each individual animal, such as previous heat exposure and overall health and age, also play a role in how vulnerable they are to heat.

Mitigation

In the short run, farmers can mitigate the worst of these issues by providing high-quality water and shade (such as from trees, buildings, and shade cloth) in the heat, warm shelter in the cold, and by adjusting feed. During heatwaves, farmers can also adjust milking procedures and milk their cows very early in the morning or late at night. To provide immediate cooling they can also use sprinklers or misting systems. But care is needed to avoid simply increasing humidity around the animals.

Mitigation can be as simple as providing a bit of shade. Shutterstock

A more long-term option is to selectively choose breeds that are better adapted to higher temperatures (such as breeds with lighter coat colour or Bos indicus types or crosses). Unfortunately, breeds adapted to warmer climates, such as the Brahman, tend not to be high milk producers or to do as well in feedlots as the traditional British beef breeds, so there will be a hit to productivity.

As the impact of climate change isn’t solely on the animals themselves, farmers will also have to adjust their work patterns and other aspects of their operations. To cope with heat, farmers themselves may need to consider working more during the cooler hours of the day. Farming both crops and livestock together can also provide a buffer against the impact of an extreme event. The combined production of wheat and wool is a typical example of spreading of risk on farm.

But for these strategies to really be effective, farmers need more information.

This includes accurate and timely forecasts of weather (temperature, rainfall, solar radiation) and heat (such as the temperature humidity index, THI) at daily, weekly and seasonal scales. Armed with this data, farmers and livestock managers can effectively plan and implement protection measures ahead of time.

A wide range of agricultural, climate and weather services exist. For example, the Bureau of Meteorology weather forecasts, seasonal outlooks of rainfall and temperature, and the current water balance and soil moisture information. There’s also the the Cool Cows website, the Dairy Forecast Service and the Cattle heat load toolbox.

We also need more research into improving our understanding of the climate system, to develop risk management plans for industries by regions, and more accurate and reliable forecasts, so that farmers and livestock managers can make management decisions and ensure the wellbeing of themselves and their animals.

Elisabeth Vogel receives an Australian Postgraduate Award for her PhD studies. She is affiliated with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

Christin Meyer receives a scholarship from Süedwolle GmbH for her thesis and is enrolled as PhD student at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research in Germany

Richard Eckard receives funding from GRDC, Dairy Australia, Emissions Reduction Alberta, Agriculture Victoria and the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources.

Get ready for heavier rain. Shutterstock

As the planet warms, rainfall and weather patterns will change. As temperatures rise, the amount of water in the atmosphere will increase. Some areas will become wetter, while others, like southern Australia, will likely be drier.

One measure of atmospheric moisture is called “precipitable water”. You may not have heard the term before, but will likely hear about it more often in the future. Both climate scientists and meteorologists are increasingly looking at it when studying weather charts.

There is a lot of uncertainty about future rainfall patterns, but there is one aspect that models have consistently emphasised — a larger proportion of rainfall will be heavy, even in some areas that are becoming drier. Atmospheric moisture is a part of this, and precipitable water is one measure of it.

So why do climate models project that we will get more heavy rainfall as the planet warms? At the heart of it is basic physics, which tells us that a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapour than a cooler one — about 7% more for every 1℃ rise in temperature.

But meteorology will also play its part, and in the real world we have recently seen the sorts of weather systems that will drive heavier rainfall outside the tropics.

More tropical weather

A stream of very moist air from the tropics can often cause very heavy rain. These streams of moisture are sometimes called atmospheric rivers, but also have names such as the Pineapple Express in the United States or the Northwest Cloudbands here in Australia. An atmospheric river recently drenched California.

These sorts of tropical excursions happen naturally, but relatively infrequently. As the planet warms, however, regions like southern Australia and northern California can expect more tropical rainfall events, even as average rainfall declines.

Following the water

Like rainfall, precipitable water is measured in millimetres. It is derived by calculating how much liquid water you would end up with if you condensed all of the water vapour above your head — from Earth’s surface to the top of the atmosphere.

We calculate this using measurements from weather balloons, from satellite data, or from weather and climate models. The greatest amount of water vapour is generally near Earth’s surface, and it decreases with height.

Higher precipitable water values mean that more water is available for potential rainfall. We generally experience this as hot and humid weather. Just how much rain actually falls is dependent on the accompanying meteorological conditions. Under conditions favourable to thunderstorm activity, for example, high precipitable water translates into heavier rainfall.

Because it shows the location and movement of moisture, precipitable water is a great way for meteorologists to follow the movement of weather systems across the globe. In the animation above, it is easy to see tropical moisture streaming out from the equator toward the poles. Due to climate change, weather forecasters will increasingly be on the lookout for very high or record levels of precipitable water associated with those events.

In Australia, several heavy rainfall events in recent years have been associated with record-high levels of precipitable water. In late December 2016, heavy rainfall across central and southeast Australia was associated with record-high December precipitable water, with weather stations in Giles and Mount Gambier recording their highest values for any month. Heavy rains have continued over the western part of Australia through January 2017.

Earlier in 2016, record-high June precipitable water was also recorded at Sydney and Hobart, with Hobart recording a level on June 6 that was 38% higher than the previous record for that month. Both of these events involved tropical air laden with moisture sourced from record or near-record warm oceans, and drawn over southern Australia.

