National energy policy failing our community
Rohan Church says poor health outcomes from burning coal look set to continue
THE Coalition’s rush to implement the National Energy Guarantee looks set to lock in a continued reliance on fossil fuels for our energy.
It is unlikely Tasmania’s Liberal Government will put forward any amendments to the NEG ahead of the August meeting of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), and an enacted NEG will represent missed opportunities for Tasmania.
The uncertainty around renewable energy policy over the past decade has been a factor in several renewable energy projects in Tasmania failing to get off the ground.
With a pathetic 26 per cent emissions reduction target for the energy sector, the NEG will not boost investment in renewable energy infrastructure in our state.
The Hodgman Government promised to remove Tasmania from the National Energy Market in the hope the state will be able to be energy self-sufficient. With last week’s Australian Competition and Consumer Commission report on the NEM providing damning insights in to the way our power bills are generated, perhaps this is justified.
However, Premier Hodgman and his Government will struggle to grow Tasmania’s energy base without federal government policy driving investment into renewables infrastructure projects. Other state and territory governments have been calling on the NEG to do more to transition our economy to renewable energy.
Crucially, the NEG will have a worsening toll on human health.
While Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull may proclaim to be technologyagnostic when it comes to securing our energy, it is impossible to remain agnostic when confronted with the significant disease burden that Australians suffer from the continued propagation of coalfired power generation.
Health data from several countries links pollution from all parts of the coal energy cycle — combustion, transportation and mining — to reduced life-expectancy.
The burning of coal emits hazardous air pollutants, including particulate matter, sulphurs and heavy metals into our atmosphere. These pollutants contribute to leading causes of death and disease, including respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, cancers, childhood asthma and possibly low birth-weights.
The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering has previously found the health costs of burning coal in Australia total about $2.6 billion every year.
One US study calculated that if all the human health costs caused by coal mining, transport and combustion were included in the retail price, energy users power bills would more than double.
As the costs of renewable energy infrastructure fall, claims that coal-fired power is cheaper simply aren’t true.
It is alarming that some in government, notably the Monash Forum, not only want to block a transition to clean energy but have called for an expansion of coal power.
This group of politicians has sought to make Australia more reliant on this outdated technology, propagating the harms to health and surely misunderstanding the legacy of their namesake.
Descendants of General Sir John Monash have called out the arguments in favour of new coal power stations as “anti-intellectual” and “antiscience”. A sentiment that would certainly be echoed by the medical community.
Even the NEG in its current form remains a health hazard in that it will guarantee that Australia continues to make significant contributions to the disastrous human health effects of climate change.
The medical community has long described climate change as the gravest threat to human health this century. Australia is already paying for many health consequences of climate change, including increased hospital admissions for heatrelated illness in increasingly frequent and severe heatwaves, spreading infectious diseases and the stress on farms from unpredictable drought and floods.
Tasmania has borne witness to many health effects of a warming planet. Severe bushfires in recent years have seen the loss of life, property and livestock and have been matched in devastation only by record-breaking floods that have lead to tragic deaths and lasting health consequences. Rohan Church is a medical practitioner and current Tasmanian Chair of Doctors for the Environment Australia