What You'd Spend To Prevent Climate Change - and What You Could Get With Your Money

12/17/2019 What you'd spend to prevent climate change — and what you could get with your money
nd what you could get with your money - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
NEWS
What you’d spend to prevent climate

change — and what you could get with
your money
By Nick Kilvert, Tim Leslie, Annika Blau and Colin Gourlay
Story Lab
Updated 17 Dec 2019, 7:07am

Published 17 Dec 2019, 2:02am
A
s the country burns and temperatures rise, climate change is once again at the forefront of
our national consciousness.
It’s a problem that seems intractable, and has dogged politics for decades.
More than 54,000 Australians took part in the nationally representative Australia Talks National
Survey, and the number one thing they said was keeping them up at night was climate change.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-17/what-youd-spend-to-halt-climate-change-and-what-you-could-get/11784704 1/48
12/17/2019 What you'd spend to prevent climate change — and what you could get with your money - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
When we asked how much more they’d be personally willing to spend to help prevent climate
change, the numbers varied.
Some people wouldn’t spend anything more (21 per cent) and some were happy to spend
thousands (9 per cent) — but most of us sit somewhere in the middle. On average, we’re willing to
chip in at least $200 each year*.
To halt climate change we’d need to make some major changes to the way the world works, so
would an extra couple of hundred dollars a year even make a difference?
Our kitty
( $4 billion )
= $4 million
It may not sound like much, but even if we take the bare
minimum Australians told us they’d be willing to spend,
it’d add up to just over $4 billion* a year.
For comparison, the Federal Government spends less than

half that on cutting greenhouse emissions and almost 10
times that on defence.
Just one Attack-class submarine is expected to cost at least

$6.6 billion.
So what could we get for our money?
With $4 billion, Chief Economist for the Australia Institute,

Richard Denniss, said we could fit around a million houses
with rooftop solar systems.
At that rate, all 10 million houses in Australia would have a

solar system within a decade.
“Let’s be clear, if we did that for the next few years, then
most people would get near-free electricity for the next
20,” Dr Denniss says.
Or, each year we could fit around half a million houses with

home battery systems.
French energy company Neoen recently revealed that

South Australia’s giant Tesla battery cost $90 million. We could
buy 44 a year at that price.
As well as helping to manage peak demand and reducing

South Australia’s reliance on gas generators, Neoen
estimates its battery saved consumers around $50 million in its
first year of operation.
Alternatively, we could fund the equivalent of a Snowy

Hydro 2.0 scheme every couple of years with change to
spare.
Snowy Hydro works like a giant battery, storing energy

that can be “turned on” when the sun doesn’t shine and
the wind doesn’t blow
the wind doesn t blow.
Snowy Hydro 2.0 will store enough energy at a given time

to power 3 million homes for a week.
Or, we could allocate $4,000 per house to optimise the

energy efficiency of one million houses each year, with
things like insulation, smart meters and energy-saving
appliances.
Starting with the lowest-income households, this would

significantly reduce power bills as well as greenhouse gas
emissions.
″$4 billion a year would go a very long way, a very long way
to reducing emissions very rapidly,” Dr Denniss says.
How to double your dollar

But if $4 billion doesn’t sound like enough, Vice Chair of
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
Professor Mark Howden, says he would work to double it.
“I would set up an autonomous organisation to run this —

independent of government, preferably with charity status
— and then use this as a vehicle to engage with
philanthropists, et cetera, to multiply it up. Let’s say dollar
for dollar.
“So the pot would be $8 billion per annum.”
He’d put $1 billion toward research and development of

things like battery technology, and on energy reduction in
transport, agriculture, and other sectors, and on climate-
change adaptation.
He’d use that $1 billion to leverage funding from

universities, research agencies and organisations like the
CSIRO, through co-investment.
With those organisations contributing their own funding

and resources, the research pot could be much larger than
the initial $1 billion.
“Usually, it is possible to at least triple the overall budget

this way by astute co-investment.”
He’d put $4 billion into a “green bank”, similar to our

existing Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC).
Last financial year, the CEFC put more than $1.3 billion
towards renewable and low-emissions projects.
Each dollar the CEFC committed was matched by more than