In both cases, heavy rainfall was widespread, with some record high daily rainfall totals.

Globally, as well as being the warmest year on record, 2016 broke records for global precipitable water in at least one international data set.

It should be noted that these record values are drawn from data covering just the period since 1992, as historical precipitable water values obtained using upper-air measurements of temperature and humidity are not easily comparable with present-day measurements. As such, precipitable water is more useful to weather forecasters than to climate scientists — although it becomes more useful as the length of the dataset increases, and can be used to evaluate model simulations.

The impact

The trend in precipitable water is expected to lead to an increase in the highest possible rainfall intensities and an increase in the frequency of extremely high daily rainfall totals, regardless of how average rainfall may change. A consequence of higher rainfall rates in a warmer world is increased flash flooding and also riverine flooding.

The implications of climate projections for heavier rainfall are many. In future, changes in the upper envelope of extreme rainfall may impact on the way we design things like urban water flows, buildings and flood mitigation. The fact that individual rainfall events can become heavier than the past in regions experiencing overall declines in rainfall and streamflow is an added nuance.

Beyond rainfall, higher moisture levels in the atmosphere also mean slower evaporation of sweat from the skin, making you feel hotter during particular heatwaves, and making evaporative air conditioning systems less effective. Just as changing temperatures influence decisions in areas such as planning, so too will increasing humidity and heavy rainfall events, even when they are episodic.

Karl Braganza is the Head of the Climate Monitoring Section in the Bureau of Meteorology's Environment and Research Division. Karl Braganza does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Acacia Pepler is completing a PhD with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, which is funded by the Australian Research Council.

David Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

This array in Indiana is one of a growing number of "community solar gardens" in the US. Robford15/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Rising electricity prices have become a fact of life in Australia – and are likely to be so for a few years to come.

However, while the cost of generating electricity will rise as cheap but ageing coal power stations go offline, that doesn’t mean your electricity bills need to follow suit.

Households and businesses can take greater control of their energy future and slash their power bills in a range of cost-effective ways. Solar panels and battery storage are among the most obvious strategies. But not everyone can afford them, which is why we are seeing the rise of community projects that aim to give more people access to clean energy.

Australia now has more than 1.6 million solar roofs. Last year 6,750 battery storage systems were installed, up from just 500 in 2015.

Yet many households and businesses are still effectively “locked out” of this energy revolution. Many renters, apartment-dwellers and lower-income households face a series of market barriers that make these options hard to access.

Renters often find that their landlord does not want to invest in solar. Those living in apartments can have the same problem with their strata or body corporate, with the added problem of not always having access to their own roof.

Poorer households typically can’t afford solar panels or batteries, even if they would save money over the longer term. On top of the expense, buying solar panels and other clean energy products can be complicated and confusing.

Club together

The good news is that there are several initiatives around Australia that aim to get around these barriers. One example is Darebin Solar $avers, a collaboration between local government, community and industry that has installed solar panels on 300 low-income households in Melbourne’s northern suburbs. There was no upfront cost to these households, ensuring they were financially better off from day one.

Another example is the community solar gardens model, which has become popular in the United States. Solar gardens work by installing a central solar array, generally near a population centre. Energy customers are invited to buy (or subscribe to) a share in a handful of the array’s solar panels. The electricity generated is then credited on the customer’s electricity bill. Often, poorer households are offered discounts to be able to participate.

One issue with these kinds of schemes, however, is that they are complicated to set up. They usually involve many partner organisations – at least one of which has to have an interest in ensuring that users are better off. It is hard to see how the market can deliver these schemes on its own.

Where markets fail, it is typically governments’ job to step in and help. So how can governments go about helping people get access to affordable clean energy?

In the United States, the Obama administration set a national target of 1 gigawatt of solar panels to be installed on low- to moderate-income homes by 2020 as part of the Clean Energy Savings for All program. The National Community Solar Partnership brought together 68 organisations to help set up community solar gardens and make them easier to access.

This week, Australia’s second national Community Energy Congress in Melbourne will hear from Barack Obama’s climate and energy adviser, Candace Vahlsing, who will outline how these policies can help ensure wider access to green energy.

In Australia, a proposal to establish a network of 50 Regional Energy Hubs is gaining traction. The federal Labor Party, Greens and Nick Xenophon Team all made commitments in the lead-up to the 2016 federal election.

The Regional Energy Hubs proposal is modelled on the Moreland Energy Foundation, a non-profit organisation in inner-north Melbourne set up in 2000 in the wake of Victoria’s energy privatisation. The foundation has a team of energy and engagement experts working with households, businesses, community groups and governments on innovative approaches to implementing sustainable energy supply – the Darebin Solar $avers program being one example. The idea would be to set up dozens more similar organisations, all linked together across the nation.

The program can be thought of as like Landcare but for clean energy. Landcare is a nationwide network of volunteers who care for our land and water, with the aim of boosting both environmental protection and agricultural productivity. Similarly, energy hubs would aim both to make energy more environmentally friendly, and to make clean energy more affordable and accessible.

