Emissions figures don't stack up: professor
- From: The Australian
- March 11, 2010
THE Rudd government ramped up the environmental benefits of its botched $2.45 billion home insulation scheme by grossly overstating the cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that could be achieved by households, expert independent analysis says.
The independent analysis undermines claims by Kevin Rudd and Environment Minister Peter Garrett that the retrofitting of insulation into 2.7 million homes would produce reductions of 49.4 million tonnes of carbon by 2020.
The Department of Climate Change - which did much of the modelling for the Rudd government - has told The Australian the claim of 49.4 million tonnes came from working out that new insulation would result in each household cutting its emissions by 1.65 tonnes a year on average.
But the benefits claimed by the government were twice the size of the benefits claimed by the two biggest beneficiaries of the insulation scheme, manufacturers CSR and Fletcher, when they were vigorously lobbying the government to fund a national rollout of insulation. Further, the benefits claimed by the government were four to five times higher than the number derived from conservative calculations by associate professor Terry Williamson, a thermal performance expert at the University of Adelaide.
Dr Williamson has relied on the official government figures and studies from the Environment Department and the former Australian Greenhouse Office into household energy use and household emissions.
He concludes that the benefits - as currently claimed - are bogus.
Two other experts who provide advice to federal government departments on greenhouse gas emissions told The Australian yesterday Dr Williamson's analysis was correct.
The emissions reduction claims did not withstand serious scrutiny, they added.
"The numbers claimed are absurd -- they are complete crap when you do the calculations," one eminent expert said.
Dr Williamson challenged the Department of Climate Change to prove its claims by releasing its modelling calculations.
"The benefits have been exaggerated by a considerable factor, and none of the government's numbers stack up," said Dr Williamson.
The average household's energy use is responsible for about eight tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year.
Dr Williamson said the most optimistic scenario could see the emission reduction get to 0.4 tonnes per household, which meant that the total carbon reduction by 2020 would be about 10 million tonnes.
This would mean that the scheme had cost taxpayers more than $200 a tonne.
A Department of Climate Change spokesman said the estimated abatement of 1.65 tonnes of carbon per installation per household year "takes into account average energy use by households as well as the split of electricity and gas use.
"It is also averaged over Australian climate regions."
