This absolutely definitely is not about profits or money.
Giant Spanish bank announces €100 billion plan to fight climate change
BBVA, the second largest bank in Spain, has launched a major new financing initiative to support sustainable development and combat climate change in the coming years.
Only gas and oil companies are “vested interests” seeking to profiteer from our demise. Banks are charities:
BBVA Group Executive Chairman Francisco González said, “At BBVA, we want to play a key role in mobilizing resources to halt climate change and promote sustainable development. It is an ambitious, long-term goal in line with our purpose of ‘bringing the age of opportunity to everyone.’”
Apparently, the bank’s role is to change Earth’s climate, and “bring the age of opportunity to everyone”.
Do their shareholders know, I wonder?
Can anyone see an elephant?
Warning — Meaningless acronym coming — SBTI:
BBVA has also become the first Spanish bank to commit to the Science Based Targets Initiative. The campaign helps major corporates work out how they have to cut emissions to prevent the impacts of climate change.
The group’s new strategy is called Pledge 2025…
If you wanted to dress up a neolithic druid program to use windmills to slow storms, you’d call it “Science Based” too.
Right now Exxon are on trial even though they “believe in climate change” because they spent $23 million or so on skeptics over ten years, and a long time ago. Yet, here’s a bank offering one hundred thousand million… it’s 4,347 times as much.
Plenty more money where that came from.
Does anyone doubt that a river of money and power flows through this science debate?
Much of this “$100 billion” will be rebadged bragging money — money that would have been spent anyway but a change of label makes it “good for advertising greenness”. It’s also good for whipping up momentum in a struggling market.
Banks would have to be crazy to ignore the Trillion-Dollar Carbon trading carrot, and we’d have to crazy to ignore banks.
Other Climate Money stories
- Citigroup commits $100 billion to “climate change”. Media loves it.
- How Green is Your Bankster? Bank of America spends $50 billion to save the world.
- Billionaires club fund Green Blob “Climate Works”
- Big-Green have more money than Big-Oil but the media are blind to it.
- Nearly $1 billion a day to change the climate… the invisible vested elephant in the room
- Climate money: Big government outspends big oil
- Climate money: Monopoly science
- Massive climate funding exposed
- Sub-prime carbon is coming
and we should let China have the Pacific
…..who needs Pearl Harbor, anyway,
cuz they is sooooo good and great and only lie a little.
10
Go to You Tube, and search for stupid documentaries. A whole bunch come up. Watch whatever one you want. STUPID is the future. Yikes! Imagine a stupid bank, who will pay for that? Wanna guess?
90
If shareholders have a problem with the companies they own virtue signalling, the left has a ready answer.
Eliminate the shareholders. Therefore, if a company you own a piece of needs to do this, sell.
51
So your shares simply change hands.
51
Assuming there is a buyer.
00
Hello out there…is anyone awake? Does anyone understand the concept of evidence? Anyone… … …?
Better question: Does anyone understand how much of the world’s wealth has been totally wasted chasing this climate change bogyman… … …?
No answer to that either.
Gordon mentions stupid documentaries at #1. But the stupidity is worse than that. I’m surprised, scared in fact that the management of a major bank can be this stupid.
The world is in the hands of something that now has a life of its own and it rules the thinking of those who pull the strings of power, even here in America where the president is thwarted by people not qualified to shine his shoes. Anyone who thinks their elected officials call the shots should wake up before it’s too late.
270
Roy you are correct. I believe I posted something awhile back about Naomi Klein and Christina Figueres have stated that the weather is not the issue. It is about redistribution of the wealth, the climate issue is just the BS needed to actually do it.
230
I think its literally of Biblical outworking, personally.
This level of coordinated evil cannot exist by itself and of itself…..
In Daniel 7:24 it talks of the creation of 10 Kings in the last days, I think these will be the 10 super-nations ( ASEAN, NAFTA, AU, EU, China, Japan, Australia-South Africa etc ) who in Revelation have one mind to give their power to the Beats ( Anti-Christ ).
The key to global govt is creating it to fight a global “crisis”.
What if……all this is actually Gods timing?
What if as unfashionable as it might be, that – hey we super clever humans aren’t actually in control at all, but even the evil forces who have been forced such that they offer the powerful people who have been fooled by the Demonic worthless trinkets of power and wealth the Devil has provided them, the same demons are in fact doing Gods bidding to bring His Word into reality?
Even the demons, which are talked of openly and plainly, are on earth and know they have a use-by Judgement date:
“When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes,[c] two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way.
“What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?”
Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding.
The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.”
He said to them, “Go!” So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water.”
( Matthew 8 )
Note that the Bible talks of a very coordinated approach to activity :
“13 And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.
14 For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.
15 Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.
16 And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.”
( Rev 16 )
And if time is running out, then time is running out also get right with God…..
51
You could be right. But I also remember that the Bible says no man will know the time in advance of its beginning.
Many have prophesied the end of the world and none have been correct so far. Their embarrassment doesn’t seem to stop the next guy from doing the same. 🙂
Evil and plain old incompetence have been around since the dawn of the human race. Some anthropologists think that we bagan about 6,000,000 years ago, giving us a long time to perfect our ways to screw the other guy just for our own profit.
31
Jesus did say there would be multiple signs all at the same time as a tree produces buds so you know spring is near….so there will be some warning…..I believe quite a few of them are appearing now…..
21
Roy, There are many places in the Bible that identify when the end times are and the signs that will happen. Daniel, Ezekiel, Amos, Revelation, plus Jesus himself made many statements.
The phrase you are thinking of is specifically the question “when will Jesus return”.
24:36But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. 24:37But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 24:38For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, 24:39And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 24:40Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. 24:41Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
24:42Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.
21
Amen!
And the return of Jesus is the end of the world, at least as we know it now.
And now maybe we should drop religion because I think Jo would say it’s off topic if she were to comment on it.
00
Roy said:
… somewhere around 157 so far. None have been accurate 🙂 because the world is still here!
30
Roy: how did Al Gore make his loot?
10
Assuming that’s not a trick question, here’s the answer.
Al Gore did what anyone wanting a following that will pay him for telling them they have a problem and only he knows the solution would do. He did what any huckster wanting fame and money would do. He picked something already said to be a problem, got himself tutored in global warming by James Hansen, formerly of NASA-GISS, hung up a shingle and began preaching doom and gloom unless we all did as he says.
If that explanation is too long here’s a shorter one. He sold his soul to money, lied about a non existent problem and pretended to be an expert who could save the world.
Nice guy, huh? 😉
10
No not a trick question. Yeah, I know he’s a rude `nice guy.’
I thought he was working as a financial adviser somewhere some how and was pushing “no CO2” solutions to his
victimscustomers. I was just looking for more accurate info …00
I know of no other way to produce wealth and well being other than through economic growth and individual liberty. Maybe someone has, but I have yet to see a documented example.