This is why we have to move past just talking about “costs” and start thinking about investment. Modelling by Marsden Jacobs and Associates shows that every dollar of government investment in community energy can leverage A$10-17 of community investment. At the same time, this delivers many other benefits to communities: closer connections between neighbours; opportunities to learn new skills or access new income streams; easing social inequity; and improving health.

Given the myriad possible solutions to our energy challenges, we need to nut out what works best, and where. The best way to do this is by putting all of our heads together – local government, state government, federal government, private enterprise, innovators in the clean energy sector, and the communities that stand to benefit. That way we can make the clean energy transition fairer and more accessible to all.

The second national Community Energy Congress is taking place in Melbourne on February 27-28.

Nicky Ison is a Research Associate at the Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF) at the University of Technology Sydney and a Founding Director of Community Power Agency. ISF undertakes paid sustainability research for a wide range of government, corporate and NGO clients. Community Power Agency is a not-for-profit organisation working to grow a vibrant community energy sector in Australia.

There are calls for Australia's onshore gas to flow much more freely. Glen Dillon, CC BY

With high gas prices partly to blame for the electricity blackouts that hit South Australia this month, and gas-fired generators caught short in New South Wales two days later, it is hardly surprising to hear calls for Australia to expand production.

Even the week before the latest crises, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told the National Press Club that increasing gas supply is “vital” for Australia’s energy future.

Following bipartisan passage of the Victorian moratorium on onshore gas developments, federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg called on all governments to support unconventional gas. He has talked of an “urgent” need to increase gas supplies to improve energy security.

But how much extra gas do we need? And how do we square this with the equally pressing need to reduce our use of fossil fuels?

How much gas can we burn?

On average, the National Electricity Market (NEM) emits about 800 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour of electricity produced. This is almost double the OECD average of 411g per kWh.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), this average needs to fall drastically to 15g per kWh by 2050 to achieve the goal of limiting the global increase in temperatures to 2℃. Indeed, the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report shows that limiting global warming to less than 2℃ will require the electricity sector’s greenhouse emissions to reach zero by 2050.

By any measure that is a huge task, particularly for a country like Australia. Currently, around 11% of the electricity in the NEM comes from gas. Even if every coal power station were closed and replaced with zero-emissions technology, the NEM’s emissions intensity would still be three times this 15g per kWh limit.

Gas demand in the NEM states. GPG: gas-powered generation; LNG: liquefied natural gas. The amount of gas burned in the electricity sector would have to reduce to meet emissions reduction targets. Melbourne Energy Institute

This means that at current demand levels we need to burn roughly 70% less gas if we are to stay in this emissions intensity range. That’s a particularly small amount when compared with current total gas demand, as shown in the figure above.

Given this constraint, we need to think about how to maximise the amount of electricity we get from this limited amount of gas, and what new technologies can help us do it.

Technological options

There are several technologies for converting gas to electricity. Older power stations, such as Torrens Island in South Australia, are similar to coal-fired power stations. Energy from combustion is used to heat water, which in turn powers a steam turbine.

Today, gas is generally converted to electricity using two different technologies. First, there are open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs). These work in a similar way to jet engines: the gas is mixed with air and burned, producing a stream of hot, high-pressure exhaust gas that drives a turbine.

OCGTs are very flexible and can ramp up and down very quickly. They are sometimes described as “peakers”, because they can respond rapidly to peaks in electricity demand. But because of this, they are typically not used very much – some OCGTs in the NEM run at full load for just a few hours a year.

Their thermal efficiency – the proportion of energy from combustion that is converted to electricity – is relatively low, at around 30%. This also means their emissions intensity is relatively high, at 580-670g per kWh.

A second type of gas power station is combined-cycle gas turbines (CCGTs). These power stations effectively recover extra energy from the exhaust stream of an OCGT turbine. This makes them more efficient than OCGTs, typically recovering 50% of the energy from the gas. As a result, their emissions intensity is lower, at roughly 400g per kWh.

One downside, however, is that CCGT technology is less flexible. It cannot stop and start as easily as an OCGT. Hence it tends to run for more of the time, operating more as a source of “baseload” power than as a response to peaks in demand.

Gas generators in the National Electricity Market (NEM) plotted by age and emissions intensity. The size of the markers indicates installed capacity, and the colour indicates technology type. Most installed capacity is flexible OCGT, which typically doesn’t use much gas over the course of a year.

As this chart shows, the efficiency of Australia’s gas power stations depends more on their technology than their age. CCGTs are more efficient. OCGTs are less efficient but more flexible, and typically use less gas overall because they are switched on more sparingly. OCGTs are also better suited to load-following and balancing renewable energy production and providing capacity to the market.

Burning questions

This is not necessarily a question of persisting with one type of gas-fired power station over the other. But it is important to think carefully about how we burn our gas as well as how much of it we burn. We also need to think about how that will help us meet our other energy objectives such as reducing greenhouse emissions and integrating more renewables into the grid.

Using more efficient technologies where possible makes sense. Several old and more inefficient plants are currently being used instead of newer, more efficient ones. Torrens Island and the newer Pelican Point in South Australia are a good example.

Pelican Point is a CCGT that is running considerably below its nominal capacity, while Torrens Island is running at high rates. While the decisions on operation of these plants are commercial and made by private companies, the same gas consumed by Torrens Island could be much more efficiently used by Pelican Point. A unit of gas burned at Pelican Point could theoretically deliver around 50% more energy than the same unit of gas burned at Torrens.

