The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have warned Australia that we are swimming upstream with our climate and clean energy policies and we are at odds with what the rest of the world is trying to achieve.

The IPCC’s latest synthesis report says that the world needs to act quickly to reduce its emissions – decarbonise its energy systems, stop burning coal and switch fossil fuel investments to clean energy.

Australia has dumped the carbon tax, it is trying to reduce renewable energy targets and deployment, Abbott insists coal should be our main source of electricity generation and divesting in fossil fuels has been labelled as stupid. We couldn’t be going more against the grain if we tried. The IPCC’s report is the result of the collaboration of 2000 scientists works, three interim reports over 6 years.

However Environment Minister Greg Hunt believes that instead of focusing on clean energy, he believes that eventually we will be able to clean up existing power stations and we should use coal as normal until technology advances enough for us to do so. “Our approach has been to let the market come forward with proposals for reducing emissions. My belief is that it’s possible to clean up power stations,” he said.

Analyst Dr Hugh Saddler said that with current policies in Australia we are likely to see a 2% increase in emissions each year so a reduction of even 5% by 2020 is going to be difficult – unless policies change.

The report states that greenhouse gasses are at their highest in 800 000 years and the majority of the worlds’ electricity should be generated from low carbon sources by 2050 with fossil fuel use ended by the end of century.

Brown coal – the dirtiest and cheapest form of coal used for electricity generation – has increased its share of the national market by 4% in four months to 26%. Black coal has increased 3% to a total of 51%. This is mainly as a result of rising gas prices and the axing of the carbon tax. The use of brown coal has increased significantly over the last few months and it is also the most emission-intensive coal used today.

A year ago, La Trobe’s Yallourn generator was operating at half capacity now the facility is running at full capacity.

Brown coal may be cheap for us to dig up and use for electricity generation but that is only if the cost of it health implications are not taken into account. It has been said that the short term health effects of coal cost Australia $2.6 billion annually.

For more details and to download a copy of the report click here.