If there were grand profits to be made from renewables the big rapacious energy giants would be buying in to solar and selling out of coal and oil. They’ve done their research. The fantasy fear campaign would have us think that Big-oil is afraid of renewables, but they truth is that if renewables were worth a lot, big-oil would have bought them.*
This week Exxon released their report on the energy outlook for the decades to come. Not much has changed since the last report in 2014, even though 40,000 people met in Paris and did historic breakthrough type things.
Exxon says oil and gas will still dominate energy in 2040
By DAVID KOENIG The Associated Press
The way oil giant Exxon Mobil sees it, the global energy landscape won’t be radically different in 2040 than it is today.
Oil and gas will remain king, accounting for an even slightly larger share of the energy supply. Coal will fall behind natural gas to become the third-largest source of energy.
Exxon forecasts that emerging renewables such as solar and wind power will triple but remain small — just 4 percent of the world’s energy. And carbon emissions will continue rising until around 2030, when cuts in industrialized nations gain traction lead an overall reduction.
Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon, told his shareholders in May last year, that ‘his firm hadn’t invested in renewable energy because “We choose not to lose money on purpose.”
That was apparently met with loud applause.
The main Exxon predictions for the world are that oil use will grow by 25%, natural gas will grow by 50%, coal will slip a bit, but all the trendy renewables will be producing only 4%:
— Global energy demand will rise 25 percent from 2014 to 2040, led by developing nations in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. The International Energy Agency recently forecast a one-third increase by 2040.
— Oil use will grow 25 percent in that period, although it will account for a slightly smaller share of overall energy, and use of natural gas will jump 56 percent.
— Together, oil and gas will account for 57 percent of the world’s energy, up from 56 percent in 2014.
— Coal’s share will slide from will slip to 20 percent from 26 percent.
—Nuclear and biomass will each account for 8 percent of energy in 2040, hydro 3 percent, and other renewables 4 percent. Exxon thinks alternative fuels will become a staple in power generation but grow more slowly in transportation because of technology and cost issues.
— Carbon emissions will rise about 11 percent between 2014 and 2040. Emissions will fall 21 percent in industrialized nations but rise 32 percent in developing ones, notably India and countries in Latin America.
What about the success of Paris? Exxon studied each nation’s commitments and assessed their likely changes, but they aren’t going to air details of that unpopular laundry:
[William Colton, the oil giant’s chief strategist,] declined to say whether Exxon believes the goals of the climate-change deal will be met.
*And yes, Shell, and BP did buy renewables, but they didn’t sell their fossil fuel assets, did they?
Thanks to GWPF for the tip.
This of course is yet another spruik from big evil fossil fuel giants who’s monopoly on energy production has given humanity the basis to live far better lives than our predecessors and hope to those that are still languishing in the times where a roll of the dark age dice determines life and death……pretty scathing overview really. 🙂
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Big oil borrows money from banks to invest in solar and renewable like everything else does. The energy monopoly is owned by the decision of creditors to either fund it or not.
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If the “energy monopoly” is owned by other people, it can’t be a monopoly, can it?
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Good point Owen.
During that ruminant comment, i suppose i was thinking of Monopoly.
Here is Bailout Monopoly:
http://monopoly.wikia.com/wiki/Bailout_Monopoly
30
Here is a bit more detail in the links below. Even this small detail is very simplistic. The complicated web of debt and derivatives amongst the players in this ‘energy monopoly game’ is going to be a Gordian Knot to untangle, if it ever can be.
“Financial Sector To Cut Credit Supply Lines For Oil And Gas Industry”
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Financial-Sector-To-Cut-Credit-Supply-Lines-For-Oil-And-Gas-Industry.html
And this one:
“Exclusive: Dallas Fed Quietly Suspends Energy Mark-To-Market On Default Contagion Fears”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-16/exclusive-dallas-fed-quietly-suspends-energy-mark-market-tells-banks-not-force-shale
Or this:
“What The Big Banks Say About Their Energy Exposure”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-21/what-big-banks-say-about-their-energy-exposure
In the game of ‘Bailout Monopoly” it says on the site,
“If the a player cannot repay his or her bailout when called, they must forfeit all of their properties to the bank. Therefore it is possible for the bank to own everything at the end of a game.”
http://monopoly.wikia.com/wiki/Bailout_Monopoly
20
The use of the term ‘monopoly’ in this case is purely tongue in cheek, being a swipe at warmists that claim ‘big oil’ supress the so called clean energy options for profit while knowingly destroying the planet, gees it sounds even crazier when you spell it out. 🙂
90
Exxon-Mobil Outlook For Energy 2040
Neither the GWPF story nor the Associated Press article on WPXI.com have a link to the original Exxon-Mobil pdf.
Exxon-Mobil 2015 Outlook for Energy pdf.
Also, the GWPF link in the O/P links to the GWPF home page where this article no longer appears.
Abe
00
Yoni, I reckon we all knew this would be the case, didn’t we? When will they learn?
50
A bit off the immediate topic but in the vein of alarmism gone wrong…
Down here in Tassie, Hughie is urinating from the heavens like he has been on the mother of beer benders with the Vikings over at Valhalla just in time to put out all our fires, fill the farmers dams and probably top up the hydro lakes a bit as well.
My strange feeling is that Tim Flannery has issued a press release to the effect that Tassie was about to shrivel up and die from unprecednted and possibly endless drought and Hughie got wind of it….. Its the only rational explation I can come up with…either that or its just the weather. I reckon it’ll snow in the central highlands somewhere.
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Hopefully lots of rain over in the west so it can refill their hydro dams.
50
The Gore effect, the Flannery effect it’s all relevant in the warmist world, hope you get the rain for the hydro too Ursus and some decent leadership at some stage, I’m told miracles happen.
60
Sorry, not much rain in the west, but a lot on the East coast, Friendly Beaches about 140mm. This is normal as most of the East coast rain comes off the sea and very little from the West and vice versa.
It will come down the South Esk in 3-4 days and will fill-up Lake Trevallyn which is minus 5 m. and feeds the only power station which is in Launceston.
20
It is about time that the leaders of the “evil fossil fuel companies” (or should that be “evil leaders of fossil fuel companies”?) got around to pointing out the bleedin’ obvious – if there was the remotest chance that there was serious money to be made from “ruinables” then the evil fossil fuel companies would have some serious money in it. The simple fact is, beyond possible research into its potential – they don’t.
30
Although green renewables are on the agenda of both Australian political parties, Labor’s goal is 50% renewable electricity by 2030, the engineering reality is that back-up generation would be required about 85% of the time for solar and 75% of the time for wind. This point is rarely mentioned with renewable energy projects, but the only options for this seems to be gas turbines or diesel gensets, both of which require fossil fuel to run. This begs the question if one has to rely on fossil fuels 80% of the time anyhow to have green energy, why even bother in the first place as it is more costly.
With Labor’s policy for renewables, one is looking at approx. 50,000 sq. km of windfarm by 2030 allowing for four times more capacity to replace 24/7/52 generation: it’s a fairyland policy, totally unachievable, but that’s the politics! Even with four times more area of windfarm there is still the possibility that they could all idle at the same time.
To get a glimpse of green electricity generation there is the King Is. project (KIREIP) which combines wind, solar and wind generation. It gives continual data of electricity production and use by the community: average usage figures go between 800 and 1700 KW depending on the of time of day, and a wind speed of 35 kph is needed to produce about 1800 KW. With winds more than 40 kph the diesel generators are stopped and excess electicity goes into the batteries and a capacitor. Peak solar production is currently about 50-60 KW at midday which has an insignificant role in the scheme.
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Robert O:
There have been 2 (? possibly 3) surveys at 5 minute intervals which show that wind output across NSW, Vic., Tas. & SA behaves the same; i.e. it is either feast or famine, with far more famine. Even the greenie mob (Zerocarbon or beyondZeroCarbon?) found that at least 20% of the time that ‘conventional’ backup would be needed.
( I use the quotes as their backup would be supplied by using the wheat crop stubble and anaerobic destructive distillation. Very obviously they had never done any of that, nor had any idea of what would be produced.)
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Graeme No3 @ # 2.1
Re; using straw stubbles for fuel
Wheat crop stubble harvesting was tried here in Dimboola in west Vic to make commercial straw panels for the housing industry.
The panels had excellent heat insulation characteristics, were light , could be easily cut to size and were a complete failure as any grain still in the straw used was promptly sought out by mice which dug holes into the panels to get at the grain.
And they sagged after a couple of years as the resins used to hold the straw in the panels together aged in any heat.
The other relevant item to using straw for fuel was that once the straw had to be sourced from more than a 20 kilometre radius from the factory, the costs of transporting the straw, not including the energy used to first mow down the stubble , bale it and collect it into stacks for convenient loading onto trucks for transport to the factory, all added up with the extra transporting distances to a non viable proposition both energy wise as well as economically.
I also did some sums a long time ago on the amount of stubble available and the energy available in that stubble straw in our grain growing region.
It was a completely non viable proposition with a severe energy deficit if any attempts were made to industrialise the use of stubble straw residues for energy production.
The processes and consequent costs involved in collecting the straw and transporting it to the factory over an ever increasing radius as the local supplies were used up just shot the whole crazy idea right down .
Secondly and an important point, a lot of grain farmers now keep their stubble residues such as grain straw as a ground cover and a contribution to using minimum tillage methods to farm so they won’t be selling any straw off their properties.
And most farmers are now using GPS guidance along with automatic self steering in their tractors [ and harvesting equipment] down to a couple of centimetres accuracy to sow between the 200 mm wide rows of standing stubble straw from the previous season which the old standing stubble reduces evaporation and therefore increases water availability to the new crop and minimises wind and frost effects on the new crop.
As usual the Green Blob in suggesting that farm straw residues be used for fuel of some sort haven’t got a bloody clue and are completely off the planet as usual with their utterly stupid ideas that have never had a modicum of investigation done on those vacuum filled thought bubbles the greenies specalise in let alone any research as to any of their proposition’s practicalities.
Using farm stubbles and then using even more energy to produce low grade fuels from that stubble straw is just another example out of countless similar irrational thought bubbles that have become such a characteristic of the green blob.
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ROM:
In this case they planned to pyrolyze the straw in a vacuum. So to the cost of cutting and collection add the heating cost. The distillate derived was intended as fuel for gas turbines across the country, so their choice of WA’s crop added another energy cost from the transport.
IT GOT WORSE.
Apparently they had never ever tested the process or even looked up the literature. Part of the fluid distilled would have been water (up to 20%) so the energy content would not have been as high as they thought. Part would have been acetone which is highly volatile and flammable. Handling that is standard industrial practice when neat, or close to it (e.g. acetylene bottles contain acetone) but when that is mixed with things like formic acid, cresylic acids etc. it cannot be stored or transported in mild steel railway tankers. Beyond being highly flammable, toxic and corrosive the mixture would make a reasonable paint stripper, so epoxy lined tnks were out. Not any grade of stainless steel would be suitable, a highly resistant grade such as 316S would be necessary (extra expense, also not easy to fabricate).
Given that it would also have caused cancer and would stink to high heaven, you might foresee trouble with any spills. Imagine the publicity! Crews in full isolation gear cleaning up “clean green” ecoFuel.
I thought, and still think, the whole idea was farcical.
250
I read that Swedish researchers counted the planet’s windmills and found 200,000 of them. I have yet to see a study praising the amount of fossil fuel inputs saved. What is the reduction in tonnes of coal and m*3 of gas consumed per MGWH? If this number is ZERO, STOP ALL NEW INSTALLATIONS PRODUCING “GREEN” ENERGY. Green energy must not simply convert one form of energy to another.
70
Actually it should read 5,000 not 50,000 sq. km., or 50,000 ha.
00
Sorry again, 5,000 sq. Km. or 500,000 ha.
00
Gross error check needed. 5,000 square kilometres is 500,000 hectares.
00
This assumes that company executives have a clue about what they are doing which I think is a very generous assumption. There are countless examples of companies completely missing trend changes, IBM with PC’s for example. Never underestimate the stupidity of the executive class.
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Appropriately cynical FIN, I’m proud of you.
Now if you’d just replace “executive class” with “government funded controlling class” I’d be convinced that you were balanced in your thinking.
I’m still breathing though.
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FIN mentions this:
Imagine the executive sitting down with engineering advisers to help him to make a decision on where the best results will come from for an investment in a power plant. The only return he gets is from the sale of the electricity the plant can actually generate.
Lets pretend he actually believes the current dream that renewables are actually able to generate their power as cheaply as coal fired power, so he has a choice of wind or coal fired power.
1. Wind Power:
A 600MW plant, so there’s 200 towers of 2MW each. Lifetime Capacity Factor 20%, and a life span of 20 years, and here I’m quoting best case scenario because it won’t stay at 20% and there’s every probability that it won’t last 20 years.
So, the total generated electricity he has to sell comes in at 21,038,400,000 KWH
2. Coal Fired Power:
A 2000MW plant. A lifetime Capacity Factor that will sink from 90/95% for the first 4/5 years down to 80% near end of life, so let’s go with the lower total here and say the life time Capacity Factor of 80%. The life span is 50 years, but hey, most can last even longer than that, so again, let’s go with the lower figure here of just those 50 years.
So, the total generated electricity he has to sell comes in at 701,280,000,000 KWH.
That’s 33.3 times as much power.
Now, remember, all things are now equal as the renewable plant tells us (hand on heart) that they can generate power as cheaply as coal fired power.
The executive knows he has a certain profit margin on the power he sells.
One plant here generates 33.3 times as much power.
Tell me again FIN, which plant would the, umm, stupid executive pick to sink his money into.
Tony.
622
I think what also needs to be considered is the whole of life cost of each power plant ie site location costs, construction, maintenance, stability/availability of resources (coal/wind), as well as ongoing employment and community development etc.
120
The best wind sites have pretty much been used up already.
It’s intermittent low intensity energy that will only be viable in niche applications.
111
We have so many wind farms that we have almost run out of wind (over farming).
60
“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” :Mark Twain
The money (debt) to make the turbines was created out of thin air, but the farming of air, you are right to observe has already started to run out. This is because thin air is used to create money (debt) out of it and is probably in short supply and so not enough to run the wind turbines.
If the thin air is further thinning up where the incredibly high debt money printing is, then it will probably be causing the air to thin around the wind turbines also. hmmmmmmmmmmm
100
Easy to find the best winds: just study flyways and migratory routes, then clock them with windmills.
Oh, wait …
90
block them
50
“Clock them”worked for me. That’s how the birds would see it.
110
bemused,
most of those things fall into the key statement I mentioned here:
Some may think I have an unequal playing field here where I mentioned that the Wind Plant is only 600MW and the coal fired plant is 2000MW.
