The New Vehicle Efficiency Standards

A word cloud from the previous FES consultation

Yesterday the federal government has released an Impact Analysis paper on its proposed New Vehicle Efficiency Standards, and is seeking public feedback on it. I spent most of 2023 campaigning for this, so I thought I'd do a quick analysis of what they've put forward. 

Draft Ballarat Net Zero Emissions Plan

The City of Ballarat's Draft Net Zero Emissions Plan (via CoB)

The City of Ballarat has passed a motion to come up with a plan for the whole municipality to reach net zero emissions by 2030. This is an incredibly ambitious goal, and it's fantastic to see this level of ambition from the council. They've released a draft plan - so how'd they do? 

Repowering Victoria's Railways

How can we eliminate rail's carbon emissions? (via Network Rail)

Previously we've discussed the Reduce, Replace, Repower framework for cleaning up the transport sector, and spoken in general terms about how best to Repower our vehicles - from cars to buses to planes. Today let's take a closer look at how to Repower and decarbonise Victoria's railways. 

Clean Transport 101: Repower

In previous posts we've seen that our priorities should be to Reduce, then Replace, then Repower; and we've gone through some guidelines for how to do the first two. So how should we Repower? 

Clean Transport 101: Replace

Last time, we discussed how to Reduce overall travel demand. This time, let's talk about how we can Replace unsustainable trips with more sustainable ones. 

Clean Transport 101: Reduce

Last time, we discussed why the Reduce, Replace, Repower framework is the key to cleaning up the transport sector. Today let's go into the details of how we can Reduce travel demand. 

Clean Transport 101: Reduce, Replace, Repower

Transport is Australia's third-largest, and fastest-growing, source of emissions. If we're to have any chance of keeping climate change to 1.5°C, we have to urgently clean up our transport system - but how? 

Fact-checking The Australia Institute's EV Mythbusting

The Australia Institute has been very vocally opposed to Victoria's EV tax, and recently put out a video called Electric Vehicle Myths Busted with Dan Bleakley from Coal Miners Driving Teslas. While the video does a good job of calling out some of the myths that right-wing politicians and culture warriors have been circulating for years, it also repeats some of the myths TAI have been perpetuating throughout the EV tax debate - so I thought I'd quickly run through it and fact-check them. As I've said before, EVs are much better than ICE vehicles - but they're no silver bullet. 

Audrey Quicke & Richie Merzian from The Australia Institute

Is road-user charging for EVs a good idea?

Electric vehicles charging (via Joenomias)

Following South Australia's announcement a few weeks ago, Victoria has just announced that it will be the second state in Australia to introduce a road-user charge (RUC) for Electric Vehicles. The stated rationale is to replace fuel excise - EVs don't burn petrol, so this revenue source will disappear as we transition from Internal Combustion Engines (ICEs) to EVs. But critics say that this disincentivises EV ownership, and will slow down that transition. So is it a good idea or not? 

Primer: Should you buy an electric car?

Electric vehicle and charger (via Walter Baxter)

Knowing my keen interests in transport and climate change, people sometimes ask me whether they should buy an electric car for environmental reasons. The short answer is "it depends", and the long answer is annoyingly complicated, so to help others who might be wondering the same thing (and to help illustrate a point I want to make in tomorrow's blog post) I thought I'd summarise the key points here. 

Not just carbon: the problems with planes

A plane flying over Uilenstede on approach to Schiphol Airport

A Green New Deal for Ballarat

A wind farm outside Port Fairy (source)

Originally published on 02-12-2019 in the Ballarat Courier as The deal that could offer Ballarat's future the most. In light of the recession that COVID-19 will push us into, it's more important than ever to stimulate our economy in an environmentally-friendly way. 

Should High Speed Rail be part of a green stimulus?

Australia, and the world, is in the midst of fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, and everyone is (quite rightly) pretty focused on the task of actually fighting the disease right now. But it is quite clear that this fight will tip us over into a recession - if not a full-blown depression - and so we're starting to see some early thoughts on what kinds of actions governments can take to get the economy moving once we're in that recovery phase.