Torrens Island power station: less efficient, but more switched on. Adam Trevorrow/Wikimedia Commons

Part of the reason for this situation is that different companies own the plants. Engie has cut capacity at Pelican Point in response to high gas prices, whereas AGL has opted to keep Torrens Island running at full steam.

This highlights the difficulty, in a privatised market, of ensuring that power is drawn preferentially from the most efficient facilities. Solutions such as managed closures or forced divestment are politically unpalatable. The much-discussed “emissions intensity scheme” would theoretically help push the market in the right direction.

What about the competition?

Many of the services and capabilities that gas turbines provide are also available from other technologies. Flexibility, dispatchability and capacity (as well as other services such as inertia and frequency control) can be provided by storage, other renewable technologies and the cheapest – demand-side management.

Some of these technologies include concentrated solar thermal, battery storage and pumped hydro, which Turnbull also mentioned in favourable terms in his Press Club address.

Indeed, some of these technologies may be able to outcompete traditional sources of capacity like OCGTs.

Whatever the case, the role of gas will need to be carefully considered, and its use will necessarily be limited. In the longer term, the need to increase gas supply is far from certain.

Dylan McConnell has received funding from the AEMC's Consumer Advocacy Panel and Energy Consumers Australia.

As politicians debate the causes of South Australia’s power failures, separating fact from rhetoric has become difficult. In this episode of The Conversation’s politics podcast, Michelle Grattan interviews energy expert Hugh Saddler.

Dr Saddler explains the complex mix of factors behind the power failures in South Australia and the stresses on the electricity systems elsewhere, and canvases what can be done to fix the problems.

With the government attempting to reinvigorate enthusiasm for coal, Saddler doesn’t believe the idea of subsidising the development of “clean coal” power stations will fly.

“There’s so many parties who would be involved in that sort of investment saying there’s no way they would invest in such a type of power station.

"One factor is that they have a long life. … That type of power station would take a very long time to build. Then it will have a long life and under that sort of life they would still be operating in 2050 when many countries have said we’ve got to be [at] zero emissions.”

A review into energy security by Australia’s chief scientist Alan Finkel is still underway. But the government has already ruled out establishing an emissions intensity scheme.

“In my opinion an emissions intensity scheme is just one of a number of different mechanisms which probably should be used. … I would suspect the sort of process that might go through is the Finkel report will come down with a whole suite of recommendations,” Saddler says.

Music credit: “Equestrian”, by Anitek on the Free Music Archive

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Keep the climate in mind when you're choosing what to plant. shutterstock

Since 1880, the average global temperature has increased by 0.8°℃, with large changes in rainfall redistribution. With these changing conditions upon us, and set to continue, gardeners will have to alter the way they do things.

As climate largely determines the distribution of plants and animals – their “climate envelope” – a rapid shift in these conditions forces wild plants and animals to adapt, migrate or die.

Gardeners face the same changing conditions. If you look at the back of a seed packet, there is often a map showing the regions where these particular plants thrive. But with a rapidly changing climate, these regions are shifting.

In the future we will need to be more thoughtful about what we plant where. This will require more dynamic information and recommendations for gardeners.

The shifting climate

Changes in altitude significantly affect the temperature. As you walk up a hill, for every 100 metres of altitude you gain, the temperature drops by an average of 0.8℃.

Changes in latitude obviously have a bearing on the temperature too. It gets cooler as you move towards the poles and away from the Equator. An accurate rule of thumb is difficult to derive, because of the number of interacting and confounding factors. But generally speaking, a shift of 300 km north or south at sea level equates to roughly a 1℃ reduction in average temperature.

This means that due to warming over the past century or so, Adelaide now experiences the climate previously found in Port Pirie, whereas Sydney’s climate is now roughly what was previously found halfway to Coffs Harbour. The temperature difference is equivalent to a northward shift of approximately 250 km or drop in altitude of 100 m.

At current climate change trajectories, these shifts are set to continue and accelerate.

The plants in your garden might need to change. Adaptation

Plants are already adapting to the changing climate. We can see that in the hopbush narrowing its leaves and other plants closing their pores. Both are adaptations to warmer, drier climates.

We have also seen some major shifts in the distribution of animal and plant communities over the past 50 years. Some of the most responsive species are small mobile insects like butterflies, but we have also seen changes among plants.

But while entire populations may be migrating or adapting, plants that grow in isolated conditions, such as fragmented bush remnants or even gardens, may not have this option. This problem is perhaps most acute for long-lived species like trees, many of which germinated hundreds of years ago under different climatic conditions. The climate conditions to which these old plants were best adapted have now changed significantly – a “climate lag”.

Using such old trees as a source of seed to grow new plants in the local area can potentially risk establishing maladapted plants. But it’s not just established varieties that run this risk.

The habitat restoration industry has recognised this problem. Many organisations involved in habitat restoration have changed their seed-sourcing policies to mix seeds collected from local sources with those from more distant places. This introduces new adaptations to help cope with current and future conditions, through practices known as composite or climate-adjusted provenancing.

The shifting climate and your garden

Gardeners can typically ameliorate some of the more extreme influences of global warming. They can, for example, provide extra water or shade on extremely hot days. Such strategies can allow plants to thrive in gardens well outside their natural climatic envelope, and have been practised by gardeners around the world for centuries.