So, maybe, maybe not.
A greenfield wind plant of 600MW is currently mooted at costing around $2.2 Billion, and here I’m not using their dreamscape LCOE, but ACTUAL costings for proposed plants of that size.
The coal fired plant on a greenfield site might actually cost double that, but on an existing coal fired plant site, the Upgrade would be mooted to cost around that same price of that $2.2 Billion for the Wind plant.
Everything else remaining equal, as is the claim from renewable urgers, then the return is from the sale of generated electricity, and the same profit margin on each unit of electricity generated and then sold.
Tony.
263
Agree to that, but to complete the argument, I think it needs to consider all the operating costs (as best as can be calculated), as well as the benefits and the ‘intangibles’ that one or the other provide, or not. For example, a coal fired power plant will provide a lot of ongoing employment (but will incur wages etc), but it will also provide a lot of secondary infrastructure, employment and income to the supporting community. I don’t think wind power will do any of that, or very little, once fully commissioned.
173
I want to see how long the new solar farm out at Narromine stays operational for. 🙂
I’ve lived out that way… DUST !
Not to mention that the local inhabitants will find the ready supply of copper and solar cells quite handy as income.
242
Spot on Andy and I have mentioned this to locals who state that there is no cleaning of panels at the moment. Your second thought of the day bought a few chuckles as I also have worked there.
40
Allow say 30% for pilferage during construction. 😉
21
I believe a wind plant will support the local legal professions quite well……and many frightbat organizations.
31
In actual fact it costs nothing to build because fiat money from the creditors is printed out of thin air. Fiat currency is the ultimate renewable resource TonyfromOz. All that is needed is a suitable financial entity (host) to lend it to. It matters not if the financial entity goes belly up. If it does, a new one can be found to clothe into indebtedness.
31
None of this matters, because the Greens haven’t really claimed it will be cheaper. Yes, they’ve used fabulous marketing words like abundant and renewable (which seem to imply cheaper to the uninitiated), but the only factors driving the Greens are:
1) Less CO2
2) Less fossil fuel use
AT ANY COST. PERIOD. COST DOES NOT MATTER. Every Green I talk to is already convinced the government needs to subsidize it. In fact, the government needs to OWN IT. There shouldn’t even be a profit motive in providing energy. MAKE CLEAN ENERGY AT ALL COSTS.
Britain might go cold, but that’s just collateral damage. If anything, that just adds to their agenda, “See? We need to get more windmills and solar panels everywhere, now, so people stop dying. And we’ll be Green when it’s all done!”
There’s absolutely no reasoning with these people on COST. They all believe the “rich” will pay for it.
160
Non-fuel opex for 200 plants spread over 10,000 times the area are bound to be higher. Especially when all maintenance work is at heights.
Casualty rates are higher per TWh generated; if you exclude the stats from developing nations’ coal mines.
The only thing renewable about wind and solar is that you have to keep renewing the devices.
151
Some food for thought by Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert on RT: A very different slant on the same subject of ‘oil’.
Video: “The Deflating Oil Market”
https://youtu.be/-QxylwnedJY?t=149
30
@TonyFromOz,
I’m interested in your example but I find it hard to follow. Why are you comparing a 600M W wind plant to a 2,000 MW coal plant? How do 200 towers at 2 MW each add up to 600 MW?
From your next comment I take it you are comparing a greenfield wind park @ $2.2 billion to a coal upgrade @ $2.2 billion?
20
Peter,
I can’t figure out where that reply went. I did it around 40 minutes back, and was sure I saw it posted, but it looks to have vanished,
Yes, you are correct, that is 200 towers at ….. 3MW each, just pressed the wrong key.
And yes also, the comparison is for an approximate original outlay in dollar terms.
The return is the profit resulting from the total generation of electricity over the life of the plant, taking into account that green dream of renewables being as cheap as for coal fired power, so everything else is equal.
That’s the inherent problem with LCOE. There are so many different variables, that there is no such thing as making all parameters equal for a so called level playing field.
131
Tony,
I think you have dropped a factor there. The cost of 2000MW capacity of wind turbines varies with the size of the turbines, the smaller ones are cheaper due to competition & over supply from Chinese and Indian suppliers, so you could build a similar nominal capacity wind farm slightly cheaper than a new coal fired plant. (The cheaper cost per turbine is offset by the extra installation and connection costs).
The rest is right, the giant wind farm would generate far less electricity for less time than the coal plant. Running costs would be about the same!!! Wind farms in the UK spend a minimum of 10% of their revenue on maintenance and then there are the costs of bank finance, regulation, rental payments to land owners, disposal of dead birds to avoid bad publicity etc. In Germany the percentage is greater because the capacity factors are lower. Nor is off-shore wind better; there is more output but maintenance jumps through the roof.
Another matter that might be mentioned is that the reduction in CO2 emissions would not be anywhere as great as the greenies assume, because of the necessity for backup. In Australia with limited hydro capacity this would either have to be coal or gas CCGT as rolling reserve, or OCGT firing up as needed, The latter have rapid response times, although not really fast enough, but are costly and generate almost as much emissions as a modern coal fired station. They also have high maintenance costs and bloody awful availability if pushed past 15% operating time.
The net result is that 20% of wind electricity would only save a little in emissions. This is backed up by the Irish study which found that 17% wind generation only reduced emissions by 9%.
And for those optimists who think that Denmark got 41% of its electricity from wind in 2014, the reality is that most of it was sold cheaply to Scandinavia and Germany.
The export figures for 2014 electrical exports to Scandinavia and Germany are: (proportion of wind generation) Q1 74%. Q2 87%. Q3 83%. Q4 66%, so at best they got 13.9% as a maximum.
60
Sorry,
start with
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/01/25/denmark-wind-power/
and comments
40
The difference is that when the ‘executive class’ fails to spot a profit opportunity, they are (1) using funds obtained voluntarily that can be withdrawn voluntarily (by selling your shares); and (2) accountable to shareholders the moment the ramifications of the decision make their way into the firm’s financials[1].
However when the professional tax-parasite classes[2] screw up – usually by funding some nonsense that the productive private sector has refused to fund – they are (1) using funds that are not given voluntarily and cannot be withdrawn voluntarily; and (2) completely unaccountable (when was the last time anyone got sacked for the NBN; for Iraq and Afghanistan? Even Crony ‘jobs for me mates’ Conroy is still sucking at the tax tit, and Malcolm Turnbull is PM FFS).
If politicians were remotely capable of spotting unexploited profit opportunities, they would all be hedge fund managers. If their job genuinely consisted of attempting to remediate market failures and solve public goods problems, fewer of them would be obvious narcissistic megalmoaniacal sociopaths.
Notes:
[1] it is true that the accountability is seldom immediate, and that a great deal of a listed company’s resources can be – and often are – spent on attempting to spin away the results of bad decisions. But share prices nevertheless respond to bad decisions: this affects (and can eliminate) all of the value of ‘deferred compensation’ (stock options etc). In the limiting case, withholding or furnishing misleading information about the news of a bad decision gets the company slapped with a lawsuit.
[2] the professional tax-parasite class includes all politicians, all bureaucrats, all ‘law enforcement’, the judiciary, the military etc: everyone whose entire income – and pension – is taken from the tax base (when they ‘pay taxes’ they are only giving back some of the tax that is transferred to them). If you think an unemployed single mum with 2 kids is a drain on the tax take, ask yourself what the tax pot has given to AhSatan Spot-Destroyer, John ‘Butcher of Baghdad’ Howard, Peter Cosgrove and their ilk, and how much each politician/judge/pig/taxdrone costs between the day they start ‘work’ and the day they finally get put in the ground and stop being a drain on the productive.
78
I am glad that you are not managing any of my investments.
50
I am glad that you are not managing any of my investments.
10
FIN and others that want to learn a bit more about why companies are disrupted.
The Stack Fallacy
50
Fin, if you are going to give examples, give a quick google first.
IBM in 1943 made the comment that the world market for computers would be five. This was of course when computers were the size of my ego, filled with vacuum tubes and required a small team of support staff just to get information a couple of half decent maths grads could do in slightly longer time with paper and slide rule. You know the quip about your phone being more powerful than the computers used in the Apollo missions? Well the Apollo missions laughed at the 1940s machines as well.
The quote you are thinking of is “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” by Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977. In 1981 IBM (remember them? You know, those guys from the example you were trying to make earlier?) released the first PC.
(How do I know this? Goggle is (sometimes) your friend.)
The other thing to remember about ‘Big Oil’ is they are not called ‘Medium Oil’ or ‘Small Oil’. Yes, they have made a lot of people rather rich and they had done so by being successful. Don’t doubt for a moment that they, and all the people linked to their fate, have a mildly selfish interest in keeping ‘Big Oil’ big. If they believed for a moment that they could make more money on ‘green’ energy compared to oil they would mothball every single well within a year and spend their new Green Money on a new holiday house near the beach. They are not addicted to oil, they are addicted to having a well paid life style.
Face it, if Big Oil isn’t trying to make money from it, there isn’t money to be made.
120
To be honest I don,t care how stupid they are, as they don,t use my tax money. If they make mistakes then the shareholders will judge them.
On their other hand, politicians and public servants have absolutely no accountability and you can’t sack them except a few at the top every 3 years (often with full entitlements after sacking anyway). The hordes of public servants stay behind.
My ideal is such that, if you break a promise then you go to jail and made bankrupt. Then we’ll see how many people will be left acting incompetently.
60
“We choose not to lose money on purpose.” This is the phrase that our politicians should embrace when they are considering subsidies for wind and solar farms. Get big business to pay a fair rate of tax and stop the crazy subsidies and imagine how good we would have it in this beautiful country.
280
Yep, and petrol/gas/diesel powered cars and trucks will still be in use in 2040 as well.
190
Mining machinery most likely still operating on diesel, long distant transport, heavy duty 4×4 hybrid diesel, but passenger cars will be full electric well before 2040, the only petrol powered vehicles will be the classic’s that are kept in pristine condition and driven on weekends.
125
Hard to believe Willard. The grid will not support that many cars charging in everyday neighborhoods and there won’t be monies to upgrade the grid capacity.
220
Electric cars will add a fair amount of demand on the grid but not as much as people think and very likely an extra demand welcomed by the power suppliers. More later, I’m out and about.
221
Willard,
😮 😮
Did you read the OP?
The power suppliers are now and will continue to supply that power by burning fossil fuels! 😮
As far as tey’re concerned, the more gulible people there are, the higher their profits! 😮
Profits from burning inexpensive and abundant fossil fuels! 🙂 🙂 🙂
Abe
50
Just a guy, what have you got against burning fossil fuels?
04
Not a problem Mark D, one Bayswater power station produces enough electricity for 5.3 million Electric passenger vehicles driving an average of 15 000kms per year.
24
Willard, It’s not what Bayswaters of the world can produce, it is the limited ampacity of the distribution grid: if 20 homes on every city block plugged in a Tesla (50amps) at 5:30 in the evening and this was repeated in every neighborhood in every city, together with all the regular load at 5:30, Have you done the math?
Tesla for example, recommends a 50amp circuit for overnight charging. Homes in the US are 100-200 amp (240volt) service and many could not support an additional 50 amp load without expensive upgrades to their service panel and service drop wire. The additional load would require larger capacity distribution transformers in nearly every neighborhood and likely the upstream grid as well. If you have a detached garage get out the wallet for an expensive trench and copper wire to get your 50 amp connection.
Never mind the price spike in copper across the world as your dream unfolds. Never mind the materials consumed for batteries. Never mind the hazards inherent in battery and charging systems.
All this to accomplish what Willard? A conversion from oil consumption to coal consumption in my car? Not worth it and therefore in my opinion, won’t happen.
https://www.teslamotors.com/support/home-charging-installation
150
Are you serious Mark, everyone’s going to plug their car in at exactly the same moment every day? Yea right. Maybe some of them may set the car to start charging when they have off peak available later in the evening?
Tesla HPWCs are 32 or 40amp max, it can be dialed down to a lower power draw if needed, the 50 amps you refer to is the circuit breaker, at least you can google a Tesla site, you may learn something.
So your happy to consume foreign oil in your car but not run a car using local sourced coal?
17
Willard it appears that you are the one that is not serious. At 32 amps how long does a Tesla take to charge? The users will have to have them plugged in virtually all the time i.e. all at the SAME time.
By the way I linked to Tesla. You aren’t accurate.
For the model X charger
You continue to not be serious by asking:
I have no problem burning coal. I have a problem with applying complex and expensive technology to “solve” a non-problem. Oil and Gasoline are well developed energy sources, reasonably safe, energy dense and I’m comfortable with importing them as needed when economical. You have not been serious about demonstrating a NEED for your electric car nonsense.
141
To expand on the above, when you say:
You demonstrate extreme lack of understanding of what the utility MUST be built to support (if you think near 100% up time is important). The Grid HAS to be built to support worst case scenarios not “timers” and not in denial of human behavior. The reason you have rush hour peaks of traffic is because great numbers of people DO go home at the same time of day. Do you think they won’t plug their battery car in when they get home? Do you think they will want to put up with a half charged car in the morning?
Then there is cost. You have failed to account for the increased costs over value. Even the Tesla site linked above is honest about the expense of wiring and service panel upgrades. My gut says the average home is going to have to spend $2000 minimum to install a 50amp charging outlet in an attached garage, much more for a detached garage. I can buy a great deal of gasoline for $2000 and we have not even purchased the car yet.
Lastly, I see potential merit in hybrid cars because they might accomplish SOME efficiency gains and maybe air quality enhancement in congested areas. Are they worth the cost? Not proven to me and this is a technology that has been in production for what almost 20 years? Surely you aren’t rational if you believe that in just 24 more years will have something worthy to replace all personal automobiles..
121
Mark, and what about those people with “on-street” parking?
Electrical cords draped everywhere… then it rains.
Won’t it be such fun 😉
101
That’s the Model X on board charger not the High powered wall connector, do some research Mark and ake note of the difference, the average Aussie car does 38kms a day, at 32 amps it would take an average of 90 minutes to replace that energy loss, for the person who does maybe 150-300kms it would take 4 to 8 hours, what does it matter their asleep. Less than &1000 to connect a HPWC including circuit breakers and isolation switches, something that will last many years, you’ve been reading to much scuttlebutt about EVs. Mark your reading to much into this “Green” thing.
08
What’s wrong with charging in the rain AndyG55? Unless you decide to lick the charge plug to see if it’s working, you won’t lick the plug will you Andy? Andy?
16
Off you go little child, and play with your electricity in the rain..
Have fun !! 🙂
41
Willard, the question is still WHY?