All the virtue signaling and supporting climate change by banks is to increase their profit and/or to avoid harassment and thereby continue to grow and profit by supporting the loony, but loud, climate change schemes, zealots, or profiteers.
201
Got it all there Leonard.
Banks pacifying the noise makers.
60
Bank Australia fits this mould. Ads around Melbourne…in green blob suburbs…signalling no investment in evil coal.
100
In more recent years we have become a member of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values, and we are a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact – both of which guide our responsible approach to banking.
Bank Australia was the first Australian member of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values, at growing network of financial institutions committed to using banking to change the world.
The members of the Global Alliance have combined assets of almost US$80 billion and provide banking to more than 20 million customers in six continents.
The United Nations Global Compact is the largest corporate citizenship and sustainability initiative in the world, with over 12,000 corporate participants from over 145 countries. Being a member gives us the opportunity to network with other organisations in Australia who are faced with and are responding to human rights, labour standards, environmental and anti-corruption issues in our community. Each year we report on our activity under the compact.
63
Who are “we”?
60
I think the resident red thumber should have drunk his coffee first. What is there in the Bank’s blurb to annoy a believer in AGWl?
40
If the banking and super industries won’t finance it chances are good it won’t be built .
30
Yeah but it all goes bang, people will change their tune.
Teach the younger generation the science basics and about the deliberate evil of the UN-created eco-strait-jack – it will stick, but they need us a yard sticks of the before and after to make sense of it all….if all you know is the piles of MSM/govt provided horse manure that sloshes out of their smart phones, how elese can they get a perspective?
It falls to us to stand up and teach. Thats the role of wiser, older people.
Biblically, the wise were the elderly, the Elders of the village were the local judges and advisors.
Moses set up elders over the people. As did David.
Its only the Left who say never trust anyone over 30, in this case just in case they speak logic and wisdom and common sense and then they cant be mislead by the Left……
The older generation have a responsibility to teach the truth about whats going on. Otherwise youre abandoning your kids and grand-kids….harsh, but true.
91
If you have superannuation , and especially if you use an industry fund, you will find that they also have a strong leaning in this direction. It takes some car in selecting what is going on with your money, rather than taking defaults, to avoid being overtly involved.
80
We are surely leaving the “adjustocene” behind us entering two new eras, the “Insaneocene and the obsceneocene”.
Leaving behind the cynicism and satire, and in all honesty I am afraid of what this absolute insanity, departure from the proper scientific method, and replacement of empirical evidence by models based on estimated values (sometimes values of convenience), is leading us. All the while our competitors/adversaries/enemies, rejoice in our increasing vulnerability. I despair for “generation Z”. If they have a future, it is surely going to be very bleak.
150
Not really…teaching the 20 somethings scientific truth has its rewards…it will take a while to kick in ( sinking down to the depths, like a depth charge….) but when it “goes off”…..well…..
Gen Z are as smart as us, just been deliberately misdirected and lied to on an industrial scale by a MSM & govt with all the morals of a rutting dog…..
My thought is to sit them down old school style, and teach them the basics.
I had a real stickler of an English Master at school…he was renowned for being uber-strict, but what he taught, stuck….30 years later…..
90
Liked the bit about the dog’s morals.
40
We are entering the ‘debtocene’
‘Tax payer’ dollars have now become ‘interest payer’ dollars..
‘Government spending’ is now government borrowing/debt. Sounds better when it is advertised as “government spending”
Infrastructure spending is now infrastructure debt….
And so on…
The big money is in solar powered debt, wind powered debt, climate powered debt….during the debtocene.
Scene from The International.
https://youtu.be/UiN1xHaNDJ0?t=54
90
And when it all collapses, as it inevitably will?
Debt cant be forestalled by just shoving it around from one bank to another…..something has to give.
80
I would have thought so too however, now we have sustainable ‘quantitative easing’. Discovered for the first time in 2007 circa thanks to the tireless work of banking scientists.
60
Cooking the books you mean?….
60
Another bloke they didn’t ask
“MARCEL CROK, THE SUPER BAD GUY OF THE CLIMATE DEBATE”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/03/08/marcel-crok-the-super-bad-guy-of-the-climate-debate/
60
The Sub Prime ‘Carbon’ Racket is still up and running thanks to the Trading Banks and is still heading to the brink of disaster. The ‘Science Based Targets Initiative’ is not based on science but on Group Think, Blind Faith, and Greed. Much the same can be said ‘Global Alliance for Banking on Values’ and the ‘United Nations Global Compact’. They are Trojan Horses for Crime, Wealth Transfer and Fraud.
80
Slightly off, topic but this bank gives South African banks a way out of some huge problems they have coming straight at them. Any South African bank a with large exposure to farming loans ( specifically white owned farms) should contact the Spanish bank and offer to sell the farms loans to them, at say a 20% discount. The Spanish Bank appears to be stupid enough to take up the offer –they wouldn’t bother to check why such, an apparently generous offer, was being made.
130
South Africa’s approach to farming seems to be: “Dismantle it and they will come.” No doubt we’ll be seeing some hyper-expensive green scams to maintain ex-farmland as “wilderness”. Maybe the funding can come from SBTI. Bob Carr can help out converting regrowth scrub to National Parks with indigenous-sounding names. Something like Oogadooga National Park would appeal to Bob. New Apartheid National Park might be more accurate.
120
South Africa’s forthcoming approach to farming is no more stupid than Australia’s current approach to energy.
130
Correct. As quite a few Brits who were kicked out of Rhodesia, said “they will need us to come back and fixed the mess they have created later….”
Sadly , it never happened,. Mugabe did his appointed job of crippling Rhodesia.
I guess the upside is the big multinationals companies had plenty of willing participants in drug trials…”The Constant Gardener” movie is rather powerful….
20
This type of activity is at the heart of the Global Warming movement.
Yesterday while flicking through The Australian newspaper I noticed a report on a matter involving the current Australian PM’s son, a large well known bank and a bond issue a few years ago for the Country of Malaysia.
The U.S. authorities are investigating the bank’s behaviour especially the possibility that a significant portion of the money raised never quite made it to the Country signing for it.
This scenario reminded me of the global renewables industry where large amounts of money move around the planet in a desperate bid to: ??? Save the planet ?? or ???
It is possible that Jo’s article here is about saving the planet, or perhaps there is a deeper purpose???
Whatever; I’m sure that all of the money raised will be accurately accounted for and that the people of Spain will get true value for their tax dollars.
As a side issue, our local council here in Newcastle has arranged to borrow money from the Australian government organisation responsible for such matters to build a renewable energy facility.
In our local garbage dump?
And nobody involved will personally benefit from this transaction.
Global Warming.. The political gift that just keeps on giving.
KK
142
Here’s the Church,
(of Globull warming)
And here’s the steeple,
(Philosofer kings/bankers)
Open the doors …
And here’s the sheeple.
(Useful-idjit-medja and other
assorted conn-sensites.
140
Scary stuff Beth, real scary.
60
Yep. Lo-o-ng war btw open and closed society,
thank goodness for a few freedom blogs like this one.
