COPENHAGEN CALLING: Greening Australia

Giles Parkinson is providing on-the-ground coverage of key developments in Copenhagen throughout the Climate Conference. To read all of Giles' news and commentary, go to our Copenhagen Climate Conference page.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong was thrown a hospital pass today, chosen to pair off with a minister from a developing country to try and find a political solution to the vexed question of developing nations' emissions reduction targets, and the even trickier question of verification.

It was one of five ministerial pairings dreamed up by the hosts in a bid to end political deadlock over the same number of key issues, but Wong was given the toughest problems to resolve. And they all must be before the political leaders fly in later in the week to sign off with a flourish and a photo opportunity.

But it was a tricky day, and the whole process virtually unravelled before it started as first a group of African nations staged a walkout of a working group, Australia suspended another session in response, and various other nations threw their hands up in exasperation at the waste of time this was all causing. It was slowly getting back to normal in the evening hours. All night sessions beckon.

It was a bewildering and fast-moving series of commas, semi-colons and exclamation marks that defined the theatre of the day. By the end of it, Wong still did not know who her negotiating partner would be – it had earlier been thought it would be India – and nearly a full day of precious time was lost.

This is a great test for the UN. There are now between 120 and 130 country leaders scheduled to appear at these talks, the largest gathering since the WWII. The challenge for the UN, which has shown only an ability to respond to crises, military and financial (in a manner of speaking), is to show it can try and forge some sort of agreement in anticipation of a problem.

With 190 countries and 100 issues, the number of possible outcomes is enormous – especially when you take into account the divisions inside the country delegations. A relief, perhaps, that the whole thing will probably come down to what the US and China decide between themselves on the final day.


Pass in or pass out

Hopefully, the UN will be better at organising agreement than it is at queues and conferences. The UN revealed that 46,000 people had been accredited to attend the Bella Centre, but badges to get in to the 15,000-capacity venue would now be severely rationed.

Only around one third of the 22,000 registered NGOs, be they of the business, environmental, technical, or youth variety, will get entry into the Bella Centre in the next two days. On Thursday, the number will be slashed to just 1,000. On Friday, it will be only 90.

On the positive side, the issuing of passes was a solid introduction to the carbon credit market. Paul Curnow, the head of an eight-strong team from legal firm Baker & McKenzie, described it as a crash course in Emissions Trading 101. At the morning BiNGO conference, the talk was of nothing else: how many badges would be issued, how would they be allocated and to whom, and could they be traded?

Some industry representatives were mortified to learn that the badges could not be traded between industry groups. It was not a fungible market. "It was really quite funny watching them try to work it out,” said Curnow. Baker's numbers got cut from eight, one of the largest of any legal firm, to one. But Curnow managed to snaffle an extra badge for his team because they belonged to an extra industry group.

The International Energy Trading Association had its badges slashed to 100 from 500 for the next two days, the Carbon Markets Investment Association had its cut from 50 to 20, while Environment Business Australia, managed to get 11 for its 33-member group – or about one for every company and the Clean Energy Council received 10 for its 25-strong delegation. Many business delegates have elected to return home early. At least they got in.


Flight to nowhere

"F***.” That was the all-too brief text message from an Aussie hack, one of a whole bunch of journos-come-lately at the Copenhagen climate talks, including some from SBS, Sky, Channel Seven and News Corp, who had their faith in global warming seriously challenged after being caught in a massive queue in freezing temperatures to get their formal accreditation.

Some simply gave up and went back to their hotels, others stayed in the queue for 11 hours, unable to move in the scrum before being turned away by police reinforcements as the accreditation centre shut at 6pm. Some missed satellite links costing thousands. All were angry.

At least they could share the pain, and the cold, with official delegates from Iceland, European parliamentarians and a host of other business and environmental types who thought that arriving in the second week would be good value for money. As one business type confided, it is not just the wasted time and money, it's the wasted emissions from travelling across the globe. A strict carbon diet for them, then, for the rest of the year.


Yes minister

Some, though, could pull the right strings to slip through. I found former Environment Minister Robert Hill, now head of Australia's Carbon Trust, perched on a stool before a high table in the corner of the Danish Climate Consortium centre, where he had decided to establish as his "office”. Ex-government ministers do not have to queue.

Ed Milliband, the UK Energy and Climate Change Minister, walked up to say hello and ask how the domestic political brawl would be affecting the Australian negotiators in Copenhagen. Hill, who headed the Australian negotiating team at Kyoto, seemed keen to play up his record as Defence Minister.