Quibble all you want the fact is there is absolutely no need to do any of it.
I believe the word is FOLLY. Folly if for Green reasons, folly if for cost reasons, folly if for AGW reasons, Folly for every reason.
80
Willard ,
Yes, maybe. But Bayswater burns fossil fuels! 😮
And the current output would have to be replaced by . . . another Bayswater! 😮
Do you even think before you rant?
Abe
110
I agree, it would take a significant infrastructure upgrade to handle charging all the sewing machines on wheels, and then you have to handle the peak power demand each day. One thing for sure is we the public will be squeezed to pay for the infrastructure upgrades….
In Gundagai in NSW behind a food outleet there are 6 Telsa charging stations – never seen one vehicle there yet.
Logic and economics says that petrol is the most logical fuel for quite some time until any significant tech advances allow for electic use. Also, if you wanted to go 4×4 driving, electrics and a deep river crossing? I think not…..
The greenies and bird shredder brigade operate in fairy land….
81
The EV charging infrastructure is being paid for by private business, and not just Tesla, local govt help out with site location but as for state and federal governments of any leaning, they don’t have a clue, remember 90% of charging is done at home.
14
Willard, I have assiduously stayed away from commenting here on what you say, because there’s just no way of making you see sense on this.
Let’s actually pretend (for the most fleeting fraction of a second) that they actually can gear up the mining and processing of Lithium ….. JUST for car batteries alone ….. JUST for Australia alone ….. JUST to cover your dream that EVERY Australian passenger vehicle will be electric by 2040, something so patently false that it truly is in the realm of the ridiculous, but hey, if you can dream, then perhaps we can explain the reality.
Let’s again pretend that Governments are willing to spend what will amount to Billions to upgrade the grids, all of them, because you mention ….. ALL the passenger vehicles in Oz, so that means all the grids, and every home in the Country will be needed to be upgraded also to handle all of that, so besides the Billions spent by Government, there will also be probably a billion or so in money from every home owner, their own hard earned here.
Let’s then actually pretend that your figures are actually correct, which I seriously ….. seriously doubt, but hey. let’s use your figures anyway.
You mention that ….. ANOTHER Bayswater could cover the need for charging them all, saying that Bayswater generates the power required for around 5 million passenger vehicles, again, something I seriously doubt.
There are currently around 14 million passenger vehicles and 3 million Utes, most of those also passenger vehicles, so there’s 17 million passenger vehicles, so using your (doubtful at best) figures of one Bayswater for around 5 million vehicles, then we are looking at 4 Bayswater equivalent plants, and to cover it all, there’s one NEW Bayswater in each of the Mainland States.
Bayswater emits approximately 20 Million tonnes of CO2 a year.
If you seriously think that in this media driven political climate, that Australian Governments will be going to add an extra ONE HUNDRED MILLION Tonnes of extra CO2 to the Atmosphere, just so we can convert to electric vehicles, then you have rocks in your head. All that extra power is just for electric car battery charging. It cannot be done from existing power generation, so it has to be extra power generation.
THAT, of itself will NEVER happen.
All electric cars will be a rich person’s niche toy market at best, if that, and to actually dream that every passenger vehicle in Australia will be electric, in any timeframe, then the line from The Castle applies perfectly here.
Tell him he’s dreamin’!!!
Willard, you really are dreaming. Don’t put this down to my perhaps being a Luddite. Put it down to extrapolating out what would be required.
Please don’t try to keep going with this. It’s good for ….. YOU to have your dreams, but please, all we are doing here is trying to explain why it won’t happen.
Tony.
PostScript: Oh yeah! Reference for Australian vehicle numbers: Motor Vehicle Census
90
Oh, and please don’t make me do the exercise for Wind Power, but just a quick calculation means a total of around 50,000MW of NEW wind power, just to charge car batteries alone, and the current wind power total in Australia is 3700MW, so that’s Australia’s current total multiplied by 13.5, which also will NEVER happen.
That’ll be The Greens Party solution.
Tony.
100
You mention that ….. ANOTHER Bayswater could cover the need for charging them all, saying that Bayswater generates the power required for around 5 million passenger vehicles, again, something I seriously doubt.
Following up on the above:
Tony can you give me the yearly power output of the Bayswater power station please? Will go with your figures so there’s no issue with my calculations on that part, seperately chuck in the average % line loss from power station to household if you like just so I don’t miss anything.
16
Why Sure!
Go for your life!
17TWH at a Power Factor of 0.95, so that’s 16.2TWH, or 16,200,000,000KWH.
Forget all the rest I said, eh!
Remember here, that when you do the sums, we also want the requirement for every household to only consume that charging electricity during certain hours. Remember also that the average power consumption for an Australian home is 20KWH per day, and, umm, don’t quote what it will actually consume (remember here, Power out equals power in) just your minimum that you’ll be using, not the actual recommended consumption eh!
Forget the extra wiring in homes where the largest consumer of electricity is the aircon unit which requires its own dedicated 15 Amp circuit and wiring.
I also guess that the extra 100 million Tonnes of emitted CO2 is not the problem to you that it would be to politicians, umm, seeking re-election.
Tony.
61
One thing I forgot to mentioninmy original post was that the Tesla charging station was brand new but also that it seemed to have a whole new tranny and switching setup.
Now something like that will not be cheap, so if it sits around with minimal use I’d suggest it may take the inagural ( Bird ) “Shreddies Award” for expensive but generally useless tech…..
Jo – I propose we instigate the Shreddies Award for the dumbest warmest nonsense…..a sliding scale of votes perhaps, voting each year like for the Brownlows….
71
Okay Tony, a couple of side issues first, plenty of homes in this country with ducted reverse cycle aircon running through 32amp ( and even 40amp ) breakers, because it’s important to some people to have the whole 200m2 house the perfect temp all day long while sitting in one room watching a plasma TV that’s the next best thing to a bar heater.
If the govt have an issue with the emitted CO2 of a power station they need to really concerned with the emissions of an oil refinery ( maybe that’s why they don’t seem to concerned with Aussie refineries shutting down? ).
So let’s get on to the main topic, let’s not just make it 5.3 million cars but 5.3 million of the most powerful- Tesla’s latest, the P90D, dual motors, combined total of 560 KW driving through four wheels instantly, 0-100 in 3 seconds, a 2000 kg passenger car that whips V8s in total silence, for a split second under heavy acceleration its motors draw 1500amps, well that things gotta chew through more electricity than a suburb?
NOPE, not even close, on average it consumes 18 kwh per 100km.
Of course it’s not that perfect because to get 18kwh into the battery you need up near 21kwh going through the meter box, multiply that by the Australian average car distance of 14500 Kms and the figure blows out to 3045kwh per year, wait no, that can’t be right thats less than a family size hot water storage system consumes in a year?
So let’s see, the figure you gave me for Bayswater was 16 200 000 000kwh per year, divide 3045 into that and we get 5.32 million passenger cars give or take a few hundred.
.
25
Sorry Willard, how much is the loss getting from Bayswater to your home?
More math for you.
30
There you go bagging fossil fuels again Justaguy.
14
Not a chance, unless a wide variety of vehicles are banned and enormous cost applied to provide power sources to remote areas. Also, where is the electricity coming from to charge even a small fraction of those electric cars? And what about the rest of the world that uses motorised vehicles in both far greater numbers, as well as in regions that have poor infrastructure?
130
Oh no they won’t be.
Surely you’re not serious here, Willard.
There is no way known they can mine and process that much Lithium into just car batteries alone in that timeframe, let alone make them affordable enough for ….. EVERY motorist.
Never mind where the power to actually charge them will be coming from.
Tony.
250
For sure there will be pressure on Lithium Tony, but does it have to be just Lithium batteries?
You often mention the Bayswater power plant, one plant that size will power a hellava lot of Electric cars. Got to go, busy day.
222
Bayswater probably could, if these cars were connected constantly to the grid.
Which brings us back to batteries, which (and open to correction here as I do not follow cutting edge battery technology) brings us back to either Lithium or some new equally useful future development.
So, 2040, or more correctly ‘well before’ 2040. So… 2030?
This means 14 years to have the tech invented, development, designed, built and flooding the market. And also not only flooding the market because they work, but flooding the market because they are so indisputably better then IC engine cars that even Mr Stuck in the Past Petrol Head can see the new advantage. Or, cost less to make, less to buy, less to run and give equal or better performance in handling, speed, safety, carrying capacity and comfort.
Forgive me but I work in engineering and know the lingering lead time for projects that use existing technology. Projects that use future tech? In 14 years? Sorry but no.
Sure there will be electric cars. Some of them will even be great vehicles. Assuming I am not locking up in the home from grumpy old people by then I may even buy one. But this is not your metric. Your metric is cars will be ‘full electric’, and to that? No.
PS – busy day as well. Also have to go. 🙂
110
Mudcrab- the tech is here, the 2 main factors to be overcome are battery availability and cost, 24 years is a long time, there will still be well maintained petrol/diesel cars getting around but if you walk in to a Toyota/Mercedes/Google dealership in 20 years time and ask for a new ICE only passenger car your going to struggle to find one.
115
Why not overcome the battery problem by putting solar panels on the roof of electric cars………..ha ha, sorry, couldn’t resist that one
120
or a wind turbine
120
“or a wind turbine”
That way, as you drive along, you produce energy.. win, win. !! 😉
120
Yes but the concrete anchoring block for the turbine on the car’s roof would make the car use up more power
120
Roof solar panels on cars…….don’t go on a long trip on a dull day.
That would be like those new speed detecter solar powered electric signs they have started to put up around the place……these new signs stop working if you get a couple of overcast days. Even tho they cost a heap the councils still invested in this faulty technology because its in to do so if you are progressive and green.
110
Willard,
24 years is a long time?
So we can develop a new stored battery transportation and energy storage batteries to replace ICE?
The only reason this is being considered is to cover and store intermittent energy and protect the grid from unreliable wind and solar power?
We are ignoring the stupid question of trying to solve a NON problem!
Does man made CO2 cause CAGW?
Really? It’s going to get cold very soon!
ANSWER
Go back to Coal, Gas, Oil & Nuclear
Problem solved!
100
What has Electric cars got to do with CO2 or CAGW Dave? I think you need to look, listen and pay attention before giving your opinion.
213
I do look, listen, and pay attention. We have already spent a ton of money here in America putting in electrical charging structure. Nobody is using it except for government drivers forced to use them and the wealthy, who can afford the cost of a $100,000 Musk mobile (Tesla). It is a novelty for them. The amount of batteries needed to supply power to get a car carrying two adults and 2 children 120 miles down the road with air conditioning borders on the ridiculous. In the desert regions of the U.S. heat leading to fires and meltdown of a toxic substance is a demonstrated problem. Volts and Teslas both recharge in approximately 30 minutes. Think of the L.A. grid problem when a million cars get home and everybody plugs in between 5 and 7 pm to have the car for the evening.
You can travel from Yuma to Phoenix, AZ, in 3 hours in a gasoline powered car at 75 mph (120 km/h). Most people atop at Gila Bend, 116 miles away, as a pit stop for 10 minutes. You will not make it to the charging station at Gila Bend from here at that speed in an electric. In the summer with air conditioner running, you wont get close to that distance. Without the air conditioner you may die of a heat stroke while you drive. It will require an revolutionary discovery in battery technology to double or triple the power density to make electric cars an acceptable form of transportation in the U.S. In addition, gasoline power density per liter is out of sight compared to battery power.
The other problem is that we are awash in oil and gas. You can poke a hole in the ground in almost any state and produce it. The current oil revolution was done by drilling only on private lands. Progressives have blocked drilling on government lands, but that will change. Gasoline currently costs a third (1.84USD at the moment in Yuma) of what Obama envisioned at the beginning of his Presidency. The abundance can’t be restricted to the United States. The concept of peak oil fails again. Then there is all that natural gas reserve. Oil prices will go up, but not to former highs without deliberate manipulation. Competing forces are making more of a market out of oil as a commodity. Cheap gasoline is murdering the electric car industry here.
Your bright spot, Williard, is electric motorcycles. Unfortunately, they cost between 20 and 30 thousand in the U.S., but distance is on a par with gasoline powered bikes and an electric will leave a comparable gas-powered bike in the dust. They also hum instead of roar. This does go against the grain of a certain type of biker in the U.S.
131
‘What has Electric cars got to do with CO2 or CAGW Dave?’
We wouldn’t be looking at electric cars if not for AGW, because they are not commercially viable.
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/world-consumption-of-lithium-2015-8?r=US&IR=T
61
So Willard have electric vehicles not had enough time to develop already?
As Ford himself said in the January 11, 1914, issue of the New York Times:
Ford-Edison electric cars were from the beginning of the twentieth century, and failed because of the lack of adequate battery technology.
See http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2010/05/25/henry-ford-and-the-electric-car/
50
The first electric car was invented in 1884 by Tomas Parker.
At that stage it was off on a race with piston pounders from Germany, Italy, and the USA.
It failed to show in the famed Gordon Bennett race in 1903 however.
Am I the only one to find it ironic that the WILLARD storage battery company was founded in 1896 by Theodore A Willard and produced its first automobile battery in 1908?
Will another 130 years be enough for it to finally find a place in history?
90
“better performance in handling, speed, safety, carrying capacity and comfort.”
and distance…. also quick refill.
Its no use if you want to go Sydney to Melbourne, 400km a charge, and have to wait overnight, TWICE, to recharge to get there.
131
Where did the quote come from Andy?
23
Willard,
It came from the same comment that you yourself responded to . . .
That you could even ask where the quote comes from when you responded to that very quote shows how deluded and irrational true believers like yourself actually are.
You’re not even following the discussion!
You just spout your nonsense based on CAGW ™ talking points and who cares if it makes no sense, right?
Your entire existance is anchored in a fantasy world that you yourself have allowed others to create around you. All because of a good dose of gullibility based on laziness; the laziness to take the time and use your brain to think things through to their logical and inevitable conclusion.
The science doesn’t add up.
The economics don’t add up.
The morality doesn’t add up.
Abe
112
When have I ever had an issue with CAGW Justaguy? Seems it always gets used by yourself and a few others on here where you have nothing constructive to say in a discussion on EVs.
06
Batteries are heavy, expensive and have a moderate energy “density”. Chemically stored energy as e.g. hydrocarbons is compact, easy to handle and store. Who knows what the future holds but at the moment batteries remain a niche application.
150
Whilst battery technologies are still developing, and nano tech construction may improve power/weight and power to volume, reduce internal resistance and cost, there remains problems with degradation through “poisoning”(i.e.continued purity). This is also the case for fuel cells. Their fate is no certainty.