But with water bills rising and the need to become more sustainable, we should think more carefully about the seeds and seedlings we plant in our gardens. The climate envelope we mentioned earlier is shifting rapidly.

We will need to start using seeds that are better adapted to cope with warmer and, in many cases, drier conditions. Typically, these plants have thinner leaves or fewer pores. This requires more information on the location and properties of the seeds’ origin, and a more detailed matching of diverse seed sources to planting location.

As the climate changes, we need to be more selective with what we plant.

As the climate continues to change we will also need to introduce species not previously grown in areas, using those that are better adapted to the increasingly changed climatic conditions. Plenty of tools are now available to help guide seed collection and species selection for planting. These include those offered through the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility and the Atlas for Living Australia, for instance.

But these resources are often aimed at expert or scientific audiences and need to be made more accessible for guiding gardening principles and plant selection for the public. The information needs to be intuitive and easy to understand. For example, we should produce lists of species that are likely to decline or benefit under future climate conditions in Australia’s major cities and towns, along with future growing areas suitable for some of our most popular garden species.

This won’t just be useful for a backyard gardener, either. Many exciting new gardening initiatives are being proposed, including rooftop gardens, which promote species conservation, carbon sequestration and heat conservation, and future city designs, which incorporate large-scale plantings and gardens for therapeutic benefits. All of these activities need to take the shifting climate into account, as well as the need to change practices to keep up with it.

Andrew Lowe receives funding from the Australian Government and not for profit groups for restoration research. He is a board member of Trees for Life and on the Scientific Advisory panel of Greening Australia.

Green shoots: a mangrove in Cairns enjoys the wet. Not all of Australia was so lucky. Guillaume Blanchard/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

After several dry years, vegetation across much of Australia received much-needed rains in 2016. But this broad pattern of improvement belies some major environmental damage in parts of the country – particularly in Tasmania, which was scorched by bushfire, the Gulf Coast and Cape York, which missed out on the rains’ return, and on the Great Barrier Reef, which suffered massive coral bleaching.

That is the conclusion of our report on Australia’s Environment in 2016, released today. It’s a summary of the state of the nation’s environmental indicators, which we compiled by analysing huge amounts of satellite imagery, ground data, and water and landscape modelling.

The report and the accompanying Australia’s Environment Explorer website summarise those data into graphs and plots for 13 environmental indicators. With most data extending back to at least the year 2000, this makes it possible to see how the environment is changing.

The overall story is one of rainfall boom after four years of bust. The national average rainfall in 2016 was again well above average, albeit not quite as much as in the bumper years 2010-11.

Our report last year showed soil moisture conditions had reached a six-year low in 2015, as Australia was dragged back towards the conditions experienced during the Millennium Drought.

The rains of 2016 seem to have put at least a temporary end to this. Over the past year the soil moisture in Australia’s landscapes has bounced back to levels not seen since 2012. Vegetation growth, leaf matter and soil protection all followed the same pattern.

Despite major bushfires in Tasmania in January, there were fewer fires overall than in previous years. As a result, carbon emissions from bushfires were the lowest since 2010, meaning that 2016 was overall a good year for land-based carbon emissions.

Scorecard: winners and losers

We combined the data to produce an overall “environmental scorecard” for each state and territory, as well as for the nation as a whole. Inevitably, this introduces subjective judgements, but because so much of the environment’s health is linked to water availability, the overall pattern would remain similar even if we were to calculate the index differently.

Environmental scores in 2016. based on data on www.ausenv.online

The national environmental score increased to above average (6.7), but the improvements were uneven. Scores fell in Tasmania and the Northern Territory, in the aftermath of dry conditions that had already started in 2015 or before, whereas other states improved by varying amounts.

Large parts of Queensland had been suffering through several years of drought but bounced back with good rains and growth conditions. Despite this, much of the state remains officially drought-declared – although not, ironically, Cape York. Such contrasts are not unusual; it often takes more than a year of good rain for drought declarations to be lifted.

Meanwhile, the Channel Country and many of the Murray-Darling Basin rivers received their best flows since the Big Wet of 2010–12, replenishing floodplains and wetlands along the way.

The bad news

Continued dry conditions in northwestern Tasmania created the conditions for massive bushfires in the first two months of 2016. The fires affected an estimated 95,000ha across the state, including 18,000ha of vulnerable alpine ecosystems in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. Although that is less than 1% of the total World Heritage Area, the ancient vegetation may have changed permanently. Characteristically for Australia, the fires were followed by a deluge, restoring soil moisture levels from May onwards but also causing major flood damage.

In the Top End, areas around the Gulf of Carpentaria missed out on the rains and continued a dry run that has lasted for four years in some places. Cape York was left high and dry, with historically low rainfall records at some locations.

Mangrove trees died in large numbers along 700km of coast on the Gulf of Carpentaria. The record temperatures and ongoing dry conditions were a likely factor. Mangroves provide breeding grounds for many sea organisms and protect the coast from erosion, and their demise may cause knock-on effects into the future.

