Peter Gallagher

The objec­tives of climate-change mit­i­ga­tion pro­grams such as those in the Gar­naut Report or in the Aus­tralian Government’s absurdly-named ‘car­bon pol­lu­tion reduc­tion scheme’ can­not be achieved by 2020 or 2050 with­out a mas­sive, and rapid, tran­si­tion away from carbon-intensive energy sources of pri­mary energy for base-load power gen­er­a­tion, trans­port etc.

But forc­ing rapid change in the way we power pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion across the econ­omy —for exam­ple, by means of carbon-quota (or tax) penal­ties— will cut growth and will redis­trib­ute resources to less pro­duc­tive sec­tors such as gov­ern­ment and (prob­a­bly) some house­holds. Cer­tainly, the emis­sion con­trols will affect busi­ness and con­sumer plans, but the wealth impacts also risk under­min­ing our capac­ity to invest in the infra­struc­ture nec­es­sary for an even­tual energy transition.

Prof. Vaclav Smil argues that the iner­tia of energy sys­tems is much greater than these ‘trans­for­ma­tional’ pro­grams acknowl­edge. Unlike infor­ma­tion sys­tems that the micro-processor rev­o­lu­tion­ized within the span of half a working-life, a tran­si­tion in energy sys­tems takes gen­er­a­tions because it requires fun­da­men­tal changes in large-scale ‘coop­er­a­tive’ infra­struc­ture such as trans­mis­sion net­works as well as in the orga­ni­za­tion of pro­duc­tion and consumption.