100
That should of course have said: energy stored/weight and energy stored/volume. Sorry.
40
RobK- The energy density of Petrol/Diesel is many times better than today’s battery packs but is not as critical in a passenger car as many people believe as 1. There are weight savings due to the mechanical parts an EV doesn’t need to carry, 2. Due to having regen braking the weight of an EV is not as critical as aerodynamics and rolling resistance, although a lighter battery pack is very welcome.
210
I agree there’s a place for small commuters at this stage. I have no experience with electric cars directly although I was very keen on them in my youth, dreaming up designs. I venture to guess fully loaded or towing a trailer range is greatly compromised. Whilst regen braking recovers some energy otherwise wasted to heat, acceleration inertia is the killer hence the attention to detail regarding rolling resistance and aerodynamics to claw every bit of range. How do they go for Airconitioning?
80
Towing affected pretty much the same as a petrol car ( a correctly matched diesel shouldn’t be affected to much ) but any vehicle that has state of the art aero is going to suffer when a trailer/ boat is hooked on the back.
Aircons don’t cause too much range loss, fan heating can be an issue, heated seats are apparently a more efficient method.
28
Pure crystal ball gazing.
In a possibly impoverished and broken fiscal environment of the future, inhabited by conditioned eco-puritans and their bureaucratic dictators, there could well be be very few electric vehicles in private ownership except for the eco-elite.
As no governments will be able to afford or willing to subsidize the electrick vehicle purchase and running costs, and very few people will be able to afford or indeed willing to purchase a vehicle of this nature (and the carbon offsets of its manufacture) or to pay the registration fees and ongoing levies (full equivalent taxation levels as the petrol/diesel predecessor) its an utterly dead duck.
Public transport will be the order of the day (in cities) along with city run cabs. For those in the outside cities, I anticipate that petrol and diesel may remain the norm.
On the other hand, far better would be a future 2040 where there is a collective and wider coming together of the senses so the toxic residue of failing eco-dictatorship is consigned to the dustbin of history, while humanity gets back on track making the World a prosperous, anxiety-free place not only to live in but to positively thrive in, one notably bereft of catastrophists of all persuasions, be they Green or Black.
201
A big maybe if you are referring to inner city personal transport vehicles, otherwise no way.
71
Dennis, it’s starts in inner city areas and as range increases and charging facilites/charging times improves it spreads from there, those who need a diesel troopy to go camping will still be catered for.
26
From;
100 Years of Failure: 10 Technologies We Were Promised But Never Got
The Flying Car
The Flying Car is/was very similar to the current promises surrounding the Electric Car.
Always promises that it is just around the corner but it never seems to appear except in the odd few very heavily subsidised numbers accompanied by a Drum roll please , horns, banjos, actresses, snake oil salesmen and lots and lots of propaganda on how the future is here.
The self driving car is the only item listed in the link above which might actually appear sometime in the near future in commercially produced numbers. And that implies in the millions, not a few thousand as is the case with the current pure electric cars.
There is no grid anywhere which can supply a number of electric cars with their required charge in minutes.
Tesla with one 40amp / 240 volt charger acquires enough power per hour of charging for 29 miles/ 47 kms .
Put in two Tesla chargers and you draw 80 amps at 240 volts and thats racking the power bill right up and melting the lines in most domestic establishments, to get enough charge per hour to drive quite modestly, some 58 miles / 95 kms.
A single street full of Tesla equivalents all charging their batteries up for the next 5 hours would probably blow every transformer in the district unless the grid operators spent a few tens of billions upgrading the grid which, no doubt, the non Tesla power users would have to pick up the bill for.
The batteries and electrical storage systems will change and become smaller and better and more dangerous as the energy concentration increases per KG of electrical storage.
But the power requirements, the amount of power that will have to be drawn from the grid to drive those electrical cars the equivalent distances that hydrocarbon fueled cars now drive will not change hardly at all from what it is now.
And I can just about imagine the total FU if half a dozen electric cars all decided to draw power from just a single one of the huge network of half century old SWER [ Single Wire/ Earth Return ] lines across regional Australia.
Or the city relatives arrive all ready to charge up their electric car when they get there only to find that the nearest charging point with any sort of high capacity car charging outlets is about 200 kms down the track at the next very big town.
Or its South Australia and the wind has stopped blowing and Tasmania is out of water and wants and is using all the power from the aging station at Morwell that has a unit down for maintenance.
Electric cars out here in the regional cities and in rural Australia and similar wide open spaces of other nations!
Yeh! right!
120
Fair dinkum Rom, you’ve just written some rubbish, amongst other things when a sparky installs a Tesla home wall connector they make the decision on how much the home can handle.
How much power do you think an EV consumes over a year?, compare that other high power drawing ( and sometimes luxury ) appliances and tell me why the energy suppliers aren’t screaming that the grid can’t cope, they may have a whinge about needing to upgrade this or that but they sure ain’t going to knock back the business.
Please Rom get your head out of the 20th century and do some research from a reliable source.
013
Here is a ripper. Everyone goes on about Tesla and forgets Lord Kelvin 🙂
“The Kelvin water dropper, invented by British scientist William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) in 1867,[1] is a type of electrostatic generator.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin_water_dropper
Lets get back to basics ..
“Kelvin Water Dropper and How it Works/Lord Kelvin’s Thunderstorm ”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sArNxGnYhNU
60
I am somewhat curious as to what part or is the whole of my post is “rubbish”.
The Amperages along with the voltages plus the distance per hour of charge required that using a Tesla as the example was taken from the Tesla charging site.
The numbers supplied there by Tesla, given Elon Musk’s tendency towards a fair admixture of gross hyperbole, are no doubt about the maximum rates of charge that can be achieved for a battery system.
The achievable mileage per charge won’t increase by more than a couple of percent as the electrical efficiency of today’s electrical components is very high already.
The aerodynamic drag co-efficents now being achieved by vehicle designers today is getting to the point where only very minor increases in vehicle drag can still be extracted in designs.
The mechanical running gear also has a very high level of efficiency, more so in electrically powered vehicles because of their fewer mechanical components that in hydrocarbon powered vehicles.
The dangers inherent in an electrical powered vehicle become considerably higher, the larger the charge in the vehicles electrical storage system. If a petrol tank is breached, if empty it might explode and burn.
If full it will run out and perhaps burn.
If diesel, very little will happen.
If battery type storage and the protective cell is breached, a major explosion from arcing plus probable fire along with very high voltage and amperages possible in almost any parts of the vehicle that anybody comes in contact with, all of which takes specialist equipment to handle is highly likely.
Ask Boeing what happens when a high power density battery container cell is ruptured or is a faulty design and you severely damage a few million dollars worth of a very late model passenger jet whilst it is sitting on the ground, not doing anything.
In OECD countries in 2002 there were 550 vehicles per thousand of population and its gone up from there.
It is estimated that there will be somewhere around two billion vehicles on the world’s roads by 2030.
Each of those vehicles if electrically powered will probably need charging at least once a week and more likely if the use of small commercial vehicles is taken into account, the charge per vehicle will average closer to three or four times a week.
On my comment about the rural SWER lines; They were put up in Victoria’s rural areas by the old SEC in the early 1960’s.
A levy was put on each rural power bill on a specific line until that line was paid for and we were happy to pay as compared to the old 32 volt engine powered lighting plant and its room full of batteries the SEC power was truly a luxury for us.
We won’t mention the intermittent power that was to be had from the even older 12 volt Windlites, a neanderthal version of today’s wind turbines and with all the same” they work sometime” traits.
Those rural SWER lines were such that when somebody down the line somewhere hit an arc from a heavy welder, the lights use to flicker very briefly so expecting a couple of dozen Tesla type electrical vehicles to get their charge off that line, most likely a daily requirement in rural areas as if you run out of electrical power anywhere you can’t hike up a local’s track and borrow a tin of fuel to get home, would lead to a melt down and ongoing power blackouts for just about everyone of those rural lines.
A similar situation would also be the case in all the small rural towns, villages and hamlets across Australia’s and other sparsely settled rural areas in many other nations.
What seems to be proposed here is that we have to build another very expensive industrial grade nation wide heavy duty power grid that has to extend to every domestic suburban street to cater for a fleet of electrically powered vehicles while still keeping and maintaining the complete network of conventenial petroleum filling stations to cater for all those regions and vehicles that cannot access or whose operations and vehicles preclude their use of electrical power as their motive force.
As for charging during the day whilst the owner [s ] are at work, instead of a highly centralised set of a few dozen hoses drawing fuel from three or four underground tanks that provides fuel for a few hundred cars per day and does so in a period of perhaps five minutes per vehicle at each hose outlet, , we will have to pay for thousands of individual heavy duty power outlets in parking areas, each of which expensive power outlets will only charge up one or two electrically powered vehicles at the most each day.
There are already quite a number of alternatives to electrically powered vehicles that also overcomes the percieved problems of the hydrocarbon powered vehicles but still uses the centralised fast fuelling points that have developed in parrallel with the development of the conventionally powered automobile of the last century.
With the coming advent of almost unlimited electrical power from Gen 4 nuclear, thorium reactors and ultimately Fusion in the decades ahead, we will be able to formulate petroleum like fuel products from CO2 or other common molecules which can be used directly in today’s technology vehicles and still have a completely neutral emmissions effect on the atmosphere and environment.
It is already being done by the US Navy experimentally in a research project to formulate fuel for its carrier borne jet fighters using the carriers nuclear reactors to provide the power to formulate the fuel.
40
Tesla also tried his hand at an electric car —
http://electricandhybridcars.com/index.php/pages/1931teslaautomobile.html
Still no success, maybe he should have been subsidized more, eh?
10
Understandable Rom, although if a Tesla charging at 32amp is going to cause problems there’s a lot of other high powered house appliances that will cause concern. As I said before private business is taking up charging infrastructure in this country, not just Tesla, check out the RAC Electric highway in WA, Tasmania are looking at a similar system, smaller establishments are installing low powered outlets 15amp to 32amp 3 phase ( destination chargers ) the House of Anvers chocolate cafe in TAS being one. Look at it this way Rom, if a business has an power outlet near a parking spot and they can charge a few bucks for power while the driver is spending money in the business as well their going to look closely at the idea.
06
A lot of other high powered appliances?
32 amps is good for Water heating, clothes dryer, kitchen stove, furnace or boiler. That isn’t “a lot” and most of them are far better to use gas if available.
It is not:
kitchen blender
kitchen mixer
toaster
TV
Radio (I know nobody does that anymore)
space heater
well pump
sump pump
lamp of any kind
power tools
air compressor
freezer
refrigerator
air conditioning(unless you live in a mansion)
Hair dryer
clothes washer
clothes iron
Waffle iron
toaster oven
Except for the air compressor, none of the items in the above list are available to work on gasoline or fuel oil.
In other words, electric cars compete for electricity that is the only option for many comforts in the home.
Think about it.
50
ROM
Don’t I remember that SWER lines are limited to motors of about 5 hp?
Which looks like drawing about 15 amps, and that probably needing a soft start?
10
Yes, you jogged my memory and you are correct which makes charging up a whole SWER line’s worth of electrical vehicles over four or five or a lot more hours a bit of a high tech very bad dream.
Ah well! a couple of chinese solar panels, real cheap from e-bay should get me a full charge in half an hour or so for my snazzy new electric car!
I have just posted again on electrical vehicles but its gone into moderation which happens a lot to me unfortunately due I think to the length and content and links in my posts.
So its not Jo or the Mods to blame for that.
30
Willard – inner-city / Urban use for high cost vehicles? Do you know who lives in the inner-cities in most of, say, the USA? Poor people. Are you giving these all electric goodies away for free? Or have you figured out a way to replicate the silicon valley effect across a series of large, and some not-so-large, countries, driving the poorer people to the margins and replacing them in the city centers with those rich enough to afford the new tech? Aside from engineering and mechanics, battery life, etc., the social realities seem to have escaped your mind as well.
100
Brilliant point Mari!
10
Is that the full electric automobile / flying machine we’ve been waiting for?
“We are living in the future” John Prine
40
Mike
What about John Prine’s “Common Sense”?
10
Im not sure what to make of EXXON’S announcment , a 25% increase in demand sounds great as a moral boost to the oil industry and its investors that is on its knees at the minute , not to mention all that extra plant feeding CO2 , but China and the States are turning oil away at the moment and supply is outstripping demand , hundreds of millions of barrels worth of oil is floating around the oceans aboard tankers that nobody wants and storage depots around the world are full to the brim . Evidence continues to mount in favour of oil being abiotic in origin ( not a fossil fuel ) therefore abundant in nature and giving the lie to the peak oil myth , so it appears the only viable strategy moving forward for EXXON along with a small handfull of other major oil companies , is to destroy all other smaller oil companies to create a monopoly and return to a policy of drip feeding oil to the market in order to return oil to an artificially high price per barrel .
163
Doubting Dave…it is Truly amazing none pick up on it other than the most elite thinkers like yourself and i. 🙂
This website is missing the most important information in the whole climate debate. When will Joe and the site owner of What’s Up With That filter out some leading skeptic or even a climate scientist who can just come out and say that:
Big Oil is actually owned by its creditors the bank at the minute. The banks own everything as they have the power to print money. It is not about ExStrong, it is about the power of the banks to own everything in the world. Hardly has anything to do with some bloke or a hand full of blokes in an oil company with delusions of grandeur. The real power is exercised from further up the pecking order. Banks are at the top and.
More than half the worlds oil rigs closed down in less than a year.
Why didn’t any climate scientist or site like this one and WUWT report on it ????
Why didn’t anyone at the Paris Climate Summit report on it and say how great it is that there is a drop in the demand for burning fossil fuels due to a rather humungous economic crisis…… hello
.
91
Mike , lol 🙂 thanks for that , but i don’t think i have the knowledge on this issue that you seem to have , i’ve only recently come across and begun to do some personal research into this topic , some postulate that it was the Rockefeller family that had oil classified as a fossil fuel because there is more profit in a scarce resource than a abundant one , since then the Olicharchy led by the banking families have maintained that ” myth “. I don’t know if that idea has any truth to it or if its just conspiracy theory ( more personal research needed ) ofcourse if you Mike or anyone else has any information that would help me in my search for knowledge , it would be gratefully received and much appreciated . cheers
50
ED, really. I thought it was obvious that I was mocking…which is reason enough to moderate too.
[Mocking or soiling? We agree it is reason enough. And what did we learn from this?] ED
02
probably the same thing as last time and the time before. Just keep on trying!
01
FWIW: Bristol is now btw also the roost of the creator of definitive Lew-papers.
11
This response belongs to Bulldust’s comment @ #49.