Evidence of mangrove dieback along a short stretch of Gulf Coast, NT. Google Timeline

To Australia’s east, high sea temperatures played an important role in large-scale bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef. Reefs and mangroves have been wiped out and recovered before, such as after cyclones. But the sheer scale of last year’s damage was unusual and set against an unmistakable climate warming trend. The big question is whether these ecosystems will be able to recover before suffering the next setback.

So, while all of our national headline environmental indicators suggest signs of general recovery, not everything is easily summarised or understood. The full consequences of the damage done to the Great Barrier Reef, tropical mangrove forests and Tasmania’s wilderness may take several years to become clear.

Worryingly, the factors that drove them into decline are likely to become stronger in future. Add to that the record heatwaves this year, and it becomes clear that climate change will not just quietly disappear.

Albert Van Dijk receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network. He has previously received funding from the Bureau of Meteorology.

David Summers receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He has previously received funding from the Bureau of Meteorology.

Peak energy demand sometimes occurs when there's no wind. Shutterstock

Despite the criticism levelled at South Australia over its renewable energy ambitions, the state is nevertheless aiming to be carbon neutral by mid-century), which will mean moving to 100% renewable electricity over the next 15-20 years.

The biggest challenge will be meeting the 2-3 hours of peak demand during the evenings, when wind generation happens to be low. This will require a mix of different technologies and strategies, including solar, wind, storage, and possibly a new interconnector to New South Wales.

The issue is the variable nature of some renewable energy technologies – wind turbines only generate electricity when there’s sufficient wind, solar panels when the sun shines. But peaks in demand occasionally coincide with periods of low renewable generation, as was the case during the heatwave a few weeks ago. Although sufficient gas-fired generated capacity existed to pick up the slack, it was not all available at the time and short, localised blackouts were implemented.

Without strategic preparation, these events are going to be more difficult to handle in future as wind and solar farms grow, especially if the interconnector between SA and Victoria fails at a critical time.

But here are some of the things we can do in the short term (the next 2-3 years) and medium term (the coming decade) to create a reliable system on the path to 100% renewable electricity.

The short-term

The key point is that the challenging periods will be infrequent and only last for a few hours. Coal or nuclear power stations, which operate best when run continuously at full power, are too inflexible in operation to pick up the slack at peak demand. They would also be too expensive, hazardous and slow to construct.

In the short term, then, we need to install options that are flexible and dispatchable (i.e. able to generate when required). The options include open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs), preferably each with a dedicated gas storage; concentrated solar thermal power with thermal storage (CST); and batteries. With the right policies these technologies could make significant contributions to peak supply within 2-3 years.

Currently 320 megawatts of OCGT capacity have been proposed for SA. These generators have the advantage of low capital cost and, as they would be operated infrequently, low annual operating cost. They can be started from cold in about 10 minutes, compared with up to a day for coal power. OCGT owners would be compensated for keeping their units on standby, ready to go when we need it. OCGTs are also sustainable when they operate on renewable fuels – biofuels, hydrogen and ammonia.

There are already several proposals for CST power stations near Port Augusta. Initially about 100MW could be installed. Subsequently, as the global CST market expands and the cost declines, more modules could be added. To use CST for evening peak demand periods, we would need to pay a time-variable feed-in tariff or a contracted price that is highest for supply during those periods.

Battery prices are declining rapidly as mass production takes off, so they could also make a significant short-term contribution. Together with solar panels on both residential and commercial rooftops, batteries could help reduce the overall demand on the grid. Residential and commercial solar owners should be given incentives to install batteries by raising electricity prices during peaks in demand, thus increasing the economic savings from self-consumption and the benefit of feeding-in any excess power generated.

While extra solar and wind farms should be constructed, they should also be balanced by flexible, dispatchable renewable electricity generation. To drive the implementation of CST and large batteries in the absence of federal government support, SA could hold reverse auctions, as Canberra does.

To offset, at least partially, increased peak electricity prices and to help electricity users reduce unnecessary demand, state and federal governments should also expand their energy-efficiency programs.

The medium term

Globally, we are at the beginning of a transition to “smart” grids, in which demand for electricity can be modified almost instantaneously by both the customer and the utility. For the utility to do this, a contract is needed to reward customers for being occasionally and partially “offloaded” (that is, having your air conditioning, refrigerator, or hot water turned off for a short period of time). Currently, only some huge electricity consumers such as aluminium smelters are subject to offloading.

For this to be expanded to residential and smaller commercial customers, we need some kind of “smart” switch. These would be operated remotely, turning off supply to electricity-hungry appliances. While the technologies already exist for smart demand reduction, it could take 5-10 years to mass-produce and roll them out on a large scale.

The cheapest form of electricity storage for the grid is pumped hydro. This is where excess electricity generated during off-peak periods – for instance by wind and solar in the middle of the day – is used to pump water from a low to a high reservoir. During peak periods, the water is then released from the upper reservoir and flows through a turbine, generating electricity.

Pumped storage is well established and can even be found on the Tumut River as part of the Snowy Mountains hydroelectric scheme. Although SA has negligible potential for hydro based on rivers, it appears to have considerable potential for pumping seawater up into many small reservoirs in coastal hills. A research group, led by Andrew Blakers at ANU and funded by ARENA, is investigating this.