60
Yes but all they have to do is bulldoze said new eco-facility 20m into the main tip later…job done….
I propose a new award for useless eco-projects – The Inagural Weatherdill Awards….
The first award goes to….drum roll…. the Awfully Big SA Battery….
Where else can you find 6% grid capacity for 1/(24*365)th of a year for a paltry AUD $50 million?
if you multiplied that out, its $50,000,000 * 365 * 24 = $438,000,000,000
How many new coal HELE plants could you buy with that? 438/2.2 = 199 new plants……
A bargain!!
60
Good one Steve.
20
The poor debt laden Spaniards….The age of the Spanish Inquisition lives on..OMGosh!
Old news From: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2015/10/spain-approves-sun-tax-discriminates-against-solar-pv.html
“Spain’s government has recently approved a new national law on self-consumption of energy that taxes solar installations disproportionately. Most notably, the majority of self-consumers will be also taxed for the electricity they generate and consume in their premises, via their own PV systems.Oct 23, 2015”
More old news…
From: https://www.thelocal.es/20131112/spains-solar-police-to-kick-in-your-door
“Spain’s solar police to kick in your door”
30
Not an unexpected development.
If you are stupid and docile, there’s always a politician to make the burden a bit more.
60
Nobody expects the Spanish Solar Inquisition….
Our chief weapons are fear, surprise, and surprise and fear….and the popes almost fanatical devotion to climate change.
Bwahahaha (diabolical laughter)
50
Nice one, Centurion….
20
This green scheme and all others have been crafted using politicians and Hollywood actors by an evil genius , I think they might have modelled it all on this super villian .
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UEaKX9YYHiQ
40
When the Russians foolishly turned up in Afghanistan in the 1980s, they said “We are here to protect you” to the very capable Afghanis….
Fast forward to 10 or so years later…the shattered & humiliated Russians staggered out of Afghanistan, with the local villagers laughing at them…..
not long after, I met a 20 something Russian chap who was working repairing computers in Oz. After chatting for a while he said he decided to emigrate after all his friends in the Red Army had been killed in Afghanistan…..
I think people will work out pretty quickly the banks are like the Russians, and will rue the day they decided to try and become charities “to protect us” in a land that’s bleeding cash from a SA-style debacle with renewables…..whena ship goes down, you keep well away, lest you be sucked under too….
As the venerable Sir Humprey Appleby would say “Minister, thats a very courageous decision…”
90
I know a couple of very nice banking people, one a psychologist and the other a team leader in management. These are very capable and upright types.
The time and effort they put into ritual, gobbledegook and general shamanism make me wonder if banking hasn’t become an odd mix of corporate conformity and hippie escapism. Most of us know there are no juicy, glam jobs and end up just knuckling down. It seems banks and like institutions don’t want to take that step into grey adulthood, and have the enormous resources, real and invented, to stay teenies forever. Hence Pledge 25, SBTI…
As for money, it has to go somewhere in the age of superannuation and fiat currency. When you run out of sensible places to put it, you put it in less sensible places. Soon it’s Merry Melodies and silicon startups that never have to turn a quid but get lots of inexplicable love from Big Gov. Then there are only the Looney Tunes investments. Enter Big Green, actually carried in by Big Gov. Who could refuse a lazy trillion to such respectability and holiness?
100
Remove the government guarantee to cover the banks losses and make them accountable for their decisions.
111
Yes.
30
The Iceland Approach….jail the Banksters…..
40
I like Iceland already.
20
I think we have misinterpreted the true meaning of the headline, “Giant Spanish bank announces €100 billion plan to fight climate change”.
Properly interpreted it, really means that the bank’s board and management being the truly caring snowflakes they are, and having noticed the appalling relative misallocation of funds distributed between the catastrophists and the deniers, have nobly decided to readdress the imbalance by devoting some funds to a modern day, quixotic tilt at the ever increasing march of windmills over the landscapes of the world.
Seriously though, it brings home just how far the march of the stoopid has progressed into the seats of power in government, finance, business and universities.
For further evidence, see this article in today’s Sydney Morning Herald
‘Nuff said!
100
Sorry for the missing link.
50
Amazing, they should stop tinkering and use the money given by Turnbull to build HSR under the Blue Mountains. First stop Vittoria, half way between Bathurst and Orange.
Premier Gladys has to bite the bullet if she wants to keep her job.
30
Doh!!
http://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/nsws-2-billion-new-trains-are-too-wide-to-get-through-tunnels/news-story/47bd2ee36f43cd3cdd2819078feb6011
“But Transport for NSW (TfNSW), the Government body that manages the state’s rail system, has come up with a cunning plan. It has proposed simply relaxing current safety standards. In addition, 10 tunnels built in the 1900s will be partially modified to allow the new trains to run.
State opposition leader Luke Foley has said the government needs to show how they will guarantee passenger safety when the new trains are introduced from 2019.
“It takes a special type of incompetence to buy trains that don’t fit through the tunnels,” Mr Foley said.
Transport bosses have insisted the trains will operate safely but conceded that, in places, rules will have to be broken.
“There are parts of the network where it is not possible to fully comply with the modern standards due to physical constraints and in these circumstances, additional measures such as speed restrictions, varied track maintenance and timetabling are implemented to ensure safety,” a TfNSW spokesman said.
It’s not the first time regional trains have caused pain. In early 2016, many of Victoria’s V-Line trains were withdrawn from service after some failed to trigger boom gates at level crossings.”
Presumably the engineers werent consulted?
20
I’ve come to the conclusion some time ago it’s not the shortage of money that is the issue, and hence prevents a variety of problems from being solved, including things like famine, cancer, and the like. There’s actually plenty of money to solve such problems, and most could have been solved by now. No, the real issue is how and where the money is spent in the first place. I surmise hundreds of trillions of dollars have been flushed down the loo over the past 100+ years on useless and/or pointless pursuits. Climate change is just a recent pointless pursuit.
Even if the climate is about to change catastrophically and the precautionary principle is the correct approach to be adopted, it obviously can never work for one simple reason; it’s not being adopted seriously. If the danger is real then how come much of the rest of the word is busy building more and more coal fired power stations? If the danger was that serious, there would be a world-wide ban on them to save the planet, right? Given they are being build in the hundreds right now with something like a thousand to go online in the not too distant future, what are we missing? It would be like having a container ship full to its maximum capacity yet the managers at the port decide to continue loading it up with much more even though they know it will sink the ship. Given many nations of the world have chosen to continue building more and more coal fired power stations, the danger is either not real or they are all clueless and it is real. If it is real then we are all doomed. If it’s not real then only some countries are doomed – those that actually follow the climate change hoax, such as Australia. We lose either way. Of course it’s not real.
When will we learn? Only after a major reset that will cause another type of flush that’s desperately needed – a flush down the loo of all those so called expert advisors, public servants and leaders in governments all around the world who are just parasites. The world is in effect managed and run by competing lunatic asylums babbling away with conflicting stories and agendas, which will all lead to one outcome according to history; crash and burn. Enjoy the ride.