11
You badly under rate the power of Nationalism, the almost pathological desire of entire nations and peoples often fed by jingoistic politiciians to take and keep and control their own destinies.
Nationalism is an extension of humanity’s age old ” tribalism” as tribes, groups of people with common interests, genetics of a common origin and a common culture hold together for protection and to have enough power as a group to negotiate and see off other encroaching parties, something that an individual or a small group is often powerless to achieve for themselves.
Oil companies might appear to be monolithic but if they were so universally powerful as many believe and claim, they would have controlled the worlds energy resource base completely by now.
Aramco in Saudi Arabia , Statoil in Norway that controlled Norway’s North Sea reserves give the lie to the claims of the overwhelming power of the oil majors and their purported ability to control the flow of global energy to their sole advantage.
Then there is Russia with oil reserves that maybe are not far behind the Saudi reserves, all state owned and controlled and unfortunately not very efficiently run.
China also controls its own oil reserves and drilling program.
From Wiki
And lurking behind it all and barely ever mentioned at present is the frakking technology monster that the Americans have developed for extracting oil and gas from their huge shale fields.
Lots of publicity about American frakking technology in the USA.
Almost nothing has been publicised on what is going to happen to the global oil and gas supplies when other nations start to use the frakking technology the Americans have developed to open up and exploit their own shale fields ;
World Shale Resource Assessments [ click on Map, top right, to get some idea of the geographical immensity of the shale deposits around the world ]
Effectively the oil majors could be cut right out of oil and gas production in many countries as their shale deposits which can be exploited for their oil and gas quite efficiently by quite small companies as the Americans again are demonstrating.
China with very large shale deposits and the second largest economic unit on the planet is also beginning to try and exploit its shale deposits all under Chinese control, although again with some so far disappointing results.
Some shale deposits will be not commercially exploitable with the current shale drilling and frakking technology as Poland’s experience in its extensive shale deposits so far has shown.
The UK on the other hand with its shale deposits of a few hundred metres thickness, American exploitable shale is often in seams only ten or so metres thick, might even rival the whole of the American shale oil and gas reserves, a mind boggling idea but possible as the Brtits begin their own frakking program after steam rolling the highly destructive, civilisation reversing, totally hypocritical UK green blob.
And we are only at the very beginning of the Global shale oil and gas technological revolution.
Then we have the extraordinary technological developments in both deep sea oil drilling as in the enormous oil fields off the Brazilian coast.
The immense oil fields being found off the African west coast.
The onshore deep well drilling technology developed by Shell that allows a smaller diameter pipe to be lowered down through the previously drilled and piped hole and then when at the end of the drill pipe string down the hole, to expand that smaller pipe to the same size as the original pipe and seal it to the already in place pipes.
And then to go on and do it again and again whilst drilling ever deeper.
Expandable Tubulars – Engineering a Pipe Dream
Deep hole temperatures at below the 45,000 feet deep [ deepest drilled oil well is 35,000 feet deep and is off shore in 4000 feet of water ] are becoming the next limit to deep holes as temperatures below 50,000 feet increase to the point where the steels used in the drill pipes begin to lose some strength.
Drilling to these depths as no doubt they will one day is beginning to get close to tapping the source rocks and very deep shale deposits that are increasingly believed to be the source of the oil found in today’s oil fields.
The source rocks for some of the Saudi’s major oil fields have been identified and we might one day, have the technology to tap into those source rocks if ever needed.
Three other factors come into play when we look at mankinds future requirements for mobile and industrial duels such as gas, oil and coal.
The world’s population growth is slowing rapidly and will probably stabilise in the second half of the 21 st century at around 9 billions before starting a long slow decline in the global population.
There appears to be an upper bound to the amount of energy per capita that can be usefully used by mankind with a couple of nations already close to reaching that apparent upper bound.
Is there a link between energy use and standard of living?
Third is the probability, not possibility, that mankind will crack Fusion power generation sometime in the not so distant future
The rewards for doing so are such that many will continue to work on Fusion until it is achieved.
And then mankind will have energy of almost unlimited potential which will along with other technologies such as cheap energy created transportable and artificially produced fuels to rival the natural oil and gas product, will almost spell the demise of most of, not all of the natural oil, gas and coal sources of energy.
We do have a Peak in the future but it is not of a shortage of hydrocarbon fuels but a Peak use of those fuels as we reach the maximum numbers of mankind and a globally high living standard and then start a long slow global population decline.
As global living standards continue their very rapid rise we will reach a peak energy usage per capita possibly by the early 22 nd century.
For a couple of advanced nations as per above graph link, that peak energy usage per capita might already be very close.
And as advanced future energy producing technologies, ie; Fusion and advanced nuclear displace the naturally sourced hydrocarbon fuels sometime in the not so distant future with artificially created alternative mobile fuels through the use of extremely cheap and plentiful energy from Fusion.
Mankind will likely leave far more oil, gas and coal in the ground than he will ever use even far into the future.
150
8 billion peak (c.2045), per the Low Fertility band of the UN Population Survey, the only one ever close to accurate. 7 bn and falling by 2100.
60
The oil shocks of the late 1970’s resulted in much the same situation. There were tankers full of oil for which there was no demand. However, somebody will be buying that stuff. If the US strategic reserve storage is not at capacity, now is the time to buy.
70
You say “now is the time to buy”. So …..if i live in Greece, i should look at forgoing the purchase of the souvlaki and fill the car up instead?
Or if i live in Detroit in the USA, i should be using food stamps to swap amongst my peers to fill the car up instead?? and so on
21
Actually, you are spot on about the food stamps (actually they use debit cards in most states) being swapped for discounted cash for gas and non-grocery items. Even drugs.
30
There are still capped oil wells dotted around Australia, Commonwealth Oil Refineries were owners of many, and they remain capped because the costs involved in extracting the oil and transporting it apparently remain commercially unviable due to lower cost oil from other countries.
80
This is definitely support for –“follow the real money” as opposed to grant money and subsidies.
140
I would replace “real money” with “fiat currency” and the scourge of fractional reserve banking practices, making non-existent money come into being at the press of a button creating debt!
51
Lomborg’s group had all this covered leading up to COP 21 Paris. Here’s his PR study that covers much of this post. SFA cut in temp by 2100 after pouring endless trillions down the drain.
http://www.lomborg.com/press-release-research-reveals-negligible-impact-of-paris-climate-promises
Here’s his comment on solar and wind, what a farce.—————-
“Subsidizing inefficient renewables is expensive and doesn’t work. The IEA estimates that we get 0.4% of our energy from wind and solar PV right now, and even in optimistic scenarios the fraction will only rise to 2.2% by 2040. Over the next 25 years, we’ll spend about $2.5 trillion in subsidies and reduce global warming temperatures by less than 0.02°C. ”
Little wonder Al Gore’s adviser Dr James Hansen called COP 21 just BS and a fra-d.
150
“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil.
You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist, Earth Day predictions of 1970, The reason you shouldn’t believe Earth Day predictions of 2009.
200
Very funny. Kenneth Watt seems to be particularly good at getting everything wrong…
“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
180
If you add that other sage Paul Ehrlich….well,just about everything could be wrong.Entrails of chicken anyone?
170
The Tim Flannery of his era. 😉
130
he’s only a single watt, so not going to be very bright, obviously…
(sorry)
120
Handjive:
He’s just a conservative…oil has been going to run out real soon from at least 1862, 3 years after commercial production started. Keep predicting something and live long enough and it will come true, so it looks like he only has to live to 183.
120
My father, born in the early 1920s said he was taught in school that oil would last 40 years. I was taught in the 1960s that oil would last for 40 years, as were my kids in the 1990s.
With the help of coal and nuclear I think it will be a good deal longer.
130
The author never heard about converting coal into transport fuels?
As germany did during WW2 and South Africa did during the sanctions period.
70
That 4% of ‘renewables’ will only be in rich countries whose idea of sustainabilty is to insulate themselves against any shortage, pushed by the Green armageddon cult pretending to be concerned about all humanity and global warming but in fact only concerned about themselves and acheiving their own pristine environment and survival. So no manufacturing, no farming, no cars, no mining, no chemicals especially evil CO2. That can all go to China and India where it will stay, apparently.
The caring Green parties, who care only for themselves as they spend everyone else’s money, the useful idiots of the communists and the UN and often communists themselves like our second generation communist Green Senator Lee Rhiannon, trained in Moscow.
In RationalWiki, A useful idiot is someone who supports one side of an ideological debate, but who is manipulated and held in contempt by the leaders of their faction or is unaware of the ultimate agenda driving the ideology to which they subscribe.
170
Jo’s last sentence is not correct. BP, Esso, Shell,& Total were into coal mining in the 1980’s after the the oil crises in the 1970’s. However they sold out in the 1990’s due to making big losses or in the case of Esso with coal in Columbia /or was in Venezula being nationalised. BP tried to get into Solar (maybe as a hedge or as a token to kept politicians happy) but they have got out with loses. I think BP also had a go at geothermal. BP has been very badly managed and their Mexican Gulf problem nearly sent them into bankruptcy. Esso were not a shining light with the Alsakan oil spill.
There are still huge reserves of coal in the world. Just think of the reserves in Qld. In NSW there are huge reserves in National Parks between Wollongong and Newcastle which some day will be mined. If necessary there is coal in Antarctica. There is also oil around the Falkland Island area- why do think Argentina wants to take it over and UK wants to keep it. The is oil along the southern coast of Chile, this may extend to Antarctica. Russia has huge reserves of coal, oil and gas along its Arctic coastline.
I think Esso are right that gas will increase but a smaller amount than they forecast. I think coal will increase at a higher rate especially in Africa where new mines are now being opened with the help of Chinese who are also putting railways lines in place to transport the coal. China have been coy with revealing their Nuclear plans. Now China is being friends with Iran and are planning to install Nuclear Power stations which they will control. Instead of Solar and wind being 4% by 2030 I suggest it will be no higher than 2%. Look to Hydro going to 6% and Nuclear to 10%.
80
I think Exxon has it pretty right.
I think coal may remain (or regain) it’s share because it’s easy to stockpile, it’s very plentiful and cheap.
I think renewables will need to trend towards synthetic hydrocarbons for storage and ease of utility.
Nuclear deserves a place in the mix.
100
I meant to add:
Nuclear deserves a place in the mix for long term security and diversity of supply.
80
Correct Robk. Economically the only viable large scale energy sources are “Fossil Fuels & Nuclear”. “Renewables” are a bit player – mainly viable in isolated regions away from the grid (power stations sourced by “Fossil Fuels & Nuclear”). To rely on “Renewables” for large scale energy generation is economic lunacy – just look at the EU.
110
Viable, but that is not where they are. “mainly viable in isolated regions away from the grid”. Cruise around the North sea and look at the thousands around the coast of Holland, Denmark and Germany. Then catch a train through the Nederlands and marvel at the thousands of windmills. They are all in the middle of the grid surrounded by some of the richest countries in the world, exactly where they are not needed. Now look at Africa. The lights are off.
140
And the Netherlands attained a good deal of it’s wealth off the back of the petrochemical industry.
“An embarrassment of riches” some seem determined to turn around.
80
Thirty years of world windmills and solar cells and Green political expenditure at $1Tn a year. Incredible waste and continuining. All to save the planet. For whom?
How much are we spending on Thorium reactors? Australia and India should be leading this research as the main holders of Thorium ore along with the US and Canada. I have read that the Indians are testing a Thorium reactor. As usual, Australia is doing nothing, technology cargo culting while the world buys our coal and spends $1Tn on solar cells and windmills.
It is amazing how much of our exports are energy. Coal, Natural gas, Crude Petroleum, refined petroleum. 22% in 2014. As for our old staple, wool. We no longer ride on the sheep’s back at 0.8%. So while we are borrowing $1Bn a week, and energy and iron prices are crashing, we appear to be handing out money overseas to prevent Global Warming and buying submarines. Can we please have our government back?
131
behind paywall:
Threat of power crisis is growing, warns CBI | The Times
26/01/2016 · Tens of billions of pounds worth of investment in power stations, wind farms and other critical energy projects needed to guarantee reliable electricity
gist of it is here:
26 Jan:BM Magazine UK: Threat of power crisis is growing, warns CBI
Tens of billions of pounds worth of investment in power stations, wind farms and other critical energy projects needed to guarantee reliable electricity supplies are in jeopardy because of a failure by ministers to reach key policy decisions, the CBI has warned.
In a letter released today by the business lobby group, and seen in advance by The Times, it argues that Britain is facing the threat of a supply crunch because of a shortage of investment and uncertainty around the future subsidies available for low carbon power….
“UK industrial firms already pay higher electricity costs than EU competitors, and spare capacity on our grid is getting squeezed out as we phase out older power stations,” says the letter, which is co-signed by 18 executives from some of Britain’s biggest companies, including ScottishPower, Ineos, Tata Steel and BOC…
Among other things, the CBI is seeking an extension beyond 2021 of the Levy Control Framework, a key green subsidy budget without which many wind and renewable energy projects will be unviable. It is also urging an extension of the Carbon Price Support mechanism beyond 2020. The lack of any clarity after that date muddies the economics of any power project due to come onstream…
ScottishPower is set to shut down Longannet, Britain’s second-biggest coal power station, in March because of increasingly tough emissions legislation. The loss of Longannet is likely to exacerbate electricity shortages at periods of peak demand, raising the likelihood of supply disruptions.
Last year Ms Rudd called for the closure of all UK coal plants within ten years, but no clear plan has been developed for how this will be achieved without creating power shortages…
http://www.bmmagazine.co.uk/newswire/threat-of-power-crisis-is-growing-warns-cbi/
26 Jan: UK Govt: What the Government is doing to secure investment in clean, secure and affordable energy
From: Department of Energy & Climate Change
In response to a letter about energy policy in the Times newspaper on 26 January 2016, Energy and Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd said:…
“We know that old and dirty coal, and some ageing nuclear power plants will be closing over the next few years, and that’s precisely why we’ve put in place a long-term plan to ensure we have secure, affordable and clean energy supplies that can be relied on now and in the future.
“We are the first country to propose an end date to using unabated coal and we will do so in a way that maintains energy security, which comes first…
The top 10 things the government is doing to secure investment in clean secure energy:…
4.Set out world leading plans to close all unabated coal-fired power stations by 2025 ***IF WE’RE CONFIDENT THAT THE SHIFT TO NEW GAS CAN BE ACHIEVED WITHIN THE NECESSARY TIMELINES…
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/what-the-government-is-doing-to-secure-investment-in-clean-secure-and-affordable-energy
80
The Institute of Mechanical Engineers also had something to say on the matter.
SEE Bishop Hill http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2016/1/26/hunky-dory.html for comments.