Steve Fielding took time out from sitting in a corner of the media centre with his lap top to drop by Hill's office in the afternoon, complaining that he had only an NGO pass and had to queue – albeit in a much smaller line on Saturday. "It's outrageous,” he said, apparently unaware of the badge rationing, as was his sponsoring group. He may not get in tomorrow, despite the promises of the delegation to keep the "hero of the ETS” inside the centre.

Talking of sceptical Senators, it seems the growing intensity of the health debate in the US is keeping powerful Republican Senators Jim Inhofe and James Sensenbrenner at home. Apparently, the US NGOs are disappointed as they had planned to follow them both around the centre wearing blindfolds.

Tim Flannery, just completing a series of TV and radio interviews, had managed to get his pass on Friday, along with his son and assistant David, a PhD science student from Sydney University. "I'm quite optimistic,” he said of the talks.


Wide brown land

If there's one thing that distinguishes the few Australian business presentations in Copenhagen it's the complete lack of engagement by overseas investors or institutions in any Australian-based business opportunities. The presentations might just as well have been held in Sydney, or Melbourne, although that would have been to miss the green business buzz that permeates in this city.

About 100 clean energy, legal, accounting, advisory and carbon-trading types turned up at the swish Nimb Hotel adjoining the stunning Tivoli Gardens to sit stoically through a series of speeches that began with Senator Wong – with a children's choir singing Christmas hymns just outside – and concluded with a 20 minute homily to small actions by Professor John D. Donaldson, whose daughter gets to wear a crown in these parts.

Senator Wong pretty much told the audience what they wanted to hear, saying that the switch to clean energy might not have been as fast as people wanted, but it would be unstoppable. Martin Parkinson, secretary of the department of Climate Change, tried to puncture hopes of a "white certificates” market for building energy efficiency, which he said would be like having two bites of the cherry. "I am not a fan.”

With that, the delegates retired to the adjoining room for networking and "cocktails”, which, possibly as a result in the slump in the price of RECs, turned out to be a choice of white wine, red wine and beer – in sufficient quantities, however, for them to reflect on how it was that the Australian clean energy and green business sectors could have slipped so far behind the rest of the world.


Replanting Australia

Peter Cosier, from the Wentworth Group of Scientists, is getting pretty frustrated by the extreme positions around terrestrial carbon being adopted by the Liberals on one hand and the harder-line green groups on the other. As discussed in yesterday's column, there is some controversy around Australia's stance on LuLuCF, land use, land use change and forestry, which seeks to define rules on how emissions from things like reduced tillage, bushfires and drought are accounted for.

Cosier feels caught between the attitude of the Libs, who seem to think that burying biochar and planting trees will be enough to solve the problem, and the hard-line greens who says all the emphasis should be on reducing emissions from industry. Cosier says it ignores the power of the markets. And he says the Australian government approach to the LuLuCF negotiations is right, because under current rules Australia's carbon accounts could be "blown to pieces” by the impact not just of bush fires, but El Nio droughts.

He says the LuLuCF and REDD (forest) mechanisms could transform the way the planet's landscape is managed. "You will not recognise the Australian landscape in 20 years' time if we can get the money to re-vegetate every water course – and all paid for by a carbon price.” The US proposed climate bill allows for 1 gigatonne of emission reductions to be sourced from international forest credits, or up to $30 billion, depending on the carbon price. If that sounds a lot, it's just a little more than the bonus pool at Goldman Sachs this past year.


No ice

It is said that Al Gore is bigger than Copenhagen. Probably not, but he and his entourage were certainly too big for the ridiculously small room used for his press conference on Monday designed to bring the focus of the conference back on to the science. We're not too sure what happened inside, but it's possible that Gore and his entourage released the report to themselves, one man from AP and a TV crew. The 300 journalists and others locked out of the Niels Bohr room moved on to skin another fish.

At a Gore-less press conference later, the foreign ministers of Norway and Denmark said the report had shown Arctic sea ice has shrunk to record low levels in recent summers, and there is a 75 per cent chance the entire polar ice cap will melt in summer in the next 3-5 years. The Greenland ice sheet is also melting more rapidly than previously thought, and there is now solid evidence of a "net melt” from the Antarctic ice sheet.

"What we thought was serious, is now worse,” the ministers said. "What we thought was an extreme forecast for sea level rise is now the median. Copenhagen has to succeed.”

Giles Parkinson can be contacted during the conference at: gpfreelance@optusnet.com.au