Power blackouts will have Joe Biden green at the gills
California power failures will become an election issue and be a new test for the Biden campaign team.
More than half a million residents lost electricity and, as Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack and Michelle Obama, spoke to Biden’s credit, the sunshine state was under threat of rolling blackouts.
Hot, but not extraordinary, weather had crashed California’s electricity grid, overwhelmed by the demands of air conditioners.
Like SA, California has been closing baseload power plants, including nuclear, and replacing them with wind and solar.
Also like SA, California has relied on importing power supplies in times of need from neighbouring states that generate electricity using coal and gas.
Pro-nuclear environmentalist Michael Shellenberger, who has run for office as California governor on the energy issue, said the state’s big bet on renewables, and shunning of natural gas and nuclear, is directly responsible for the state’s blackouts and high electricity prices: “The underlying reason blackouts are occurring is because California lacks reliable, in-state supply.”
Governor Gavin Newsom said California residents and their businesses deserve better from their government.
University of California energy professor Kaniel Kammen said it had been a “stress test on the system”. The result was “we have not built up enough of a smart enough system to take advantage of all of the renewables we have in place”.
Blackouts are unlikely to turn California red for Donald Trump’s Republicans, but they are a signpost of the problems that must be addressed for a Biden presidency to deliver on its ambitious green dreams. They put a spotlight on the challenges the rest of the world might face, too, if a Biden administration makes good on its promise to become a global policeman for climate action.
A Biden win will put a lot of pressure on Australia to do more. But it remains unclear how the US will be able to re-engage with China to promote the sort of truly global response needed to make a difference. As the US looks set to supercharge its carbon-neutral agenda under Biden, China, the world’s biggest emitter by far, has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by boosting the pipeline of coal-fired power plants.
Nonetheless, for many environmentalists the upcoming US presidential election represents a historic fork in the road. One branch leads to another term of Trump as President.
Under this scenario, the US will formally exit the Paris Agreement almost immediately. America’s push for energy independence through shale oil and gas will be secured. The trend away from US dependence on the Middle East for energy will be confirmed, and the focus on pressuring China to be an honest trading partner and good global citizen will continue.
The other road, a Biden win, promises a retreat from Trump’s America First approach and a return to multilateral engagement, particularly on climate change, favoured by former Democrat president Obama.
A Biden presidency will immediately hit the stop button on the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and give global climate politics, exhausted by years of Trump and bogged down by the COVID-19 pandemic, a sugar hit. US participation will transform the delayed climate meeting in Glasgow, now scheduled for the end of next year.
Meanwhile, if new fracking is blocked by Biden, America’s energy superpower transition could stall; and if the US is forced to return to the Middle East for greater supplies it will find a changed landscape, with China a new and bigger player in the energy politics of the region.
For Australia, there are threats and opportunities in Biden’s published climate plans.
Carbon Market Institute chief executive John Connor says Biden’s plans, if implemented, would be “an adrenaline shot for Australian policy”.
“What the Biden plan does is very strongly braids together the economic opportunity and environmental justice angles,” Connor tells Inquirer.
In his electioneering documents, Biden says after recommitting the US to the Paris Agreement, he will “lead an effort to get every major country to ramp up the ambition of their domestic climate targets”. He will “make sure those commitments are transparent and enforceable” and “fully integrate climate change into our foreign policy, national security strategies, as well as our approach to trade”.
Biden’s Year One Legislative Agenda on Climate Change will include an “enforcement mechanism to achieve net-zero emissions no later than 2050”.
This enforcement mechanism will be based on the principles that polluters must bear the full cost of carbon pollution they are emitting and that reductions in emissions are economy-wide.
Biden has pledged to make the largest-ever investment in clean-energy research and innovation, investing $400bn over 10 years. Targets will be to make grid-scale storage at one-10th the cost of lithium-ion batteries, small modular nuclear reactors at half the construction cost of today’s reactors, and to promote carbon capture and storage.
Success on these three fronts would transform the feasibility and economics of the renewable energy transition.
Australia has been a keen bipartisan supporter of research-and-development spending, from the Howard government with president George W Bush to the “mission innovation” project with Bill Gates under Obama.
Australia’s Energy Minister, Angus Taylor, tells Inquirer the Morrison government’s Technology Roadmap recognises that advances in technology are the only way of reducing emissions while maintaining a strong economy.
He says Australia will “continue to work key partners like the US to accelerate the development of new and emerging technologies and reduce emissions without imposing new costs on households, businesses or the economy”.
Figures provided by Taylor’s department show Australia and the US are world leaders in emissions reduction and renewable energy investment. Australia’s emissions reductions from 2005-18 were minus 13 per cent. This compares with the US, minus 10 per cent, and New Zealand, less than minus 1 per cent. In terms of investments in renewable energy projects, in 2019 Australia spent $308 per person, 10 times the global per capita average. The US spent $233 per person, Japan $179, the UK $109 and Germany $73.
The political front in Glasgow next year, however, is likely to revolve around a commitment to being carbon-neutral by 2050. The Morrison government’s current position is for Australia to be carbon neutral some time in the second half of the century.
A Carbon Market Institute survey in 2019 found Australian business concerns were growing over the prospects of carbon tariffs on exports. Sixty-one per cent of business respondents (up from 46 per cent in 2018) were concerned emissions-intensive, trade-exposed industries will be impacted by carbon prices being implemented in key trading partners such as China and South Korea.
Seventy per cent agreed carbon border tariff adjustments from trading partners are a potential risk to Australia’s emissions-intensive economy and exports.
Despite its recent big per capita spend on renewables, Australia is still regarded as a laggard in global talks, alongside Brazil and Saudi Arabia. A Biden win will increase the pressure for the Australian government to act. The challenge remains to avoid the pitfalls of SA, and California.
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As US Democrats held their convention in Milwaukee this week to boost Joe Biden’s vision for America, in California, home of the progressive green politics favoured by Biden’s team, electricity users were having a South Australia moment.