Report:
http://www.imeche.org/docs/default-source/position-statements-energy/imeche-ps-electricity-gap.pdf?sfvrsn=0
30
Graeme
IIRC BH also has something to say on the author
10
btw any percentage dip in coal would be based on a much bigger energy pie surely…plus perhaps some wishful thinking on the part of those still hoping to kill the coal competition:
27 Jan: ClimateChangeNews: Megan Darby: Shell shareholders vote for BG merger, quashing climate concerns
Oil major insists its assets will not be stranded by greenhouse gas emissions curbs, against protests £40bn deal is overvalued
Shell is going ahead with a £40 billion (US$57bn) takeover of BG Group, after shareholders voted 83% in favour on Wednesday…
Chief financial officer Simon Henry insisted: “Shell does not suffer from a stranded asset problem.”…
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund backed Shell, however, arguing companies should stick together through tough times. Based on the country’s oil revenues, it is divesting from coal on climate grounds but continuing to fund hydrocarbon businesses…
Analysts at Carbon Tracker Initiative estimate $77 billion of Shell’s planned investment in oil and gas projects is surplus to the 2C threshold…
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/01/27/shell-shareholders-vote-for-bg-merger-quashing-climate-concerns/
26 Jan: UK Telegraph: Hinkley Point go-ahead delayed amid EDF funding doubts
French energy giant had been expected to take a final investment decision on new nuclear plant on January 27 but has postponed it again
By Emily Gosden, Energy Editor, and Henry Samuel, in Paris
But the continued delays to the project – once due to start generating in 2017 – are likely to raise further concerns about the UK’s energy strategy and the prospects for EDF being able to fund a second planned plant at Sizewell as well as a third, Chinese-led plant at Bradwell…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/12123674/Hinkley-Point-go-ahead-delayed-amid-EDF-funding-doubts.html
40
The unemployment should help curb all the CO2 emissions in Canada. The Canadians are doing their part to help fight global CO2 warming. Everyone is doing their part to fight emissions by using economic collapse and austerity measures etc. The Greeks, and even refugees with no money to buy oil entering Europe are all doing their part.
“Oil industry to lose 100,000 jobs by the end of 2015 as policy uncertainties, low prices decimate sector”
“The oil and gas sector will see 100,000 job losses by the end of this year, including 40,000 direct jobs, as a combination of policy uncertainties and low crude oil prices decimates the sector, the head of the country’s oil and gas industry group says.”
From: http://business.financialpost.com/news/energy/oil-industry-to-lose-100000-jobs-by-the-end-of-2015-as-policy-uncertainties-low-prices-decimate-sector
80
If the oil industries are on their knees due to low prices/over supply, imagine the job prospects of the renewables sector.
80
“The total supply of any mineral is unknown and unknowable because the future knowledge that would create mineral resources cannot
be known before its time.”
“If resources are not fixed but created, then the nature of the scarcity problem changes dramatically.
For the technological means involved in the use of resources determines their creation and therefore the extent of their scarcity.
The nature of the scarcity is not outside the process (that is natural), but a condition of it.”
Open-Ended Resourceship: Bring on 2012!
By Robert Bradley Jr. — December 29, 2011
61
4 pages: 27 Jan: Forbes: Dan Reed: The Collapse Of Oil Prices Has Killed What Little Serious Interest Airlines Ever Had In Biofuels
Additionally, airlines – which always are sensitive to the rising and falling of public and political sentiments – have sought to position themselves as environmentally-concerned corporate citizens eager to make the jump to burning greener, cleaner biofuels rather than nasty-old carbon fuels.
For the most part, they successfully have nurtured that perception among the public even though in reality they have done little more than play around the edges of biofuel experimentation…
Now, though, with jet fuel – essentially kerosene – refined and sold on the U.S. Gulf Coast selling for as little as 85 cents a gallon, airlines no longer have any serious interest in biofuels. So don’t believe whatever biofuel-boosting statements they may continue to put up on their websites and into their news releases…
So even before the collapse of oil prices over the last eight months it had become quite obvious that aviation biofuels aren’t likely to be price-competitive with carbon-based fuels any time in the foreseeable future…READ ALL
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielreed/2016/01/27/the-collapse-of-oil-prices-has-killed-what-little-serious-interest-airlines-ever-had-in-biofuels/
25 Jan: Bloomberg: Abengoa Seeks Sale of Biofuel Assets in New Viability Plan
by Rodrigo Orihuela & Macarena Munoz
Abengoa SA, the Spanish renewable energy developer on the verge of insolvency, will seek to sell its biofuel business as part of a debt restructuring plan to avoid bankruptcy.
A plan presented Jan. 25 to the board establishes “the sale of all non-core assets including all the first generation biofuel ones,” the Seville, Spain-based company said in an e-mailed statement…
“Everything around Abengoa is complex (corporate structure, financing, relationships with creditor banks), which makes us concerned that the two months it has remaining may not be enough time to secure a restructuring agreement,” CreditSights analyst Andrew Moulder said in a note Monday…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-25/abengoa-seeks-sale-of-biofuel-assets-in-bid-to-avert-bankruptcy
71
Oh well, you can all tell your grandchildren about the wonder of the Tarkine while you are blogging. Dickheads.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/27/world-heritage-forests-burn-as-global-tragedy-unfolds-in-tasmania
By the way, where’s the notch? Been over 18 months and still no sign.
[Hmmm Green, you seem upset. Is it that Nature is not behaving as YOU’d like? There is a reason that 1000 year old forests don’t cover the earth. Nature is a bitch. Sorry] ED
[Off topic. Whatever. The notch is doing better than ever. We’ll get back to that soon. – Jo]
18
To an old country guy who has had to deal with Nature all his life to make a living and who kept nearly 40 acres of natural Buloke timber as a natural reserve as many farmers have done and are doing, who has a farming brother who kept 90 acres of beautiful bushland [ going price for his farmland is over $2000 / acre ] for some 50 years now and who donated another 40 acres of bushland to a Nature preserving group, bushland that was on a property he bought.
Brunswick Green’s handle say it all about the levels of ignorance and self satisified egotism that apparently believe his city like based ilk are the only ones who care about Nature.
Brunswick Green, As you appear to be so confident in your condemnation of others about not caring about Nature, have you given up a couple of hundred thousand dollars of your personal wealth and even more potential income out of your own pocket and earnings over decades past to preserve areas of Nature for future generations?
if you haven’t given as generously as the examples above for the preservation of Natural environment of Australia then what are the reasons you have forgone such opportunities?
In short, have you at any time put any of your money where your mouth is ?
101
If you’re so concerned why aren’t you down there administering social justice?
You wouldn’t get lost being the proverbial map of Tasmania…..
11
Brunswick Green
When your side coughs up the million or so you’ve cost our small ranching operation via native vegetation management acts (uncompensated) I might listed further
(Not a DFS)
21
You are not alone in your loss Ian. It hurts to give up so much for so little. No redress, no logic and no sense.
10
And what is claimed as remnant around here is about as pristine as a recycled virginity
40
Has anyone seen the rainfall in Tasmania in the last day or so.!!!!
upper east coast getting hammered !!!
Only a total DH would continually mix up NATURAL weather variability with imagined human effects.
But then, most greenies ARE complete DHs. !!
31
Here’s the forecast for Queenstown
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/tas/west-and-sth-coast/queenstown
and Smithton
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/tas/northwest-coast/smithton
Does Brunsy look like a fool.. yesm !.. he sure does
20
Brunswick_Green,
So, from 1915 to 2015, (“for the past century”), major fires have naturally occurred every 20 years, on average.
But, the article claims that these naturally occurring fires should only have occurred every 75 to 120 years.
How do they know that they should only occur every 75 to 120 years?
Have these fires been accurately monitored, cataloged, etc. for centuries before 1915?
Where is that data?
Kool-Aid anyone?
Abe
10
Brunswick_Green,
Increased CO2 is supposed to warm the surface causing more evaporation. More evaporation means more water vapor which means heavier clouds which means more precipitation.
So make up your mind. Does Climate Change ™ bring more precipitation or dryer summers?
More Kool-Aid anyone?
Abe
00
As the cost of fuel plummets it allows for greater ease of movement at a reasonable price.
http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2016/jan/27/blogger-claims-to-save-772-from-sheffield-to-essex-by-flying-via-berlin
41
🙂 🙂 🙂
41
It is comforting to know that governments have enough money to subsidise renewable energy that will only deliver at best 4 per cent of the world’s energy needs.
What a wealthy world we must be living.
81
Of course it’s taxpayers’ and/or consumers’ money, the wealth of the nation wasted on useless failing technologies.
If only our governments, state and federal, would get out of the way and leave it to the free market decisions of consumers, power producers could make long-term rational decisions about the best employment of the nation’s abundant fuel resources which no doubt would result in more efficient coal-burning plant and much cheaper electricity for everyone — end of rant.
90
Wind turbine foundations, all couple of hundred tonnes of them each of concrete and with that large steel ring sitting central on top of the immense concrete block buried deep into the surface.
And the puzzlement of the anthropologists of 6016 AD who will be trying to decipher the type of religion that buried thousands of immense blocks of concrete along with their almost identical long ago rusted out rings of steel in all the known nations of that civilisation’s time, monuments almost totally buried in what seemed to be a vast and apparently chaotic series of arrays in some very unusual places.
It would have to be for a religious purpose as those huge isolated blocks of concrete with their faint rusted rings,[ what type of worship those rings stood for is still a subject of very hot debate,] of what was some form of steel are almost identical in concept to the very ancient religious monuments of 10000 to 12000 years before 6016 that were always placed at or near the highest elevations .
And what ever was the purpose of that religion, its period of global domination was very short for dating techniques put its rapid rise at around 2000 AD followed by its equally rapid disappearance by around 2030 to 2040 AD.
Many a paper will be written and many an academic hour will be wasted in a fruitless debate about the purpose and reasons for the rapid rise along with the very rapid demise of what appeared to be for a very short period, an almost global religion along with the debate about the purpose and reasons for its great buried monuments of concrete and steel.
191
ROM,
2 hundred tones …give over. They’re the ones that fall over in moderate winds*. The big new ones are looking at 2-3 thousand tonnes of base.
* after the ground is saturated by rain.
130
An array of even bigger buried monuments !
And the labor and the expense that old civilisation must have gone to to build these massive monumental buried blocks.
The religious cult that could organise such a herculean task must have had a very powerful hold upon its adherents.
And then it appears to just suddenly collapse.
We can only surmise that the task of building these enormous monuments destroyed the wealth of that advanced civilisation or created so much civil strife that the whole cult hierarchy was put to the sword.
Surely a puzzle that will take many generations of our archeologists and anthropologists to try and disentangle as to why what appears to be such an advanced civilisation went down this arcane monument building road and why the probable and very powerful cult that built those buried monuments lasted such a short period.
—————–
PS; Thanks Graeme.
I should have checked on those tonnages of concrete and steel in the latest environmental disfiguring monuments to the ultimate bird chopping bit of the usual green stupidity.
150
Stonehenge all over again.
We’ll have to sweep out some freezing works and bury truckloads of bones to throw the archeologists off the scent and keep them running around in circles.
And bury the remains of some huge BBQ’s along the lines of blocks, with plenty of empty bottles. That will cause some good head scratching.
40
You vandal, you !
But they were probably government archeologists and you just ensured that they had funding for the rest of their careers and lots and lots of papers from modeled scenarios and numerous hypothesis, including one that the monuments were to placate the Gods of Sea Level Rise by building those monuments on the highest points.
And no doubt some papers proposing a hypothesis that the monuments were really the bases for gigantic fans, there was a mention of these in one of the ancient fables, that were erected by a short lived cult that preached that the planet would overheat and so they erected these gigantic fans on those holy monuments as the rust rings have suggested, to cool the planet down with the fans.
Just another hypothesis I know, but good for another ten years worth of archeological grants at least.
40
ROM
This might be a useful figure
“But let’s have some fun. Let’s look at a large section of UK construction: wind turbines. According to wind industry figures, 1883 MW of wind turbines was installed in the UK in 2013. It isn’t easy to find info on amount of concrete in wind turbine bases from the wind industry itself, and I don’t trust the critics to give a straight up answer, but a search suggests a figure of 120 cubic metres per MW of installed turbine (bigger turbines require more concrete, in a roughly linear relationship).”
From a comment by Spence-UK at
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2016/1/29/limited-integrity-josh-359.html#comments
00
27 Jan: Financial Times: Nick Butler: Implications of another delay to Hinkley nuclear reactor project
The UK plan is uneconomic for owners and consumers, writes Nick Butler
(Nick Butler is visiting professor and chair of the Kings Policy Institute at Kings College London)
The Chinese have not formally signed up to the financing agreement and now it has become clear that the EDF board is unwilling to go ahead with a decision that would add to its financial problems by adding debt and risk to its already shaky balance sheet.
EDF shares have more than halved in the past year. The merger with Areva forced on EDF by the French government also adds to the company’s burden because of the unfinished and perhaps unfinishable reactor construction project at Olkiluoto in Finland…
There is no prospect of the French government, its main shareholder, rescuing EDF. Thousands of employees are being laid off, alienating the French trade unions who have come out against Hinkley because of its potential negative impact on the company’s finances…
What does this mean for UK energy policy? Britain has two choices.
The first is to fund the project…etc
The second alternative is to rewrite existing energy policy: substituting gas for nuclear and perhaps extending the life of coal-fired stations beyond 2025. Extra offshore wind, short of a big technical breakthrough, would surely be too expensive to meet the government’s objective of reducing electricity costs…etc
Once again, nemesis follows hubris.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4b3c1d9e-c506-11e5-808f-8231cd71622e.html
71
still dreaming…but facing some realities!
27 Jan: CarbonBrief: Simon Evans: Analysis: Hinkley delay could put UK carbon budgets at further risk
The UK is already expected to miss its carbon budgets for the mid-2020s.
The emissions from a delay at Hinkley would increase this overshoot four-fold, Carbon Brief analysis shows. [The exact nature of the UK carbon budgets depends on accounting rules, see the footnote below. The UK is off-track whatever the measure]…
The UK could instead replace the lost generation from a delay to Hinkley with zero-carbon wind. However, the requirements would be significant.
To generate as much electricity as the 3.2 gigawatt (GW) Hinkley scheme, the UK would need to build an additional 11GW of onshore windfarms, a total of around 5,500 individual turbines. Alternatively, the UK could build 7GW of offshore windfarms, with around 1,500 turbines.