$3 from the private sector — bringing $6.3 billion to projects
like solar farms, or boosting the capacity of SA’s giant Tesla
battery.
The green bank would invest in projects that bring a

financial return on investment — for example, the CEFC
made a $320 million return last year, which can now be
invested in more projects.
A small portion of the kitty would also go to funding

community solutions to climate change — to empower
A t li t t th i id i t
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-17/what-youd-spend-to-halt-climate-change-and-what-you-could-get/11784704 ti 30/48
Australians to put their ideas into action.
And he’d set aside $1 million for an award program to

l b t th hi t fA
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-17/what-youd-spend-to-halt-climate-change-and-what-you-could-get/11784704 t li li t 31/48
celebrate the achievements of Australians on climate

action and encourage more ingenuity.
Wi h h i i $3 billi h ’d f
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-17/what-youd-spend-to-halt-climate-change-and-what-you-could-get/11784704 d d h 32/48
With the remaining $3 billion, he’d fund on-ground change,

lobbying, and leveraging business and government so that
climate is central to all policy decisions, rather than a
sideline issue.
Multiplying our money

$8 billion still not enough?
Anna Skarbek, former banker and CEO of Climate Works

Australia, says $4 billion could be leveraged to yield so
much more.
For example: right now we could buy 80,000 electric

vehicles outright for $4 billion…
But we know that people are going to be buying cars

anyway, so instead we can subsidise purchases that are
already going to happen.
Let’s say we subsidise electric cars by $10,000, making

them cheaper than the petrol alternative. It would then make
economic sense for businesses and individuals to buy the
cheaper electric car.
In that way, $4 billion would facilitate the purchase of $20

billion worth of electric vehicles — keeping 400,000 petrol-
powered cars off the road.
″$4 billion in fact could stretch a very long way, if it was

used in a blended finance way to unlock much larger
shares of private capital.”
An injection of funding from our kitty could remove risk

for investors in new clean technologies, which is often all it
takes to kickstart a profitable industry.
One industry we could jump-start is clean hydrogen,

which has been touted as a key future export for Australia.
It could replace fossil fuels in steel and aluminium

production and potentially diesel engines in international
shipping.
Having local zero-emissions industries like steel and

aluminium would also make those products attractive to

international markets looking to reduce their carbon
footprints.
″$4 billion is a really, really valuable contribution,” says Ms

Skarbek.
Looking to the regions

When deciding how to spend our kitty, it’s important to
consider climate inequality, says Kate Mackenzie from the
Centre for Policy Development.
Given $4 billion a year to play with, she’d invest $1 billion

on regions and communities with fossil fuel-dependent
economies.
‘We can make any decision

we want’
While there might not be a climate fund that we can each chip in $200 to each year, the experts
say there’s something close.
Most of us put a portion of our annual income into superannuation, and just like with our kitty,
that adds up Starting
quickly. now would give those communities time to
transition their economies to clean-energy alternatives,
The amount such
of money tied up in super
as hydrogen, is big —
instead of$2.9 big. The
trillion their
having average
hands Australian puts around
forced
$9,000 into their super each year — 45 times what we said we’d chuck into our climate kitty.
when the world shifts away from fossil fuels.
“Anyone interested in directing more resources to renewable energy can switch their super fund
to 100 per cent fossil-fuel-free funds,” Dr Denniss says.
Already, the CEFC’s industry partner, Ironstone Capital, says there’s been a huge increase in
demand for renewable energy investment opportunities from superannuation and managed
wealth funds.
Rather than seeing the transition to clean energy as a financial burden for Australia, Ms Skarbek
says it’s about seeing the opportunities we can seize.
“It’s an investment in the longevity of the employers in those sectors. It’s about industrial
development and it’s a national prosperity issue.”
Tackling climate change starts with dispelling the myth that it’s too expensive, and that we can’t
make a difference, Dr Denniss says.
“What we’ve told ourselves is that it’s really expensive and we can’t do it. It’s a democracy, we can
make any decision we want, but to suggest Australia can’t afford these things is simply absurd.”
Australians ranked climate change as the number one problem for them personally in the
Australia Talks National Survey. To see how your views compare, use our interactive tool —
available in English, simplified Chinese, Arabic and Vietnamese.
Ms Mackenzie would also dedicate $1 billion to adaptation
measures for the most vulnerable communities and
Then, join Annabel Crabb as she takes you through some of the most surprising and exciting
insights withsystems,
Waleed Alywith a Australia
on the portion Talks
earmarked for
TV special onoverhauling
iView.
planning laws and building codes to account for changing
*The averageclimate.
amount Australians said they would personally be willing to spend each year was
calculated using the proportions who chose each of 6 brackets: nothing at all (21 per cent); less than
$100 (18 per cent); $100-500 (28 per cent); $500-1000 (10 per cent); $1000-2000 (5 per cent) and more
than $2000 (4 per cent). (A further 13 per cent said they “didn’t know”). This calculation was done using
the lower end of each bracket, to provide a conservative estimate.
The total amount Australians were willing to spend to prevent climate change was calculated using the
number of Australian adults at the 2016 census (19.4 million), multiplied by the proportion who chose
each bracket, multiplied by the lower end of the bracket.
This data came from the Australia Talks National Survey, conducted by the ABC and Vox Pop Labs,
which was fielded to 54,000 Australians in July 2019. The survey data was weighted using sex, age,
education level, language of use, State, geographical region and voting choice in the 2019 Federal
election, to offer a representative sample of the Australian population.
SHARE THIS STORY
Credits:
Reporter: Nick Kilvert
Producers: Tim Leslie and Annika Blau
Developers: Colin Gourlay and Simon Elvery
Editors: Cristen Tilley and Jonathan Webb
ODYSSEY FORMAT BY ABC NEWS STORY LAB

