Scott Morrison seeks international partners for the development of low-emission technologies at the climate summit in Biden Australia News

Scott Morrison will use a global climate summit hosted by US President Joe Biden to anticipate $ 565.8 million in spending over the next eight years to build international collaboration and advance the development of some low-carbon technologies.

The Australian Prime Minister will announce to the virtual summit during a contribution expected on Thursday evening that he wants to build practical, project-based international partnerships to accelerate new energy technologies and reduce costs. The spending, to be confirmed in the May budget, will be accompanied by additional domestic investment in hydrogen hubs and carbon capture and storage projects.

According to the government, priority countries for future international cooperation on investments in low-emission technologies include the US, UK, Germany, Japan, Korea and Singapore, as well as India, Canada and New Zealand.

Priority technologies include hydrogen and carbon capture and storage, low or zero emission steel production, low carbon alumina and aluminum production, and carbon free liquefied natural gas production and shipping to Asian countries.

Australia is under acute pressure at the Biden Summit because it has comparatively little ambition for climate action, and experts believe that the Morrison government will have to significantly increase spending on technological development in order to keep up with the new investments in the energy sector USA to keep up. UK and Europe.

The Biden government will announce a 2030 pledge to cut emissions twice as low as Australia as the president hosts 40 world leaders in the virtual summit. New announcements are also expected from Japan, Canada and South Korea, with the possibility that China will follow suit later this year ahead of a major climate change conference in Glasgow in November.

China has confirmed it will attend the Biden Summit, and the UK – the host of Cop26 in Glasgow in November – signaled on Wednesday that it will strengthen its emissions reduction ambitions.

According to the recommendations of the government’s legal climate advisors, the UK will cut carbon dioxide by 78% by 2035 compared to 1990 levels – an increase from the current target of 68% reduction by 2030. Australia’s emissions reduction target for 2030 is between 26 and 28% at 2005 levels .

While Morrison on Wednesday raised the potential for hydrogen during a visit to a fringe electorate on the central coast of New South Wales and said that Australia could develop “hydrogen valleys” like Silicon Valley in the US, research was recently carried out for the quantification program of the United Nations Environment Program carried out With spending on “green recovery” in major economies, Australia is at the bottom of the list.

Morrison this week announced $ 275.5 million spending over five years to accelerate development of four additional clean hydrogen hubs. Some of the funds are to be made available in the run-up to the federal elections next year. However, recent research by Oxford University’s Economic Recovery Project has shown that Germany – a likely partner of Australia in one of the projects – spent $ 9 billion on hydrogen alone as part of the Covid-19 recovery.

The investor community has told the Morrison government that it must increase ambitions by 2030 if Australia is to meet the Paris Agreement target of keeping global warming to 1.5 ° C and keeping capital in the country if other jurisdictions do pursue a more stable climate protection policy. However, the government is not expected to make any new concrete commitments at the Biden Summit.

The government has identified new battery technologies and critical minerals as potential avenues for collaboration between Australia and the Biden government, as well as for carbon projects in the soil.

Australia could also collaborate with the UK and the US to conduct research and development in small modular nuclear reactor technologies. The government says the goal is to “catalyze between $ 3 and $ 5 in co-investments for every dollar invested.”

Former Australian chief scientist Alan Finkel is an avid supporter of hydrogen. In a statement on funding international cooperation, Finkel said that working with other like-minded countries to develop and deploy new technologies would reduce the cost of a transition to net zero emissions and “accelerate their adoption”.