130
Of course the large supply of money causes another problem far greater than any possible problem like catastrophic climate change could cause. The massive supply of money we “enjoy” today is from massive amounts of debt. It’s growing larger by the day and it’s not going to stop until the whole financial system collapses on it’s own weight. It’s already one way too far to be avoided. Even Trump won’t be able to fix it either – it’s too big and there are too many powerful special interest groups who would not be happy if he did.
80
It is the CO2 horsesh*t which has to stop.
71
While the description of “flushing down the loo” is good, it doesn’t adequately direct our attention to the main event.
In all of this there is the higher purpose, and I don’t mean saving the planet.
The main purpose has always been to divert a small trickle of the flow to self enrichment.
The facts about the utility and economic reality of renewables,as currently structured, are that NO SANE OR RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT WOULD SANCTION THE USE OF RENEWABLES TO PROVIDE ELECTRICITY.
Our democratic process has been subverted and we should rightly be angry.
70
Peter there won’t be an economic collapse because the yuan will become king.
The billions wasted every year on renewables is unfortunate, but you may wish to compare it with armaments and see its all relative. Money is only a means of exchange and at the moment we need a little bit of inflation in the system. Infrastructure is the way ahead.
‘If it’s not real then only some countries are doomed ….’
No countries are doomed, sea level won’t rise and the world will make sure there is no mass starvation due to global cooling.
22
Don’t just stop at changing our currency to the Yuan because given the choice of prime ministers at the moment in Oz if I could vote for the Chinese president I bloody well would .
20
* chuckle *
Beijing doesn’t want to upset our democracy, they find it amusing, archaic and unworkable.
10
…no, not like the past ones since WW2. The Reserve Bank
w… bankers of the Western nations have finally recognised the dangers of land-price bubbles and are deliberately dampening lending on land to prevent such a bubble from forming. It worked to prevent crash last year, although it was close. Some of the F.I.R.E sector, like GE Money, were wobbly but didn’t collapse. All the Bankers at Davros patted each other on the back for that.But human ingenuity is boundless. Somebody will think of something. The Dutch had Tulips back in the sixteenth century, the English had the South Seas bubble during the nineteenth century (although that was land based: somebody else’s land somewhere else). The bit-coin scam has some possibilities to shape up as another one but that is sufficiently obscure to not make it. Yet. Watch that space.
00
It is very thoughtful of the Spanish bank to give shareholders a heads up
that they are incompetent . Spending customer and shareholders money in a pointless frivolous way
ensures that anyone with a brain should switch banks before the wheels come off .
A bank is going to halt climate change ? Really . Why not just try to be competent bankers instead ?
They are in second place for a reason and now we know why .
80
You might be mistaken.
Maybe there is a market in high interest car loans for four wheel drives fitted with solar panels and a wind turbine to generate electricity while driving??.
And environmentally friendly cruise missiles fitted with solar panels might also work to make the defense industry more sustainable?
60
Banks exist to take everyone’s money. In most western economies, they farm rent. Rent is a word whose meaning has been corrupted to hide its reality. It actually means “the annual increment [increase] in value” of a plot of land, but since the end of the nineteenth century it’s become what a lessee pays a lessor through (deliberate) misuse, for use of a plot of land.
Banks “farm” this source of money through mortgages. They create “credit” or non-money, to lend it on mortgages which the mortgagee converts into real money through paying it off with interest. The Reserve Banks of most countries require lenders to use security for these loans, and usually specify land. That’s right. It’s circular. Over the life of a mortgage, a bank literally receives back double the “value” except that what it gets back is real money, instead of the credit it lent. Bank wins, mortgagees lose.
Now imagine a country where only a very few people/families own land and it’s been owned by its owners for hundreds of years. Like Spain. There isn’t much of a “land market” nor consequently much of a “mortgage market” to earn pots and pots of money from. But people still save their wages and incomes, what little they have left after paying for accommodation, food, clothing, public transport, entertainment if they are lucky, and so on, in a bank. But there are lots and lots of people doing this, and not so many banks, so what can a bank do with all that money? There’s no land price bubble to lose it in so it has to get creative.
00
OT but worth mentioning that the North Korean leader will cease nuclear ambitions and wants to meet Trump , this is surely going to put a dent in the anti Trump cause .
70
When it comes to brinkmanship Donald is a professional and gets results, he carries a big stick.
Now the carrot, developing a large middle class from scratch.
40
Will they finance Adani?
30
Its a hot potato, even the Chinese banks won’t finance the Carmichael Mine.
30
climate leader Shell is at it again, with the help of Reuters…READ ALL:
8 Mar: Reuters: At energy summit, climate pits U.S. against Europe
by Ron Bousso; additional reporting by Ernest Scheyder in New York;
HOUSTONL The U.S. energy secretary blasted renewable fuels champions on Wednesday while the head of Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSa.L) urged the energy sector to focus on global efforts to cut carbon emissions, reflecting a yawning trans-Atlantic gap on climate issues.
Speaking at the CERAWeek conference in Houston, Shell CEO Ben van Beurden outlined an ambitious plan to reduce the Anglo-Dutch company’s carbon footprint and expand in renewables, and called on others to follow.
“The energy landscape is changing fast. So we must change, where change is what the world needs,” van Beurden said…
Shell and European peers including BP Plc (BP.L), France’s Total SA (TOTF.PA) and Norway’s Statoil (STL.OL) are becoming increasingly active in low-carbon energy and are vocal supporters of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Until recently, climate has been less prominent in strategy presentations from U.S. rivals Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) and Chevron Corp (CVX.N)…
Van Beurden gave an unusually strong-worded speech calling climate the biggest challenge facing the energy sector.
“There may not be total unity behind the Paris Agreement any longer, but there is no other issue with the potential to disrupt our industry on such a deep and fundamental level.” …
U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry struck a starkly different tone, blasting the 2015 agreement to limit global warming. Perry said it was “immoral” to say people should live without fossil fuels…
Few in Houston were as emphatic as van Beurden, who outlined how Shell is moving to meet its targets to halve carbon emissions by 2050…
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ceraweek-energy/at-energy-summit-climate-pits-u-s-against-europe-idUSKCN1GJ2YQ
well, that didn’t last long:
9 Mar: Reuters: Shell’s U.S. shale output plans prioritize oil over natgas
by Ron Bousso, Ernest Scheyder
HOUSTON: Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSa.L) is focused on increasing its U.S. shale operation’s oil production while slowing investment in lower-margin natural gas, an executive said on Thursday.
The Anglo-Dutch company aims to boost its overall shale production by 200,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d) to 500,000 boe/d between 2017 and 2020, mostly in the United States with some production in Argentina…
Shell, like Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) and Chevron Corp (CVX.N), aims to make shale production a driver of growth in the next decade. But today most of its output is natural gas, where profit margins are lower.