What You'd Spend To Prevent Climate Change - and What You Could Get With Your Money

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Titolo originale

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

What You'd Spend To Prevent Climate Change - and What You Could Get With Your Money

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

12/17/2019 What you'd spend to prevent climate change — and what you could get with your money

What you’d spend to prevent climate

By Nick Kilvert, Tim Leslie, Annika Blau and Colin Gourlay

Updated 17 Dec 2019, 7:07am

For comparison, the Federal Government spends less than

Just one Attack-class submarine is expected to cost at least

So what could we get for our money?

With $4 billion, Chief Economist for the Australia Institute,

At that rate, all 10 million houses in Australia would have a

Or, each year we could ﬁt around half a million houses with

French energy company Neoen recently revealed that

As well as helping to manage peak demand and reducing

Alternatively, we could fund the equivalent of a Snowy

Snowy Hydro works like a giant battery, storing energy

Snowy Hydro 2.0 will store enough energy at a given time

Or, we could allocate $4,000 per house to optimise the

Starting with the lowest-income households, this would

How to double your dollar

“I would set up an autonomous organisation to run this —

“So the pot would be $8 billion per annum.”

He’d put $1 billion toward research and development of

He’d use that $1 billion to leverage funding from

With those organisations contributing their own funding

“Usually, it is possible to at least triple the overall budget

He’d put $4 billion into a “green bank”, similar to our

Each dollar the CEFC committed was matched by more than

The green bank would invest in projects that bring a

A small portion of the kitty would also go to funding

Australians to put their ideas into action.

And he’d set aside $1 million for an award program to

celebrate the achievements of Australians on climate

With the remaining $3 billion, he’d fund on-ground change,

Multiplying our money

Anna Skarbek, former banker and CEO of Climate Works

For example: right now we could buy 80,000 electric

But we know that people are going to be buying cars

Let’s say we subsidise electric cars by $10,000, making

In that way, $4 billion would facilitate the purchase of $20

″$4 billion in fact could stretch a very long way, if it was

An injection of funding from our kitty could remove risk

One industry we could jump-start is clean hydrogen,

It could replace fossil fuels in steel and aluminium

Having local zero-emissions industries like steel and

aluminium would also make those products attractive to

″$4 billion is a really, really valuable contribution,” says Ms

Looking to the regions

Given $4 billion a year to play with, she’d invest $1 billion

‘We can make any decision

SHARE THIS STORY

Producers: Tim Leslie and Annika Blau

Developers: Colin Gourlay and Simon Elvery

Editors: Cristen Tilley and Jonathan Webb

ODYSSEY FORMAT BY ABC NEWS STORY LAB

Potrebbero piacerti anche