Your intrepid hosts failed to start a flame war with friends of the pod over the relative merits of IAMs so we were forced  to reconvene ENERGY CRISIS CORNER. And wowser, the past week has provided plenty of fodder there! We recap Russia’s brinkmanship on threatening to cut off gas supply to Europe altogether, triggering an emergency meeting of EU energy ministers last Friday at which several policy responses were discussed but nothing agreed. Will the EU move to put price caps on all imported gas? It’s looking likely but the ramifications will be far and wide and certainly bound to touch us here in Australia. Stay tuned as we continue to watch what comes out of a very tense period of negotiations amongst our European friends! 

Our deep dive this week sees us consider a paper recently published in Nature Climate Change, “Determining the credibility of commitments in international climate policy” brought to us by David G. Victor, Marcel Lumkowsky, and Astrid Dannenberg. Attempting to assess the credibility of pledges made by countries in the Paris Agreement, they’ve surveyed 800+ climate “elites” with decades of experience to inform some analysis with some interesting conclusions - listen on folks to hear what we made of it!

Frankie’s One More Thing this week was the passing of the Climate Change Bill through the Australian parliament last Thursday, meaning we now have legislated targets for 43% emissions reduction by 2030 and Net Zero by 2050! Frankie happened to be at Parliament House that day to soak up the elation amongst those who managed the Bill’s passage, surely a turning point in Australia’s journey towards stronger climate action :-)

Tennant’s One More Thing was to flag the very important and live independent review of Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) being led by former Chief Scientist Professor Ian Chubb. The panel led by Chubb is doing a short sharp period of public consultation until 26 September, so if ACCU integrity keeps you up at night dear listeners it’s time to get a move on and lodge a submission while you can! This review will maybe definitely most assuredly be the subject of a future pod.

Luke’s One More Thing was yet more good news in recapping the agreement of Building Ministers at their recent meeting on 26 August to adopt proposed increases to the minimum energy efficiency requirements for new homes in the National Construction Code. It’s been over a decade since these were last increased and these changes represent lots of hard work by public servants and advocates over an extended period of time. A time to celebrate this win and massive shout out to all involved!  

That’s all folks, see you next time! Please keep tweeting your thoughts to us at @LukeMenzel, @TennantReed and @FrankieMuskovic and email us your suggestions for papers to read at [email protected]!