As a result, around 85 percent of Shell’s shale budget for at least the next two years will go toward new oil resources, particularly in the Permian oilfield of West Texas and Canada’s Duvernay Basin, Guidry said…
Shell has earmarked between $2 billion and $3 billion per year, roughly 10 percent of its capital expenditure, for shale until 2020…
Shell also is advancing shale production in Argentina’s Vaca Muerta basin and will make a decision on developing a production well later this year, Guidry said…
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ceraweek-energy-shell/shells-u-s-shale-output-plans-prioritize-oil-over-natgas-idUSKCN1GK334
8 Mar: Bloomberg: Shell Says Oil’s Not Going Anywhere
by Sharon Cho and Serene Cheong
There’ll be at least one home still welcoming fossil fuels in the face of a growing threat from cleaner resources, according to Royal Dutch Shell Plc.
Heavy industry relies on hydrocarbons to generate extremely high temperatures and chemical reactions, according to Mark Quartermain, vice president of crude oil trading and supply at the company. Many processes used in iron, steel, cement and plastics factories can’t be electrified at all, and even if they could be, cannot be done at a viable cost in the foreseeable future, he said at a conference in Singapore…
Oil continues to play a fundamental role in today’s world, and global demand will continue to rise before a slight decline in the late 2030s, when peak consumption may occur, he said. While Shell sees gas playing an important role as well, oil demand is predicted to grow in the next 20 years…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-08/shell-says-oil-s-here-to-stay-as-clean-power-seen-lacking-sizzle
20
Although it’s off topic a little, as Spain does have a number of CSP power plants (Concentrating Solar Power or Solar Thermal) there is this snippet of information here in pat’s comment: (my bolding here)
The same applies with the generation of electrical power, and that’s where all these renewable supporters fail so utterly to understand.
The difference between coal fired power and CSP is HEAT.
The critical part of the whole process of generating power is the weight of the rotor, and that’s the huge rotating electromagnets on the shaft inside the generator, the last step of the process.
To rotate that huge weight requires a huge turbine, which in turn requires a huge amount of pressurised steam, which requires a huge amount of steam output from the furnace, and that requires a huge amount of water to boil in the first place, and that requires a huge amount of heat ….. and that heat MUST be constant, and it MUST be at a very very high temperature, and did I emphasise very enough?
CSP focusses the Sun’s heat via mirrors to heat a compound, and that compound then heats the water to steam which drives the turbine which rotates that rotor inside the generator. The heat ‘made’ by the focussing of the SUN is nowhere near (not within a bull’s roar) that of what can be achieved by huge amounts of powdered coal injected with air into the furnace at a constant rate ….. at a constant rate, 24 hours a day.
Hence, with CSP, less heat, less steam, less pressurised steam, smaller turbine, smaller generator with a very much lighter rotor, all that can be turned over by the turbine driven by that steam, hence less power output, considerably less.
Then, with heat diversion for CSP. you have less heat available for the primary function, power during the day, and heat in the diverted heat block, again at a lower heat and cooling throughout the night, hence less steam on both counts hence smaller turbine, designed only to drive the correct weight of the rotor, hence CSP will only ever be ….. CONSIDERABLY smaller than coal fired power Units.
An example of this is to look no further than coal fired power itself.
Sub Critical and Critical – up to 660MW generators
Supercritical – 750MW to 1000MW (higher heat and higher pressure than Critical)
UltraSuerCritical – 1100MW to 1300MW (higher heat and higher pressure than SuperCritical)
Advanced USC – 1400MW to 1800MW (higher heat and higher pressure than UltraSuperCritical)
It’s all based on the generator design of what can be achieved by a set amount at a set temp and a set pressure of steam.
The first time I mentioned this, I got laughed at big time, and that was a little off putting, but after more years, what I originally said has proven to be correct.
Connect an
1800MW,1400MW,1000MW,750MW,660MW,500MW, 400MW generator up to a CSP plant and it will not even turn over ….. EVER.THAT is why large scale coal fired power has a very rosy future.
Tony.
121
“Spain loses its second international arbitration in the electric reform case”
https://www.energynews.es/en/spain-loses-its-second-international-arbitration/
And: “Investment Disputes Involving the Renewable Energy Industry Under the Energy Charter Treaty”
https://globalarbitrationreview.com/chapter/1142579/investment-disputes-involving-the-renewable-energy-industry-under-the-energy-charter-treaty
Those living in the geographical region called ‘Spain’ could still turn this around…Concentrated Solar (CS) could be used to supply the world with tortilla corn chips using the energy from CS and be a world leading region for this product. Who knows…hmmm (pondering)
50
With the Sun going into it’s end-of-cycle minimum (coming to the end of SSCycle 24). Cosmic Rays are increasing sufficiently rapidly and sufficiently intensely to start raising alarms in some places. It’s going to be interesting over the next decade, to see just how much extra cloud cover will be created, or not, as the case may be. Some researchers (see SkepticalScience.com) claim there is nothing to see, others (see Svensmark, Svensmark, Veizer and Shaviv) the reverse.
There was a paper some years ago which attributed the warming in Spain to lessening cloud cover over the central plains. That was during the decades when Cosmic Rays were much lower than at present. Spain appears to have taken advantage of that lower cloud cover to build these solar plants.
But all good things come to an end. The local star, our big generator, our friendly sun, is allegedly going into a Grand Minimum of the Maunder variety and Disasterologists are already noting the increase in Cosmic Rays. They’re already equating that to future increases in cancers. Ha. We live on a radioactive planet but that doesn’t stop them. The Cosmic Rays increase and decrease with the eleven year Schwabe Cycle, which hasn’t necessarily translated into (documented) increases in cloud cover yet, but it might. So it’s going to be interesting to see what performance these plants make or don’t make over the next few years and decades. 🙂
I haven’t sold my coal shares, yet, and won’t.
May we live in interesting times … they sure are! 🙂
00
more climate action from Shell:
9 Mar: 7News: Hail shale, but deepwater oil fights back
by Ron Bousso, AAP
Penguins, Royal Dutch Shell’s latest oil and gas development in a remote corner of the British North Sea, epitomises the new doctrine for deepwater projects – keep it cheap and simple.
Shunned during the oil price crash of 2014-2016, deepwater projects are being embraced again, a challenge to the surge in onshore US shale output.
Due for completion in 2021 at a cost of around $US1 billion, Penguins will cost a fraction of the average of giant developments earlier this decade, producing a modest 45,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day…
Analysts at Bernstein expect around 40 new offshore projects to be approved in 2018, compared with 29 last year and 14 in 2016, when project numbers fell to the lowest since at least 1990.
Companies including Exxon, Shell and BP have set a rigid cost ceiling for new projects, requiring them to be profitable with oil at $US40 a barrel in order to withstand an uncertain outlook clouded by the rise of electric vehicles…
BP is expected to approve a number of projects this year, he added, including in Senegal, Mauritania, Oman and Azerbaijan…
Some fields are so vast that they require massive investment, while remaining profitable at low oil prices.