Another option is to build a new transmission line to join SA directly to eastern New South Wales via Broken Hill. Although such a line could take a decade to plan and build, and would be expensive, it would make the National Electricity Market grid more resilient and controllable, and would link up renewable energy generation in South Australia (wind and possibly future geothermal) and western NSW (solar and wind) with demand centres in the east. Since it would be valuable national infrastructure, the cost could be shared between the federal and state governments.

A 100% renewable future

Over the next 20 years it is entirely feasible for SA to aim for 100% continuous renewable electricity. The important requirements for reliability and stability are a diverse set of renewable energy sources, especially a balanced mix between variable and flexible-dispatchable technologies, storage, geographic dispersion of wind and solar farms, smart demand management, energy efficiency and possibly a new interconnector joining SA and NSW.

Furthermore, CST, OCGTs, batteries with appropriate inverters, and synchronous condensers can all contribute to a stable and 100% renewable SA.

As a driver of long-term investment, a national carbon price that steadily increases to a high level would compensate for the environmental costs of burning fossil fuels. Furthermore, the Renewable Energy Target (RET) should be extended from 2020 to 2030 and increased in scale. We should also create separate targets for CST with thermal storage and large-scale storage. Finally, the NEM Objective and several of its rules will have to be changed.

However, even without national drivers, SA could transform its grid to one that is renewable, reliable and affordable – in the process showing other states how it can be done.

Mark Diesendorf previously received funding from the CRC for Low Carbon Living and the Australian Research Council.

Rocking the boat: Scott Morrison and his infamous lump of carbon. AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

This summer has seen a concerted attack on renewable energy coming out of Canberra, featuring everyone from One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts to Coalition ministers channelling the far right of their party. So absurd and illogical has the broadside been, it is tempting to conclude that conservative politics is at risk of losing its way entirely.

In 2017, talking down renewables while advocating “clean coal” smacks of desperation and political recklessness in the face of the wider forces that are now lighting up the path to a renewable future.

Here are my picks for the top four most absurd attempts at gaming the politics of energy from right-of-centre politicians.

1. The poll that backfired

In the top spot is Malcolm Roberts – former coal executive, current senator and full-time climate denier – who held a poll on Twitter to see how much voters hate “green energy”.

Source: Twitter.

The only problem was that his poll (as unscientific as these things are), ended up showing overwhelming support for renewables, at 87%.

Of course the premise in his question is disingenuous, as the Coalition government has recently attempted to divert some of the money originally set aside for renewables into some decidedly non-renewable projects. Which brings us to…

2. ‘Clean’ coal

Funding “clean coal” – a term invented by a coal industry PR firm, would be a spectacularly brazen repurposing of green energy funding. It hinges on the idea that techniques like carbon capture and storage can help coal become clean enough to compete with zero-carbon energy sources like wind and solar. Under this perverse reasoning, coal would thus qualify for subsidies from the very funding bodies that were set up to end our reliance on coal.

The campaign, which kicked off with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s National Press Club Speech on Feb 1, reached its apex when Treasurer Scott Morrison brandished a lump of coal in parliament. But as Lenore Taylor pointed out last week, the argument for clean coal, which the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) has been pushing for many years, has the government looking like the adman.

3. Attacks on ‘ideology’

While pushing clean coal at the behest of the fossil fuel industry, the Coalition has ironically also been warning us of Labor’s “ideological” campaign for renewable energy.

In a scalding attack last week, business analyst Alan Kohler accused the government of being “evangelists” for coal, and wondered what has happened to the Malcolm Turnbull who once sacrificed his leadership to his progressive personal convictions on climate. He wrote:

…one suspects that Morrison and Turnbull know too – we all know, really – that the only reason coal is “cheap” is that the cost of dealing with the carbon dioxide that comes from burning it is not included in the price.

Coal is by far the most expensive fuel for generating electricity, full stop — if the cost of dealing with climate change is taken into account.

The MCA and the Turnbull government are among the few groups still resisting the inevitable.

Source: Twitter.

4. Using the weather as a weapon

Despite the Coalition looking increasingly isolated on energy policy, the rearguard action against renewables continues. For weeks now we have been hearing about the need for an energy mix that is secure, reliable and affordable, as energy minister Josh Frydenberg told us on ABC radio on Monday.

This platform of energy security has been used to launch a disingenuous attack on renewables, based on their alleged unreliability (which is allegedly even worse during climate-induced bouts of extreme weather).

The first such attack came in the wake of the cyclone in South Australia that triggered a statewide blackout last September. South Australia’s wind energy industry was again singled out for criticism after a heatwave prompted more outages this month.

Turnbull took the opportunity to draw a link between the blackouts and SA’s high penetration of renewable energy:

If you want to have a larger and larger share of intermittent renewables in your energy system then you need to have the backup … when the wind isn’t blowing.

The day after the blackout (and with the heatwave bearing down on Sydney), Morrison held up his coal in parliament and pledged not to let business “fizzle out in the dark” as he claimed Labor would.

However, a week later the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) apologised to the 90,000 households and businesses affected by the blackouts, attributing them to load-shedding and pointing out that a software error cut off 60,000 extra consumers unnecessarily. AEMO added that because heatwaves have grown more extreme under the warming climate, it was unable to forecast accurately how much extra supply would be needed.

The anti-renewables message finally came unstuck last weekend, when it was revealed that Turnbull and his ministers had already been advised that renewables were not to blame for last September’s incident.