The UK currently has 8.5GW of onshore and 5GW of offshore capacity totalling 5,200 and 1,500 turbines respectively. Replacing Hinkley would take roughly as many wind turbines as the UK has in total today…
Because these windfarms would not operate 100% of the time, there would need to be some back-up generation, demand-response to reduce electricity needs, or undersea interconnectors to access supplies from further afield…
Amendments to the Energy Bill currently going through parliament would change the UK’s carbon accounting rules in line with the CCC’s recommendation.
***However, the government has moved to strike this amendment from the Bill…
http://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-hinkley-delay-could-put-uk-carbon-budgets-at-further-risk?utm_content=buffer5b996&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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26 Jan: UK Telegraph: Jillian Ambrose: Windfarms paid double the market price to cut power
The grid operator is now taking action to avoid future wind power waste
Wind farms were paid more than double the market price to stop generating electricity this week, despite the country facing an increased risk of blackouts this winter.
Strong wind conditions in the early hours of Monday and Tuesday morning threatened to overwhelm the grid with more subsidised power than needed, forcing National Grid to offer lucrative payouts of between £58 and £115 per MWh to turn the turbines off.
The payouts stand well above the current market rate of around £45/MWh to compensate wind farms for the subsidies they might otherwise have earned…
But market analysts say that payments to reduce wind power are becoming increasingly common as the number of turbines grows.
Cornwall Energy analyst Thomas Edwards said: “Payments in this range now happen fairly often over mornings when there is high wind, low demand and coal and gas plant begin to ramp up.”
One power market participant said National Grid was effectively “paying the cost of a poor system and network design”…
Constraint payments were also paid to coal and gas plants this week, but at significantly lower prices, below the market rate. Thermal generation needs less compensation from National Grid because the plants save money on the fuel they don’t burn.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/utilities/12122543/Windfarms-paid-double-the-market-price-to-cut-power.html
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I’m a little tired of Big Oil using my pro-fossil sympathies for its war against coal. I know that a giant flop like Ivanpah solar is good for the gas biz, but I’d rather not have giant flops and I’d rather gas was not used as “bridging” to nowhere.
Gas, oil and nukes are just great. But coal is chocolate sunshine. Coal, the finest Permian black, lies in our backyard – centuries of the lovely stuff! – and doesn’t involve hot and cold wars over sea lanes and pipelines. Coal is King. Our King.
111
mosomoso mentions this:
A lot of people don’t realise just how good those CSP (Concentrating Solar Power, or Solar Thermal) plants are for the natural gas business.
Ivanpah has applied for more hours of operation using Natural Gas.
In exactly the same manner as for all of these CSP plants, Ivanpah uses Natural Gas to run the turbines up to speed, which then drive the generator, and begin the operation, until the Sun heats the compound enough for it to be hot enough to boil the water to steam to run the conventional steam turbine which then takes over and drives the generator.
I was quite surprised when I first noticed that one of these CSP plants did this, so then I checked them all, and they all do it.
Ivanpah is one of the first plants to use a specifically designed 125MW turbine, while nearly every other CSP plant uses only 50MW turbines or multiples of them to generate totals higher than 50MW, so 100MW plant will have 2 of them, a 200MW plant will have 4 of them. Ivanpah has 3 X 125MW units, and they’re finding that they have to have more of the compound medium, and it takes longer to get that larger amount to a molten enough state to take over the (whole) solar operation.
It’s even worse with heat diversion as some of that heat is, well, diverted, hence again, longer for the solar component to take over, even though it might then operate for longer at the Sun going down end of the process, and heat diversion is 2, 4, 8 hours at most and they are still trying to get 16 hours of heat diversion operation for a full 24 hour cycle.
However, what they are finding is that the Solar process of itself is not enough to begin the process, so, to, umm, help it along, they use a NG turbine at start up, and until the solar takes over.
Imagine how, umm, inconvenient it would be with the introduction of a Carbon (Dioxide) Tax, ETS, and they impose the tax on these renewable solar plants.
People might actually ask questions.
Incidentally, I saw a dull and boring document back in 2009, and it was dated 2003. and was based on modelling. The modelled prediction was that by 2010, they would be able to operate a 250MW unit just on Solar Power alone, with 24 hour operation, and by 2014/15. they would be able to operate a 400MW unit on a full 24 hour basis.
The actuality is that they can barely manage part time operation with a 125MW unit, and are struggling to get more than 20MW with full heat diversion, and even then it’s barely for 40 days or so in Mid Summer.
Tony.
191
They must have been talking about Solar GAS turbines Tony.
70
Chevron were pretty smart in their indirect funding of Paul Ehrlich and his missus, Sierra etc. But things got a bit blatant when Chesapeake Energy shelled out about $26 million dollars to Sierra for Beyond Coal between 2007 and 2010. (Greenpeace, maybe a bit jealous, let out a yelp and it had to stop.)
Beyond all the trickiness and hypocrisy, what concerns me is our exposure to global tensions over gas, which is the New Black, the substance most likely to get brawled over in the 21st century. An Australia full of coal and uranium (plus its own gas) should be able to buy out of a lot of this energy mess. We’ll always be affected by oil and gas brawls (and even French uranium demand in African hotspots) but surely the less we depend on externals the better.
The answer to a lot of our probs is lying in that Sydney-Gunnedah-Bowen Basin. Too obvious?
120
Gotta love the renewables – almost the exact opposite of a perpetual motion machine. Now if only we could reverse the renewable technology…
31
Some of the tragic result of Paris and the push to somehow make renewables sorta viable will likely be high costs of hydrocarbon fuels and fuel poverty to the world’s poor and middle class.
121
I wonder how much of this will get onto the MSM.
http://notrickszone.com/2016/01/27/cold-shock-claims-dozens-of-lives-in-tropical-asia-amid-record-lows-taiwanese-see-snow-first-time-in-their-lives/#sthash.tnjrMsM2.dpbs
111
Ah, that’s either the weather or an extreme event. A consequence of CO2 made Global Warming. When you really want to believe something, it can be used to explain everything. How many Climate Scientists are looking for other employment or early retirement? Somewhere warm.
81
From the link:
The Swiss news site writes that on the Japanese island of Amamioshima “snow fell for the first time in 115 years“
Just that makes a nonsense of extremes caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions – not 115 years ago, it wasn’t
So why cannot whatever combination of factors active then have re-combined now ? This scientific question is never addressed in public, yet it is so simple and obvious
101
That is probably only a nameplate 4% shaman energy, wind and sun. In practice, maybe 28% of 4% or 1%.
No matter how much science advances our knowledge, there will always be people who believe in worshiping the elements and do not really believe trees, plants and all living things are made from an invisible gas, CO2. They probably do not believe water is made from two invisible gases either.
102
When I say elements, that does not mean Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen but Wind, Earth, Fire, Water. The others are some sort of lie spread by scientists. Nothing solid is made from gases. Greenpeace even banned the element chlorine.
92
Mark Butler was on Fran’s Brekkie/ABC this morning talking about this.
is this time well spent? lol.
28 Jan: Australian: AAP: Labor’s 40 climate meeting in six weeks
The federal opposition has kicked off a series of 40 meetings with business, unions and environment groups over six weeks to discuss its ambitious plan to slash carbon emissions.
Labor announced its proposed post-2020 emissions reduction target of 45 per cent by 2030 – recommended by the government-funded Climate Change Authority – at the end of 2015.
However, the policy isn’t set in stone and environment spokesman Mark Butler told ABC on Thursday he’ll take it to several stakeholders before assessing if it’s consistent with targets of comparable nations.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/labors-40-climate-meeting-in-six-weeks/news-story/91e64347d40b4001fffc3ee5e05e8464
60
When science comes to terms with the missing matter and energy in the universe, and ,learns how to manipulate it as Tesla started to do, we will then and only then ween ourselves off hydrocarbon fuels. Science per sec has many things to learn, this century should see the impossible be normal. The power is such that we can destroy ourselves without wisdom, we have a long way to go.
52
a bit of fun.
during the Kerber/Konta women’s tennis semi-final this afternoon, Renee Stubbs was totally amazed that the sun was out, yet rain drops were falling on the court. bizarre. never seen anything like it, she remarked to her fellow commentators, and no-one said Renee…you don’t know sunshowers?
it’s no wonder the CAGW crowd can hoodwink the public when it comes to weather events:
Wikipedia: Sunshower
Folkloric names
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshower
btw in Jamaica they say the devil & his wife are fighting.
91
Nothing to disagree with here. Exxon clearly know their business. Expect rising mea levels.
91
2040 is too late to save my job and hundreds of thousands of other oil field workers around the globe.
Ciao
John
81
Are you the John Gorter I drank beer with at ANU in the 60’s,if so how are you going?
01
The EV CAR
The Battery Storage Home
The battery storage industry
All dreaming!
The world will be powered by Oil, Coal, Gas & Nuclear until 2100 at least!
131
I still believe we are not exploring combustion of metals. Metals burn. Aluminum/Aluminium is a great renewable resource, 90% of value being electricity which means it is a battery without being a battery. Widely available, safe, storable, transportable, its energy content is comparable to oil and prices are comparable. A viable Alumina/Aluminium conversion would be far cheaper and less polluting than refining from bauxite. Here in Australia the Greens are trying to shut this down when they should be building it.
I know I have written this before, but few scientists are being asked their opinion, so we are left with science ignorant politicians and even worse anti science Greens who left to their own devices would have wind driven wooden phones. To them solar seems fabulous free energy when it is nothing of the sort and not at all adequate for a modern world. While fortunes are being spent trying to bury CO2 when we really need it for food, how much is being spent not only on alternative sources of energy like offshore sea based generators running on the temperature differential but also on workable storage. No, a giant coiled spring or flywheel will not work.
When will any government actually call a meeting of scientists? Who gave Tim Flannery the right to decide hard science issues? He has no hard science skills at all. The debates I have seen have involved journalists, economists, politicians, actors, activists, Greens and opportunists. Why would we want to know about the future of the planet from DiCaprio or Jolie or Bono or Blanchett? I assume they mean well but these tax avoiding millionaries are an embarassment. Bob Geldoff charged a fortune in Melbourne to deliver a lecture on poverty. I suppose he has his costs and his entourage but surely that was not just going in his pocket?
Please, can we have our real government back, the one we elected, not the Turnbull, Bishop and Morrison one? There must be more to the Australian public priorities than transsexuals and women with beards and men in dresses and same gender marriages, or I am being transsamegenderphobicist?
70
TdeF
Back on WUWT Willis was on hydrogen. And pointing out that you can’t mine it as it is already burnt.
Think this might be the case for metals.
10
TdeF,
Why not stick with carbon and hydrogen based compounds which are readily available in unoxidized form and the combustion products are biologically friendly.
10
I reckon zinc-air batteries are the go…..
10
In the stupid part of the world I live in (province of Ontario, Canada), the Prime Minister and his lackeys have announced that future pipelines will have 2 new regulatory hurdles to pass before approval. One of these is to consider green house gas emissions ‘downstream’. Like end users wont get their oil from somewhere else, like the female oppression capital of the world Saudi Arabia.
A few years ago the premier of my province waived environmental assessments completely for new turbine farms, which has resulted in several being placed on bird migration routes, and health complaints from nearby residents.
What a stupid time to be alive.
131
These sort of pronouncements are utterly useless other than to give our descendants a good chuckle because they are all based on a wildly false assumption. They all assume the only technology options are those in practice today. How can people be so stupid as to assume there will be no new inventions and discoveries.
Its why the head of IBM famously predicted that the world wide market for computers would be about 10. In this case what about thorium reactors, hot fusion or more controversially cold fusion (LENR). Of course these are the technologies already far enough advanced to be talked about so even they fall into the known category. What about new technologies of which we have no idea today?
31
ROM is a fan http://joannenova.com.au/2014/10/renewable-energy-target-costs-miners-millions-green-electricity-cost-9-15-of-bills/#comment-1586072
Now what happened again to E-cat?
11
Common sense is returning
moving forward to a more fossil fuel based energy based economy
70
It looks like David & Jo are backing their work again along with a few “friends”. Well done !!!
http://coolfuturesfundsmanagement.com/
Don’t be shy Jo —put up a new thread as an “advertorial”. Readers will help it go global.
80
On CH10 last night there was mention of a “new solar system” from Tesla, solar panels connected to a battery pack that could power the average home and save the householder money. In fact landlords could “invest”, get credits from the grid for excess electricity and charge the tenant for the balance including the battery pack power supply.
But then mention was made about a start up price of $15,000.00 and that the entry level would not provide enough stored power to cope with an average family’s evening average usage. No mention of extended periods of cloudy days. One person interviewed agreed that the payback period for his home would be at least ten years. But no explanation of what costs were included, was it equipment and installation only or did he calculate interest on the money he spent that he would lose or interest paid to the money lender. And no mention of how long the solar panels and battery pack would last before needing to be replaced. After all, that is another cost factor.
The CH10 people did not seem to be too excited about the system. That was a pleasant surprise.
Maybe people are waking up to the renewable energy con?
20
Off Topic: Sometimes indigenous Australians are mentioned here, I hope the following is of interest;
From the Observatory near Coonabarabran NSW;
in January 2016 I visited the telescopes near Coonabarabran NSW and noted a reference to an ancient Australia Aborigine stone arrangementEarly relating to tracking the Sun in Mt Rothwell Victoria.
Estimated to be up to 20,000 years old. The position of the stones show the exact point at which the Sun sets on the Summer and Winter solstices, and the Spring and the Autumn equinoxes.
The precise alignment of the stones suggests it was constructed to map the movements of the Sun, in order to track the seasons.
This site predates the construction of Stonehenge by more than 10,000 years.
The Stars are also involved in the Dreaming, with stories told through generations of oral tradition. The depth and complexity of these stories reveal a greater understanding of Aboriginal people’s interpretation of the Sky.
The version of the Emu in the Sky can be seen in the Milky Way, by looking at the dark nebulae rather than the Stars. These dark areas are interstellar clouds made up of dust and gas, so dense that they obscure any light within them.
Modern Australians should make it their business to better understand our indigenous people’s ancestors and their way of life in the country we now call Australia.
20
Fossil fuels will continue strongly, because within 5 to 8 years the world will start to realise that radiation does not set surface temperatures for the simple reason that the Sun’s direct radiation to the surface (about 168W/m^2) cannot explain temperatures above 233K (-40°C) and there is no valid physics saying that back radiation can be added either. There’s no need to explain temperatures with radiation anyway. Experiments have shown that force fields set up temperature gradients, and correct physics can be used to explain why. And that’s why the surface is what it is, and carbon dioxide has no significant effect on temperature – never has, never will.