Among the largest projects expected to be approved this year are Petrobras’s Libra II in Brazil, at an expected cost of $US10 billion, Shell’s Bonga Southwest in Nigeria at $US12.2 billion and Exxon’s Mamba liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Mozambique at $US30 billion, according to analysts at Jefferies.
For all the buzz around shale production, it accounts for around 7 per cent of the world’s crude supply of around 98 million barrels per day while offshore production accounts for over one quarter…
Exxon, the world’s top publicly traded oil company, last year gave the go-ahead for the development of the Liza field in Guyana. The project is expected to generate double-digit returns with oil at $US40, the company said.
Oil majors have made a number of major discoveries in recent months – Exxon in Guyana, BP in the North Sea, Shell in the Gulf of Mexico, Eni and Total offshore Cyprus – and their development will hinge on keeping costs low.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/39454245/hail-shale-but-deepwater-oil-fights-back/
8 Mar: Sky News: Shell and Blackstone join forces to fuel $10bn BHP shale bid
Shell and Blackstone are working together on a joint bid for BHP’s onshore US shale assets, Sky News can reveal.
By Mark Kleinman
Shell, the FTSE 100 oil behemoth, is plotting a $10bn (£7.3bn) joint takeover bid for the American shale division of BHP, the world’s biggest miner.
Sky News has learnt that Shell and Blackstone, the private equity firm, have agreed to work together on an offer for the assets, which were put up for sale last summer by BHP amid pressure from an ***activist investor.
A joint offer from Shell and Blackstone would be only one of several credible proposals that BHP is expecting to receive for the US shale operations, according to banking sources.
If they were to succeed with a bid, it would be the largest takeover in which Shell has been involved since its £35bn purchase of BG Group (oil and gas) in early 2016.
The shale auction, which includes a number of fields in the prized Permian Basin, is expected to lead to a deal later this year…
For Shell, a takeover of the BHP business would accelerate its plans for shale to become a material cash engine by the mid-to-late 2020s…
https://news.sky.com/story/shell-and-blackstone-join-forces-to-fuel-10bn-bhp-shale-bid-11281414
9 Mar: Reuters: Saudi Aramco signs preliminary gas deal with Shell
by Dmitry Zhdannikov and Rania El Gamal
LONDON/DUBAI – State oil giant Saudi Aramco signed a preliminary deal to pursue international gas opportunities with Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) on Thursday as part of top crude exporter Saudi Arabia’s diversification drive before the listing of Aramco.
The memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed in London between the two companies was during the official visit of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to Britain, and would include gas upstream and liquefaction projects…
“It is a discussion that began some time ago and now we have signed a memorandum to work on gas projects from upstream to downstream across the world and in Saudi Arabia. Concrete projects would be announced in due course,” Shell Chief Executive Ben van Beurden told Reuters after the signing ceremony…
Aramco is gearing up for a share listing later this year, aiming to get a valuation of up to $2 trillion in what could be the world’s biggest initial public offering (IPO)…
Expanding its gas portfolio inside the kingdom as well as abroad could help increase Aramco’s valuation as it generates more revenue from exports than selling oil at lower domestic prices – Saudi Arabia is the world’s fifth-biggest oil consumer despite being only the 20th-biggest economy…
Diversifying gas assets abroad would help Aramco achieve a better valuation and is attractive for investors, industry sources has said…
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-aramco-shell-gas/saudi-aramco-signs-preliminary-gas-deal-with-shell-idUSKCN1GK257
20
These guys have not been reading Elon’s press releases. All this money into oil production is going to be stranded just like the recent investments in coal.
30
You may be interested in the Australian Debt Clock.
http://www.australiandebtclock.com.au/
Enjoy watching as total government debt goes up by about $2400 per second.
50
Don’t worry about debt, we are all in the same boat, productive use of borrowed monies is a good thing.
On the other hand, if we have no enemy why waste money on defence?
‘The defence budget is slated to grow to two percent of GDP by 2020-21. … Australia’s defense spending is expected to increase by over 80 percent — from A$32.4 billion in fiscal year 2016-17 to A$58.7 billion in 2025-26 — over the next decade.’ wiki
20
After a cruise where people wanted to know if Climate Change was real, I could suggest that we do not let the promoters control the language by truncation
Carbon Dioxide, a clear, tiny and essential and invisible gas for all life on earth is not Carbon, a dirty black sooty substance. Engines do not output carbon. No one much sells or produces carbon, the purest form of an element which gives us all our metals. Greens can of course live without metals, metal bicycles, metal aircraft, metal buildings and reinforced concrete.
Man Made Climate Change is not Climate Change. Climates Change. So what?
Man Made Climate Change by Carbon Dioxide denier. Denier is short for Holocaust Denier, a denial of truth. Denial of Man Made Climate Change by CO2 is totally justified simply because it is blatantly untrue.
It was never true. There is no evidence for Man Made Climate Change by Carbon Dioxide. There never was.
80
Of course people use carbon, but it is an unusual product. Solid carbon is used for electrodes when creating alumin(i)um. (i)=English spelling. Coke from coal was the invention which allowed the production of high quality steel and saved the forests of Europe which were stripped 200 years ago. Europe would be a wasteland without coal. The Greens have no knowledge of chemistry, a point made explicitly by Dr. Patrick Moore in his book Confessions of a Greenpeace dropout.
90
Also used for carbon arc gouging of metal either in preparation for welding or dismantling etc ,very noisy because of the compressed air used to blow away the molten metal .
40
Yes, the lance. Famous and dramatic.
40
I have one in the shed but haven’t used it in years although the rods make great pencils .
41
Here’s how to make your own thermic lance.
https://youtu.be/EA-VCaBUsCA
Thermic lance in action.
https://youtu.be/JI5whCBV0bk
00
further detail –
also says BBVA was part of a 17-bank consortium that financed the Dakota Access pipeline, but they promise to do “enhanced due diligence” in future when indigenous groups are affected. can’t copy, so read all if you wish:
1 Mar: Financial Times: BBVA to pedge $100 bn of finance into green energy projects
by Martin Arnold
However, Tony Ballabriga, BBVA’s global head of responsible business, said the bank would exempt any countries that rely on imports for more than 70 per cent of their energy – allowing it to keep funding coal projects in Turkey, where it has a sizeable presence…
Mr. Ballabriga said more than half of the banks Euro 100 billion target for green and sustainable finance by 2025 would come from green loans, a nascent but fast-growing form of lending that offers companies lower interest rates if they hit carbon-reduction targets…
https://www.ft.com/content/0fe92a82-1ca4-11e8-956a-43db76e69936
FT has 100bn dollars in headline, but the Euro 100 billion is in the text.
00
unattributed. ONLY MENTION OF COAL IS ABOUT NEOEN’S BATTERY SAVING SA WHEN COAL FAILED!
