Melbourne Day 2

Another good day in Melbourne. I got up this morning at about 6:45am and felt pretty good. I haven’t really experienced any effects of jet lag. Although tonight may be another story. First thing this morning, I tested Skype with Jeff City and it seemed to work fine. Hopefully, that will translate to a pretty seamless Agenda session on Wednesday (3am Thursday morning Melbourne time.)
I met again with Julie Comito this morning. We are arranging a site visit to a wind farm in Portland, VIC. The good news is that Portland is at the end of the Great Ocean Road, which roughly translates to the Pacific Coast Highway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. It looks like I am going to take a tour bus to the end of the road in Port Campbell and then a bus over to Portland to visit the wind farm and an aluminum smelter.
My first substantive meeting was with Richard Bolt. Richard is the Secretary for the Department of Primary Industries for Victoria. He is the state of Victoria’s official who has primary responsibility for energy. He was described later as “the smartest bureaucrat in Victoria today.” He has done extensive work on helping to design a cap and trade system for Victoria that became the blueprint for the Australian national cap and trade system. He described in detail the interaction between the states and the federal government in trying to combat climate change. He also stated that the most important factor in getting a good cap and trade system was getting the price of carbon correct, a recurring theme throughout my meetings.
Throughout this process I have been struck by the almost unanimous agreement by all members of the political spectrum about the need to do something about climate change. Richard explained the very simple reason for this. The Australian state of Victoria has already seen the clear and devastating effects of climate change. Victoria has suffered under drought conditions for almost 8 years and has recently been victimized by horrible brushfires. Meanwhile, Queensland in the north has also seen devastating floods because of increase rainfall. Richard described a day a few months ago where the temperature was 48degrees C, which roughly translates into 116 degrees F. He called it a “day from hell” where dry hot winds of over 100 k/h with 116 degree weather fanned brushfire flames that caused power outages as well as loss of life. The situation has become so dire that Victoria is racing to complete a desalinization plant in 2011, before the state runs out of water. ..and there is no guarantee that it will. Being that directly affected by climate change drives the Australian public’s willingness to pay more energy as long as the lights stay on.
Victoria has several potential projects that will help move their power generation from primarily coal to other renewable resources. First, they are looking at potential carbon sequestration projects in the area. One that would inject carbon into natural off-shore gas fields has great potential. They are also looking at a solar precinct in the northwest corner of Victoria for a large scale solar project.
My second meeting was with Tony Wood. Tony works for the Clinton Foundation. One of the Clinton Foundations primary missions is to work on climate change. Tony is a former utility executive who was hired away by the Clinton Foundation to run their Clean Energy Program. Tony and the Foundation help work as “honest brokers” in the climate change debate. They help bring the stakeholders together and try to define issues and solutions using real verifiable data . He is also very interested in carbon sequestration projects. He brought some very interesting perspectives. For example, Australia is introducing a renewable energy standard as well as a cap and emissions trading system. Tony pointed out that many times while these policies are meant to achieve the same environmental goal, they can be detrimental to one another as the renewable standard can make the cap and trade system less effective. He reiterated what I have heard over and over again, that the market structure in dealing with carbon needs to be right and ultimately the price of carbon is the most important factor in that market structure. Once you get the market structure right, then the regulatory structure and the financial markets can work to reinforce the market’s own efficiencies.
My final meeting was with Dougal McInness. Dougal is the Senior Policy Officer for coolNRG. coolNRG is involved in the mass distribution of compact fluorescent light bulbs. The team with power companies or governments or both and use mass media campaigns to distribute the bulbs. For example, they will partner with a newspaper that announces that on a certain day readers will receive a free compact fluorescent light bulb with the purchase of a newspaper. They also run a contest where if the light bulb is installed and it turns green, that person is entered into a drawing along with 20 or so other people to win a hybrid car. The other 19 folks win free energy audits, and other prizes. The goal of the contest is to get people to install the light bulbs. They have been successful is distributing over a million CFL bulbs in a single day and their install rate is about 75 percent. The cost is a combination of the cost of the bulbs, some advertising and logistical costs. The biggest cost is the actual cost of the bulbs. That number of installed bulbs can save an amazing amount of kilowatt hours. This was an exciting meeting for me because it seemed to have the potential to have direct application to Missouri. I could see very easily how the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Kansas City Star could collaborate with AmerenUE and KC P&L and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources to distribute millions of CFL bulbs and undertake a massive educational campaign to get people to think about reducing energy consumption. I want to have a meeting when I get back with some potential participants to see if they are interested in some sort of campaign. I think we could go even further with corporate sponsors and try to put some money behind it. A campaign to distribute a million CFL bulbs may typically cost about $2 million dollars, with about 80 percent of that being the actual cost of the light bulbs.
I just have one meeting tomorrow and will hopefully get to use the rest of the day to see some more of the City. I have seen it from some of the views of the offices I have been in but have not seem nearly enough from the ground level. Tony Wood had an interesting observation about Sydney and Melbourne. He said that to appreciate Sydney you have to look at it, but to appreciate Melbourne you have to experience it. He said both are spectacular cities but they are very different in character. Thursday it is off to Canberra, the Federal Capitol.