Sunday 25 October 2020

2020 Oct 26th Joe Biden election win would TRANSFORM GLOBAL ENERGY POLICY

Electric car charging station.

 If Biden wins as the polls predict, global energy politics will be transformed … in the midst of this year’s UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. And the Australian government will be forced to rethink its own approach.

The core of Biden’s energy policy is a target of net zero emissions economy-wide by 2050, and by 2035 in the electricity sector. To achieve that he is proposing to spend $US2.0 trillion over four years targeting, among other things, decarbonisation of the transport sector via fuel emissions standards and 500,000 new electric vehicle charging stations, and $US400 billion ($A564 billion) of investment in new technologies such as hydrogen.

Needless to say that sort of money blows the Australian government’s $1.9 billion energy technology plan unveiled a month ago out of the water.

Not that we could ever match that sort spending of course, but we could match the centrepiece of the Biden plan: an “enforcement mechanism (that) will be based on the principles that polluters must bear the full cost of the carbon pollution they are emitting and that our economy must achieve ambitious reductions in emissions economy-wide instead of having just a few sectors carry the burden of change.”

Moreover: “The enforcement mechanism will achieve clear, legally-binding emissions reductions with environmental integrity.”

This clearly implies some kind of carbon price, although nowhere is that specifically called for in Biden’s policy and he has left it open in speeches. Axios recently ran an “exclusive” story that “Joe Biden is unlikely to pursue a carbon tax” if he wins in November, attributed to “several people familiar with his campaign’s thinking”.

So, still open. Most of the scientific commentary on net zero emissions by 2050 suggests that the only way that would be achievable is through a price on carbon, most likely through an emissions trading scheme rather than a straight carbon tax.

China has also announced plans for a cap-and-trade system for pricing carbon, so if the United States joins China and the existing European emissions trading scheme, it would effectively be global. Suddenly Australia would be the proverbial shag on a rock, with tiny spending on energy technology and no emissions trading scheme.

The other significant part of the Biden policy is his plan to accelerate the take-up of electric vehicles, with 500,000 new public charging stations by 2030, and restoration of the full electric vehicle tax credit.

This will also be transformational, also adding to policies in Europe and China: the EU Commission now proposes a 50 per cent reduction in fleet emissions of carbon dioxide by 2030 (which effectively mandates a 50 per cent electric vehicle penetration rate Europe), and China is targeting 25 per cent neighbourhood electric vehicle penetration by 2025 to go with its net zero emissions by 2060 target.

Last week, Morgan Stanley increased its forecast for global EV penetration from to 13.2 per cent globally by 2025 (from 11.6 per cent) and 31 per cent by 2030 (from 26 per cent). If Biden wins next week, it’s likely to happen even more quickly.

Apart from anything else, this will lead to the rapid expansion of several battery material commodity industries: lithium, nickel, copper and graphite. There will also be enormous investment going into battery technology as well as making hydrogen for long-range electric fuel cells – for trucks, ships and possibly even aircraft.

And an important point about all this is that the pandemic is irrelevant to it: the transition to reduced carbon emissions, and specifically the replacement of the global transport fleet with electric vehicles, is going to happen no matter what COVID-19 does.

* Alan Kohler is Editor in Chief of Eureka Report 26th Oct 2020

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/joe-biden-election-win-would-transform-global-energy-policy/news-story/cfa8064fb4d7accbe3fcef4bf8991a62

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