8 Mar: The Economist: The power and the furore
A state election stirs a row about renewable energy in Australia
Will wind and solar buoy the economy of South Australia, or sink it?
With just 7% of Australia’s population, South Australia has become a testing ground for a political argument about how hard the government should push to replace fossil fuels with cleaner energy. The projects at Jamestown and Whyalla loom large in the state election on March 17th. The rest of Australia, too, is paying more attention than it normally would. The last coal-fired power station in South Australia closed two years ago. While the bigger eastern states still rely on coal for most of their electricity, South Australia now gets almost half of its power from wind and solar, the highest proportion in the country. (The rest comes mainly from gas.)…
South Australia has long been connected to a grid encompassing four other states in eastern Australia with 40,000km of transmission lines. But in 2016 a freak storm disconnected it, leading to a statewide blackout. A smaller outage followed five months later. To Mr Weatherill, the drama meant the national electricity market was “failing”. He launched a plan a year ago for South Australia to “take charge” of its own energy with A$550m ($430m) of public money, by building a gas-fired plant and financing green projects. Private investors are keen. Solar Reserve, a Californian company, will start work on a solar thermal power plant at Port Augusta, near Whyalla, this year. Tesla will build a “virtual power plant” by fitting 50,000 homes with solar panels and batteries.
Neoen now owns and runs the giant battery next to its 99 wind turbines on the edge of the Flinders Ranges, one of Australia’s windiest places. The device started operating in December, in the middle of a hot summer, when demand for air-conditioning is high. Since then, says Franck Woitiez of Neoen, it has kicked in several dozen times in response to ***“unexpected failures” at coal-fired plants as far away as Queensland, in north-east Australia. The Australian Energy Market Operator, which oversees the national system, seems to approve of South Australia’s initiatives. Audrey Zibelman, its head, says the battery is “faster than traditional generators” and dependable: “That’s important to us.”…
This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “The power and the furore”
https://www.economist.com/news/asia/21738424-will-wind-and-solar-buoy-economy-south-australia-or-sink-it-state-election-stirs-row
10
the Economist article is deceptive and, if I were Josh Frydenberg, I would demand a right a reply:
another excerpt:
Josh Frydenberg, the federal energy minister, likens Mr Weatherill to a “problem gambler chasing his losses”. He says too much renewable power will lead to blackouts and push up power prices. Instead, his latest energy plan calls for reliable electricity from any source, although the details remain unclear. Critics see this scepticism as a bid to guarantee a future for coal, a big industry in Australia…
8 Mar: RenewEconomy: Pas-de-deux: Two big coal units trip at same time in Victoria
By Giles Parkinson
Earlier Thursday morning, two of the country’s biggest coal units – 530MW blocks at the Loy Yang A (number two) and the Loy Yang B (number 1) brown coal generators – tripped at the same time, robbing the grid of 1,065MW of capacity in an instant.
There is no indication yet of what caused the outage – although it seems that the Loy Yang B unit tripped, causing power surge which took out the number two unit at Loy Yang A. There is talk that the Loy Yang B unit will be out for a month, so it is relatively serious…
At least they didn’t fail in the midst of a heatwave. As it turned out, demand was low (but growing as the population slowly awakened and switched stuff on).
However, the outage did cause prices to double in Victoria as traders profited from the sudden scarcity, with the same impact passed on to South Australia’s electricity market, and to a lesser extent in NSW.
These are the 43rd and 44th trip of a major coal-fired unit in the Australian grid since the start of summer, according to The Australia’s Institute Coal and Gas Watch. Seven have occurred in March alone.
And they were the 12th and 13th suffered since Christmas by big brown coal generators, making a mockery of the federal government’s focus on coal-fired generation as a guarantor of “reliability”.
Wind and solar are criticised by the country’s energy minister Josh Frydenberg as “intermittent” – but at least with the case of wind and solar their variability is predictable. The same cannot be said of the coal fleet, or even some gas units when the going gets really hot.
And for those with a vested interest in the future (vested, because everyone should have one – a future, that is), this is how the Tesla big battery, also known as the Hornsdale Power Reserve, responded.
It is not paid to respond to faults such as these, mostly because a “fast frequency response” market in Australia, which could take advantage of such batteries, does not yet exist.
But the Tesla big battery does hop in when the frequency dips below 49.8 Hertz (the point that triggers a “contingency” response), as it did on Thursday, injecting a relatively modest 21MW into what is known as the FCAS market to help arrest the fall in frequency.
That’s the red bit (Tesla discharging) at the same time as the black spike (wholesale prices) to the left of centre in the graph above, signalling when the units tripped.
Update: An AGL spokesman said in a later statement: “Unit 2 at Loy Yang A power station tripped and was offline this morning following a fault at Loy Yang B power station which caused a power spike. The unit has returned to service.”
http://reneweconomy.com.au/pas-de-deux-two-big-coal-units-trip-at-same-time-in-victoria-36587/
from the comments:
Robert Garnett: The fault that occurred with Loy Yang B was not the power station it was the high voltage transmission equipment that connects it to the grid. The generating unit in question has operated for about 210,000 hours since commissioning in 1993 with around 96% availability. The average car engine is lucky to do 3000 hours before it is a total write off. Work it out. Two hundred thousand kilometers at an average speed of 60 k. The Loy Yang B units have some of the finest boilers and turbines in the world and will run for at least another 150,000 hours. They will continue to do this at their design efficiencies.
If that makes these stations unreliable then please explain what technologies do better. Solar panels degrade over times and most manufacturers will only give you 20 to 25 years of life. The capacitors in the invertors that solar panels use will be lucky if they last fifteen years. Wind turbines are a particularly cheap and nasty piece of engineering and will be lucky to last ten years, with probably five percent of them catching fire and being totally destroyed.
Find a lithium ion battery that will last as long as Loy Yang B at 100% capacity and with the load factor of Loy Yang B and I will donate $100 to the Greens party. One example only as I’m only a poor engineer.
The issue with coal is not reliability or capacity factor, it is the carbon dioxide it produces. That’s the argument that matters. The reliability thing is bullshit. It simply isn’t true.
If you don’t believe me do some of your own research on the internet. There is heaps of stuff on coal plant reliability. Back in the day Neuarath power station in Germany won the Guinness book of records award for the highest coal plant capacity factor at 93% LYB does 96%
How long does your wanky I-Phone last and what landfill site does it end up in?
20
I wouldn’t get overexcited. No doubt the money is over ten or twenty years and requires subsidies and government guarantees so it’s not at risk. Just another large corporate taking advantage of corporatism.
The sad thing is all these young people who think they are supporting one thing are actually supporting the opposite.
70
It is the great irony of our time.