Meanwhile, as the heatwave moved across New South Wales, there is evidence that renewables such as rooftop solar dramatically reduced the need for load-shedding.

But one of the biggest ironies of the Coalition’s decision to pick on SA’s wind farms is that many of them were put there by federal government policy.

As Ben Eltham wrote last week:

After eight years of treating energy policy as a plaything for political gain, the federal Liberal Party is now so wedded to climate denialism and fossil fuel loyalty signalling that it knows no other way. In the process, Malcolm Turnbull has abandoned nearly everything he once stood for … except perhaps the only real thing he ever stood for, the gaining and holding of power.

In attempting to distance the Commonwealth from projects that are actually making progress on climate, Turnbull has executed a complete reversal of his own personal convictions on climate change. Perhaps party-political expedience really is the only explanation for the ongoing war of words on renewable energy.

In some political circles, hostility to climate policy has become a way of showing off one’s conservative credentials. But a suggestion for pricing carbon, grounded in classic conservative principles, has now emerged in the United States.

It has come not from the populist Trump administration, but from an eminent group of Republicans with impeccable conservative credentials, several of whom served as cabinet secretaries in previous Republican administrations.

Last week they published a manifesto entitled The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends. In a nutshell, the proposal is for a carbon tax – yes, a tax – with the proceeds to be returned to all citizens as a “carbon dividend”, every quarter. More details in a moment.

The group accepts that climate change is real and that, regardless of whether it is human-induced, a human response is urgently needed. Moreover, they say:

Now that the Republican Party controls the White House and Congress, it has the opportunity and responsibility to promote a climate plan that showcases the full power of enduring conservative convictions.

Tax and dividend

The plan envisages a tax on fossil fuels at the point at which they leave the refinery or coal mine and enter the economy. It would start at US$40 a tonne and increase over time. This would force up the price of many commodities – most obviously petrol – and might be expected to anger consumers, were it not for the dividend strategy.

The dividend would be paid to all Americans, via the social security system. A family of four might expect a dividend of US$2,000 in the first year, rising over time in line with the tax.

The manifesto’s authors include eminent establishment Republicans, including James Baker, Secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan and Secretary of State for George H. W. Bush; and George Shultz, Secretary of State in the Reagan administration and a former member of Richard Nixon’s cabinet. They are certainly sensitive to the political unpopularity of new taxes.

Their response is that this is not a tax that will accrue to the government, because it will be “revenue-neutral”: all of the money will go back to citizens. The carbon-pricing scheme introduced in Australia under former prime minister Julia Gillard was also revenue-neutral but returned money to consumers partly through income tax relief, which is less visible than a direct dividend.

The high visibility of a carbon dividend to the consumer arguably makes this a more politically palatable policy. For this reason the manifesto’s authors call their proposal a carbon dividend rather than a carbon tax. They calculate that the dividend would leave 70% of the population financially better off, particularly among working-class taxpayers. As they put it:

…carbon dividends would increase the disposable income of the majority of Americans while disproportionately helping those struggling to make ends meet.

The group argues that this proposal is consistent with conservative principles in various ways.

First, it is a market-based solution to the problem of climate change which maximises freedom to consumers and producers. Second, it will facilitate the rollback of Obama-era regulations such as the Clean Power Plan, which conservatives regard as the epitome of heavy-handed regulation. As the Congress has discovered with relation to Obamacare, it cannot simply repeal unwanted Obama legislation without replacing it with something widely seen as better.

Finally, they argue that the repeal of heavily bureaucratic regulations would eliminate the need for a bureaucracy to enforce them. This would facilitate smaller government, one of the abiding aspirations of conservatives.

Apart from these matters of principle, the group points to several other political advantages – not least the chance to bring the Republican Party back into the mainstream on climate change:

For too long, many Republicans have looked the other way, forfeiting the policy initiative to those who favor growth-inhibiting command-and-control regulations, and fostering a needless climate divide between the GOP and the scientific, business, military, religious, civic and international mainstream.

The manifesto’s authors point out that climate change concern is greatest among under-35s, as well as Asians and Hispanics - the nation’s fastest-growing ethnic groups. A carbon dividend policy would enhance the appeal of the Republican Party to all of these groups.

They acknowledge that it may be an uphill battle to win over the anti-establishment Trump White House. But, they say:

…this is an opportunity to demonstrate the power of the conservative canon by offering a more effective, equitable and popular climate policy based on free markets, smaller government and dividends for all Americans.

Back in Australia, many conservative politicians such as Senator Cory Bernardi – who this month defected from the government so as to promote more freely his conservative principles – still decry carbon pricing. Bernardi described the idea of returning to carbon trading as “one of the dumbest things I have ever heard”. This is hardly a conservative response given the ramifications for our climate.

Conservatives like Bernardi continue to equate carbon pricing with socialism. Yet for these establishment US Republicans, taxing carbon is entirely consistent with their conservative principles. Bernardi and his like-minded colleagues in Australia would do well to consider the possibility that there is indeed a conservative case for a carbon tax.

Former Republican congressman Bob Inglis will speak about the conservative response to climate change at Australia’s National Press Club on February 22.

Andrew Hopkins is affiliated with The Australia Institute