Taiwan-China conflict could reverse net zero pledges says right-wing conference organiser Philippa Stroud

A conflict between China and Taiwan could spark a global rethink of net zero policies, the organisers of a right-wing conference making its Australian debut later this month have said.

Speaking exclusively to The Nightly, Baroness Philippa Stroud who formed the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship movement alongside former deputy prime minister and Nationals leader John Anderson, said coal should remain on the table as an energy option to keep electricity prices lower and boost economic growth.

The Nightly can reveal that ARC will hold its second-only conference outside of London when it convenes in Sydney later this month.

The headline speakers list will assemble the troika that led the Howard government comprising former PM John Howard, Mr Anderson and former treasurer Peter Costello, who is widely regarded as a moderate Liberal.

Coalition frontbencher and right-wing darling of the No Indigenous referendum campaign Jacinta Price as well as historian Niall Ferguson will also speak.

ARC aims to counter what it says are the defeatist and declinist narrative and self-harming economic policies that some parts of the West have embraced.

Founder Baroness Stroud said the decision to shun coal in favour of renewables to pursue net-zero carbon emission goals, a target Britain has legislated for and was instrumental in pushing Australia to follow, was one of those examples.

“I suspect that people will start reassessing Net-Zero,” Baroness Stroud said from London.

“More because we need the freedom to pursue the energy policy that’s appropriate for us as a nation and not drive up energy costs for the most vulnerable people in our nations.

“That will become more evident as time goes on.”

She said that geopolitical tensions were also playing a part in the reevaluation of climate policies, because of the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

“If anything were to happen, heaven forbid, between China and Taiwan energy security is going to become the big story,” she said.

While climate campaigners in Europe have argued that the dependence on Russian gas exposed by the war in Ukraine shows the need to speed up the roll-out of renewables and nuclear energy, Baroness Stroud said the self-sufficiency debate would also involve including all domestic sources of energy.

“ARC would be happy with all forms of energy sources still available,’ she said.

“Yeah, including coal.

“If you take the journey that the human being has been on, it has always been human ingenuity that has made these fuels cleaner and cleaner and cleaner.

“I would put a lot of money that we’re spending at the moment on subsidies into research and development so that we can come up with the technologies to use the energy sources in as clean a way as possible.”

According to the Federal Government’s national greenhouse accounts, coal produces up to 95kg of CO2 equivalent per gigajoule of energy.

This compares to 51kg for gas and zero for solar, wind and batteries.

Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie said coal didn’t stack up.

“Proposals to extend the life of old coal clunkers is like running a 50-year-old car – it’s polluting, unreliable and exorbitantly expensive,” she said.

“Climate scientists could not be more clear.

“Coal, oil and gas are causing immense harm and this will only get worse if we fail to stop burning them.

“CSIRO’s latest GenCost report reaffirms that wind and solar are cheaper than coal now and will be cheaper in 2030, even when accounting for storage and transmission costs.”

While clean coal has long been touted by the industry as an environmentally friendlier version, data compiled by Reuters in 2018 showed that burning refined coal of the 56 plants in the US using refined coal, 22 ended up producing more nitrogen oxides compared to when they were burning raw coal.

“Clean coal is an oxymoron,” said Ms Mackenzie.

“Burning coal produces climate pollution, coal industry fantasies that they can clean it up have not materialised, despite decades and billions of dollars.

“Coal is always polluting.”

At the end of last month, Britain turned off its last coal-fired power station becoming the first G7 nation to completely retire the fuel source and ending 142 years of Britain’s reliance on coal. The move was widely applauded as part of the UK’s goal to have all its energy sourced from renewables by 2030.

Baroness Stroud said she was not “pro-coal,” not anti-renewables and personally believed that nuclear was the way forward but that the market should ultimately decide which fuel source was best.

She said she accepted the view of scientists that climate change was happening but cited Bjorn Lomborg who sits on ARC’s advisory board in arguing that it was a matter of economic priorities rather than responding to the threat posed by global warming.

“It concerns me that we’re trying to push a market through so quickly that we’re ratcheting up price and actually and damaging people in the present,” she said.

ARC launched in London last year and was attended by a string of Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s frontbenchers including Ms Price, shadow defence minister Andrew Hastie, shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor and shadow home affairs minister James Patterson.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott, who also sits on ARC’s advisory board attended along with his former chief of staff Peta Credlin and her husband, former Liberal party director Brian Loughnane.

Mr Abbott told a sideline event at last year’s event that the “climate cult” would be discredited and that: “The anthropogenic global warming thesis, at least in its more extreme forms, is both ahistorical and utterly implausible.”

ARC’s first conference in 2023 was attended by 1500 people in total from 72 countries and was headlined by the right-wing social commentator Jordan Peterson.

The Australian conference is expected to attract around 600 delegates on October 22.

Baroness Stroud said the organisation wanted to sit above politics and attract people from a variety of ideological perspectives.

“We’re deliberately positioning it above politics in order to expand right across the ideas space,” she said.

“In February, (in London) you’ll see some speakers from the left coming in as well, which will be a joy.”