Friends of the Earth Brisbane

Climate Justice Campaign

MEDIA RELEASE: 4TH June, 2007

Beattie’s Climate Change Strategy mere window dressing

Friends of the Earth Brisbane says that the Queensland Government’s climate change strategy ‘ClimateSmart 2050’, released yesterday is anything but smart.

“The Beattie government has yet again demonstrated that it is not taking the threat of climate change seriously. It has failed to set a target for reducing emissions by 2020, and has based its already too low 60%

reduction of greenhouse emissions by 2050 target on 2000 levels rather than 1990 levels. It has also committed the lion’s share of funding for so-called “clean” coal technologies rather than on the renewable energy technologies that are the real solutions to climate change” said Friends of the Earth Climate Justice spokesperson Emma Brindal.

“To avert dangerous climate change, the Queensland government should be setting the renewable energy target at 25% by 2020 instead of the low 10% the government has promised. The interim target of 6% by 2015 is extremely low, considering that more than 5% of Queensland electricity is already from renewables” said Ms Brindal. “To make matters worse, the 10% target includes so-called “clean” coal

technologies. Geosequestration or carbon capture and storage (CCS) is the principal clean coal technology. However, it is unproven on a commercial scale, expensive, energy intensive, and potentially dangerous.

Furthermore, it shifts the responsibility for our carbon emissions and storage of these emissions onto future generations” said Ms Brindal.

“If proven to work on a commercial scale, geosequestration is unlikely to be up and running before 2015. We need to see more funding for technologies that already exist such as solar, wind, cogeneration, biomass and geothermal energy” said Ms Brindal.

“While the government’s report notes that renewable sources are intermittent, it ignores the fact that there are renewable energy technologies that can provide baseload energy such as bioenergy and geothermal, and that there are numerous emerging large scale energy storage systems being developed. Funding should be going into these areas rather than to the coal industry” said Ms Brindal.

“We need to see a ban on opening new coal mines alongside Just Transition policies for workers in the coal industry to allow them to move into more sustainable industries such as the renewables sector” said Ms Brindal.

“The Beattie government’s shortsightedness means that it cannot see past the dollar signs from coal. However, the costs of climate change will be far greater if we do not act, both in economic and human terms” said Ms Brindal. Queensland’s energy almost doubled between 1990 and 2000. Friends of the

Earth believes that to minimise the risk of overshooting a 2 degree rise in global temperatures and avert dangerous climate change, we need a target of 40% reductions on 1990 levels by 2020 and 90-95% by 2050.

More information: Emma Brindal 0411 084 727