23
28 Jan: ClimateChangeNews: Alex Pashley: Top lobbyist says coal needs its own ‘Mission Innovation’
Despite climate concerns, hundreds of coal plants are being built worldwide. The World Coal Association argues governments should stump up for cleaner technology
But it’s an idea that has the backing of former Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh, who told Climate Home the industry will be around for decades to come, and needs global support to clean up its act.
“The coal issue still remains… even with most aggressive solar, wind and nuclear India will still probably triple coal in next 15 years,” he said. “There’s a huge research project if the world supports India…
Over 700 coal plants are under construction worldwide, with another 1,700 in the pipeline, according to Global Coal Plant Tracker…READ ON
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/01/28/world-coal-mission-innovation/
28 Jan: ClimateChangeNews: Megan Darby: Australia, Japan, US coal burners face ‘utility death spiral’
Old power generators are losing market share to wind and solar, say Oxford University analysts, in environmental risk report for investors
In the most comprehensive study of its kind, analysts at Oxford University crunched data on the world’s 100 biggest coal burning utilities and top 30 miners…
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/01/28/coal-stranded-assets/
10
28 Jan: ClimateChangeNews: Ed King: Kyte: Universal energy access possible by early 2020s
Sustainable Energy 4 All chief says major strides in clean energy, efficiency and finance mean target of powering entire planet is closer than ever
Every man, woman and child on the planet could finally have access to regular and sustainable energy within a decade, according to a top UN official…
Under the Sustainable Energy 4 All initiative these people should have access to electricity and cleaner cooking facilities by 2030, but the UN body’s chief Rachel Kyte is aiming for the early 2020s.
“We’re going to get this done earlier”, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview…
Clean energy investments hit a high of $329 billion in 2015, a figure Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday urged business leaders to double by 2020.
“Markets now have the clear signal they need to unleash the full force of human ingenuity and scale up investments that can generate low-emissions resilient growth,” he told a New York summit…
In a recent interview with Climate Home, Kyte said there was now an “embarrassment of riches” when it came to investing in Africa’s clean energy future – which SE4ALL will look to coordinate…
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/01/28/kyte-universal-energy-access-attainable-early-2020s/
30
read all:
28 Jan: ReutersCarbonPulse: Mike Szabo: Ukraine environment minister, two senior officials fired over Kyoto cash corruption charges
Ukraine’s acting minister of environment and natural resources Serhii Kurykin and two senior officials have been fired for allegedly attempting to embezzle 550 million Hryvnia ($22 million) in Kyoto Protocol revenues, the government said on Wednesday.
Ukraine’s director of the environment ministry’s climate policy department Vladyslav Vezhnin and the CEO of state-run green investment firm Ukrekoinvest SE Oleksii Koval were also sacked following an investigation, according to a government news website…
It is not clear if the case is linked to Japan’s request to have Ukraine return an undisclosed amount of unused funds that it received from selling Assigned Amount Units (AAUs) to Japan under Kyoto’s first commitment period, which ran from 2008 to 2012…
In 2011, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko was jailed following similar accusations by rival Viktor Yanukovich that included misappropriating at least €200 million in AAU sale proceeds…
http://carbon-pulse.com/14793/
20
28 Jan: ClimateChangeNews: Megan Darby: Australia, Japan, US coal burners face ‘utility death spiral’
Old power generators are losing market share to wind and solar, say Oxford University analysts, in environmental risk report for investors
In the most comprehensive study of its kind, analysts at Oxford University crunched data on the world’s 100 biggest coal burning utilities and top 30 miners…
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/01/28/coal-stranded-assets/
30
28 Jan: ReutersCarbonPulse: Ben Garside: EU political party chiefs strike deal on ETS reform
The environment committee (ENVI) will share competence with the industry committee (ITRE) on certain elements, but ITRE will not gain exclusive control of the Modernisation Fund.
The deal was made by the so-called Conference of Presidents after group leaders failed to reach an agreement over which cross-party committee would run the high profile dossier.
But the sharing of power means it will not be possible to fast-track negotiations with EU member states before a vote is taken in the full parliament, according to Ian Duncan, the MEP who will steer the file through ENVI.
“It will have to go to plenary, but the issue has been resolved and we can now move forward with some certainty,” he told Carbon Pulse by phone…
http://carbon-pulse.com/14819/
28 Jan: ReutersCarbonPulse: Carbon Trading Capital firm borrows 2 mln CO2 permits from Shanghai power company
China Carbon Futures, owned by UK-headquartered trading firm Carbon Trading Capital, has borrowed 2 million Shanghai Emissions Allowances (SHEAs) from one of the city’s biggest power generators to use for speculative trading before returning them in late May, the first publicly announced deal of its kind in the city’s carbon market.
China Carbon Futures and state-owned Shanghai Wujing Power Corp. signed the deal at a ceremony in Shanghai on Thursday.
Under the agreement, a type of deal the Shanghai decided to allow in June last year, China Carbon Futures can use the allowances for speculative trading, but must return them to Shanghai Wujing before the June compliance deadline for 2015.
The two companies will share the potential profits from the trading.
The deal came as Shanghai carbon prices stand at 9.20 yuan ($1.40), marginally above the all-time low of 9 yuan, which was hit earlier this week…
“I’m hoping to see more structured deals. We can’t really do just spot, it’s too little and too risky,” Kou (China Carbon Futures’ director of carbon financing and structuring) said.
http://carbon-pulse.com/14801/
10
when you ask the right CAGW people to comment?
27 Jan: Guardian: Karl Mathiesen: World heritage forests burn as global tragedy unfolds in Tasmania
David Bowman, professor, environmental change biology, University of Tasmania: “We are in a new place,” he says. “We just have to accept that we’ve crossed a threshold, I suspect. This is what climate change looks like.”…
David Lindenmayer, professor of ecology and conservation biology, ANU: “Clearly the fire regime is starting to change.”…
“That’s what other people have been forecasting is going to happen,” Lindenmayer says. “We are going to see more fires, over larger areas, that are more frequent and of higher severity. What we are seeing in Tasmania would appear to be a manifestation of that.
Bowman says: “The implications of this are, of course, goodbye Gondwana. Because Gondwana can’t live in this sort of world.”….
Geoff Law, a longtime Tasmanian conservationist and former head of the Wilderness Society, describes Bowman’s long-term prognosis for the Gondwanan forests as “devastating”…
Brown told the ABC’s Radio National: “Tasmania has just experienced the driest spring in recorded history, then the hottest December. They’ve had almost no rain in January. Everything is hotter and drier, so we are facing unprecedented conditions in human history … due to the human-caused climate change.”…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/27/world-heritage-forests-burn-as-global-tragedy-unfolds-in-tasmania
20
read all:
28 Jan: Financial Times: North Sea oil industry to receive emergency investment package
by Kiran Stacey and Jim Pickard
David Cameron will fly to Aberdeen on Thursday to announce a £250m package to prop up the North Sea oil industry, the first stage of an infrastructure investment for the city.
The prime minister will promise a new “oil and gas technology centre” in Aberdeen to fund future research, including into innovative ways to extract oil and gas…
The industry is seeking £3bn in funding…
He added: “I’m determined we build a bridge to the future for all those involved in the North Sea… I’ll be going to Aberdeen tomorrow to say more about what we can do to help this vital industry at this vital time.”…
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/035457c6-c50b-11e5-b3b1-7b2481276e45.html
20
According to The Age today;
30
read all:
30 Jan: UK Spectator: James Delingpole: I’m putting my money where my mouth is and betting against climate change
I’ve invested in a fund that will aim to short-sell overvalued renewable energy stocks
‘As oil crashes, is it time to short solar stocks?’ Gosh, I wish I’d read that headline a year ago. The solar stock it tipped for doom in January 2015 has since plummeted from $19 to $2.65…READ ALL
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/im-putting-my-money-where-my-mouth-is-and-betting-against-climate-change/
30
I see Glikson is at it again:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-29/glikson-the-dilemma-of-a-climate-scientist/7123246
Given his main research interest is asteroid impact effects, why is he so interested in GHGs and climate change? A funding shortage in his preferred research area perhaps?
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Yep, was going to say that and came here suspecting one of the Jonovians would be onto it already.
I like the way he begins by admitting climate scientists have been put back into their proper place by sceptics. Presumably “a world of charts and data” is the proper place for scientists.
He then proceeds to make several statements which are hyperlinked to articles that don’t actually support his contentions.
e.g. Claims CliSci authors are more panicked in private than they will say in public, which is 180 degrees apart from what we saw in ClimateGate. He links to an article which says nothing about private concerns of climate scientists.
e.g. Claims “the unprecedented rate at which atmospheric CO2 levels are rising”, offers no evidence for this, and he can’t because even ice cores don’t measure rates of CO2 accurately enough to be comparable to modern instruments over more than a couple of thousand years.
e.g. Claims “global warming to 3 and 4 degrees C can only spell the demise of numerous species and a collapse of civilisation as we know it” … which is a statement about the future, so cannot be proven today, and as civilisation did not exist in the Eocene or PETM the Earth does not actually have any evidence of whether civilisation does or does not collapse at that temperature.
e.g. Claims climate scientists lose their jobs when they raise alarm about climate – exactly the opposite of the reality we’ve seen all over the planet. Further he hyperlinks the case of Trevor McDougall as though this somehow substantiates his point. As near as I can tell with some quick Googling, McDougall has never made any alarmist statements about climate change. Further, McDougall was let go during the RGR years, not during the Abbott era, and was promptly hired by UNSW and also appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society. Gosh, so hard done-by! He seems to have been let go after writing a paper that showed (in his words) that ocean physics ”is recognised as a crucial missing link” in the ability to improve the accuracy of climate modelling. His most recent CSIRO paper was cited by another author who used it to conclude: “the importance of Southern Ocean upwelling for our understanding of climate rivals that of North Atlantic downwelling, because it controls the rate at which ocean reservoirs of heat and carbon communicate with the surface.” Uhuh, so basically McDougall showed the climate models were missing a significant non-linear phenomenon of heat transport which then implied changes in adiabatic upwelling in the South are altering surface temperature. This all points towards Dr McDougall being inconvenient to the CO2 scare campaign and highly rewarded in spite of it, and yet still Tricky Glikky casts him as a martyr for The Cause.
All up, a complete trainwreck from the Glikster.
The irony is that in saying mainstream positions are too optimistic he is basically arguing that a minority of scientists should not be ignored just because they disagree with the 97% consensus.
But the irony seems lost on the Glikster.
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26 Jan: Sott.net: Climate fraudsters exposed by new monsoon study
by G.S. Mudur, The Telegraph, India
India’s monsoon is in no danger of catastrophic collapse in response to global warming and air pollution, two atmospheric scientists said today, refuting earlier predictions that the monsoon could shut down within 100 years.
The scientists at Yale University in the US who used computers to model the Earth’s atmosphere, land and oceans have found that the expected changes in the monsoon will not abruptly alter their strength or their water volume.
Their results contradict earlier forecasts by scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany portending frequent and severe failures and even a breakdown of the monsoon, which is critical to India’s food, water resources and economy…
The scientists described their results this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a US research journal.
Their corrected models have suggested that while the monsoon is expected to change over the next century, there is no reason to fear an abrupt shift that will push India into a dry regime over the next century or two.
Many Indian scientists who had been sceptical about the earlier predictions are happy with the results from the Yale researchers. “A lot of hype had been generated over the earlier predictions about abrupt changes to the monsoon, causing concern among policy makers,” Jayaraman Srinivasan, a professor at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, who was not associated with the work, told The Telegraph…READ ON
http://www.sott.net/article/311151-Climate-fraudsters-exposed-by-new-monsoon-study
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Mods: “Reply” seems to be borken
[Blame Doug Cotton. We had to pull two of his posts and that unfortunately broke the nesting.]ED
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two comments have now gone into moderation re new monsoon study contradicting Potsdam alarmism.
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posting the original G.S. Mudur article at the Telegraph website, because the original headline is less inflammatory than the one used by alternative website, SOTT.net – see comment #50:
27 Jan: Telegraph, India: G.S. Mudur: Study allays monsoon alarm
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1160127/jsp/nation/story_66027.jsp
this link to the study itself is still in moderation, so posting again.
read all:
25 Jan: Science Daily: New model emerges for monsoons in a changing global climate
Source: Yale University
Continent-scale monsoons will adapt to climate change gradually, without suddenly losing their watery oomph, new research indicates. Previous theories omitted the fact that air cools as it rises. Called “adiabatic cooling,” this process is responsible for the familiar drop in temperature that occurs as masses of air rise over mountain ranges…
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160125155909.htm
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Well, it appears that the lighter you make one of the new-fangled batteries, the more likely it is to ignite:
http://college.usatoday.com/2016/01/09/more-than-30-colleges-ban-hoverboards-amid-safety-concerns/
Getting batteries to work right, and not be too heavy, must be a hard target to hit.
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Don’t be shy.
Australia’s future on coal is looking great!
http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=coal-australian&months=60
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
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John,
Are you retarded?
Your quote . . .
Coal use, John. Coal use.
Worldwide, John. Worldwide.
To which you respond by linking to . . .
Global energy demand will rise by 25% by 2040. To which you respond . . .
Yes, but Australian Coal prices have dropped in the last five years!
😮 😮 :O 😮 😮
Abe
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John,
BTW, John, you do realize that by having lower prices Australia can better compete in regional and world markets thereby selling more coal! 😉
Coal trade
Coal is traded all over the world, with coal shipped huge distances by sea to reach markets. Overall international trade in coal reached 1383 Mt in 2014; while this is a significant amount of coal it accounts for about 25% of total coal consumed. Most coal is used in the country in which it is produced. Transportation costs account for a large share of the total delivered price of coal, therefore international trade in steam coal is effectively divided into two regional markets:
The Atlantic market
Made up of importing countries in Western Europe, notably the UK, Germany and Spain.
The Pacific market
This consists of developing and OECD Asian importers, notably Japan, Korea and Chinese Taipei. Indonesia remains the world’s largest coal exporter. It exported 410 Mt of coal in 2014. Australia remains the world’s largest supplier of coking coal – exporting 180 Mt of coking coal (as well as 194 Mt of steam coal).
Are we having fun yet, John?
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
Abe
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Port Waratah terminal 4 was finally approved on 1st October 2015.
This, and the new Hexham holding yard, will allow for a greatly increased export of coal through Port Waratah.
http://www.pwcs.com.au/terminal-4/in-development/
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early morning error… should read…
…..will allow for a greatly increased export of coal through Kooragang Island
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I’m just using the figure in the report Joanne Nova. It’s very simple.
Coal use is projected to be lower and the price over the last 5 years has been dropping.
Yes, thanks, I am having fun even if Australia is backing a dead horse.
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
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John,
Your math is even worse than your logic!
Where did you get that figure of 23%?
Abe
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