40
OT but is CAGW about to be tested in court in the Northern Territory?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-09/single-largest-land-clearing-approval-challenged-greenhouse-gas/9533294
20
robert rosicka –
and in a different courte, behind paywall, but some excerpts found:
Wind farm for Mt Lofty Ranges to go ahead despite local opposition
The Advertiser-3 hours ago
The Tilt Renewables Australia wind farm, adjacent to the more than century-old McLachlan family sheep and cattle station near Mt Pleasant, was approved by Mid Murray Council in late 2015. But locals appealed to the Environment, Resources and Development Court, arguing the turbines were an eyesore, too noisy, could make them ill and would damage flora, fauna as well as local wildlife. In a judgment published yesterday, senior ERD judge Susanne Cole, together with commissioners Jennifer Nolan and Alan Rumsby, granted development approval, with a series of conditions, despite “substantial” opposition. In a 60-page ruling dismissing the appeals, they found the 103, 165m high turbines – dotted over an 11550 ha area that will be 30km long – met local development rules. They rejected numerous noise, health, access and aesthetic fears. The plan originally had 114 turbines..
“We acknowledge that there is significant, strong objection within the local community to the changes to the landscape, which will result from the addition of (wind turbines), wires, poles and other infrastructure,” they wrote….
summary at the webpage:
Adelaide Advertiser: Locals lose $700m wind farm battle
A SPRAWLING multimillion-dollar wind farm project can be built despite “substantial” local opposition including from the AFL’s boss, the state’s development court has ruled.
AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan was among four groups that launched legal action against the $700 million project, 50km east …
30
Judges should be required to live near the bird choppers for a year before they’re competent in making a decision like this .
20
Agreed. My first thought was that if noise and health nuisances arise from these wind turbines/bird mincers then those judges should be sued for damages.
10
as always, consumed by a hatred of coal…but only because their interests lie elsewhere. worth reading all. comments are virtually all anti-coal:
9 Mar: RenewEconomy: Giles Parkinson: Snowy insists 2.0 good for wind and solar, not so good for coal
Snowy Hydro has moved to dispel some of the principal concerns around its ambitious Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project, arguing that it will likely accelerate the uptake of wind and solar, and will not underpin the future of coal – despite an independent experts report suggesting otherwise.
In a briefing in Sydney this week, senior executives from Snowy 2.0 played down the suggestion made in the independent report from Marsden Jacob that Snowy 2.0 would result in more coal being burned because the presence of the 2GW and 175 hours of pumped hydro storage project.
The Marsden Jacob report asserted that Snowy 2.0 would “improve the economics of coal-fired generation” and that as a result emissions will likely rise, and coal-fired power plants will be used more.
“That’s not what we want to see,” says Gordon Wymer, the company’s former CFO who has just shifted to a new role as Head of Commercial, that includes strategy and carriage of the Snowy 2.0 project…
But Wymer says Snowy Hydro has no interest in supporting coal generators and instead suggests Snowy 2.o would likely bring in an extra 400-800MW of large-scale wind and solar projects that would otherwise not be built – because of its need for cheap power to pump water uphill.
He says wind and solar provide the best opportunities to do that – such as in early morning (3am) for wind, and the midday hours for solar.
Snowy Hydro has begun discussions to write contracts to provide a “floor price” for wind and solar projects, giving them enough certainty to lock in finance and allowing them to reap any upside in the wholesale markets, as well as reducing Snowy’s dependence on coal contracts.
Snowy Hydro finds itself in an interesting position. It sees Snowy 2.0 as critical for its own future, and crucial for the inevitable energy transition to a grid dominated by wind and solar, storage and distributed generation.
It has seized the political moment and won the support of prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, for whom the Snowy 2.0 project could be his signature initiative, or even his legacy project, given his inability to advance credible policies elsewhere…
But political patronage – and now 100 per cent ownership – carries risks, because the $6 billion (and counting) project proposal also becomes a political tool as well as a government asset…READ ALL
http://reneweconomy.com.au/snowy-insists-2-0-good-wind-solar-not-good-coal-35985/
10
read all:
9 Mar: Nature: MIT launches multimillion-dollar collaboration to develop fusion energy
With corporate participation, researchers seek to build a pilot fusion energy plant within 15 years.
by Jeff Tollefson
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge will work with a private firm to develop technology for producing energy from nuclear fusion within the next 15 years. If successful, the multimillion-dollar effort could help unlock a virtually limitless source of pollution-free energy.
The team’s approach — which has attracted US$50 million thus far — is based on a generation of high-temperature superconductors that has become commercially available in the last several years, researchers from MIT and its partner, Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) in Cambridge, said on 8 March.
The more-powerful superconductors will allow the team to strengthen the magnetic field that contains the hot plasma fuel used in traditional tokamak reactors. That could enable a reactor that is smaller, cheaper and easier to build than previous designs, including the troubled international ITER project under development in southern France.
“It’s about scale, and it’s about speed,” says Robert Mumgaard, chief executive officer at CFS. The company — a private venture spun off from MIT — has attracted US$50 million from Italian energy giant ENI, and plans to invest $30 million of that sum in research and development at MIT over the next three years. Mumgaard says the collaboration between academics and industrialists should help the team to drive fusion technology out of the lab and into the marketplace…
For their part, MIT researchers hope their work will generate more government interest in fusion research. “If we can change that narrative, we can potentially reinvigorate the rest of the program,” Greenwald says.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02966-3
10
the bullying is ramping up:
9 Mar: Guardian: Rio Tinto won’t allow UK investors to vote on Mineral Council issue
Decision a blow to those wanting Rio to stop funding industry association memberships
by Michael Slezak
A move urging Rio Tinto to rethink its funding of the fossil fuel lobby has suffered a setback – the Anglo-Australian mining company has refused to present a shareholder motion on the issue to its annual general meeting in the UK.
Last week, institutional investors who manage a combined $84bn in funds – and hold about $100m of Rio Tinto shares – filed a motion to the Australian arm of Rio Tinto, calling for a review of the company’s funding of industry association memberships.
They said some of those groups lobbied for outcomes that hindered sensible climate and energy policy, and therefore harmed the financial position of the company.
The move followed a similar motion filed at BHP, which won a significant minority of votes and resulted in the company announcing it would quit the World Coal Association and reconsider its membership of the Minerals Council of Australia…READ ON
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/mar/09/rio-tinto-wont-allow-uk-investors-to-vote-on-mineral-council-issue
8 Mar: ClimateChangeNews: Megan Darby: Brazil fights emissions cap for shipping, citing cost concerns
Ahead of a key meeting at the International Maritime Organisation in April, Brazil is leading objections to setting tough climate targets for the sector
Brazil is seeking to water down prospective climate targets for the shipping sector, documents seen by Climate Home News show.
A joint submission to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) from Brazil, India, Argentina and Saudi Arabia scratches out large parts of a draft global agreement due to be finalised next month.
The group deleted sections proposing to cap greenhouse gas emissions from shipping at 2008 levels and reduce them “significantly” by 2050, arguing only relative measures of carbon intensity should be used. An overarching vision to achieve a zero carbon sector by 2075 was replaced with the vaguer “no later than in the second half of this century”.
It added that no policy measures “are expected to be implemented” before 2023, ignoring suggestions for action that could be taken sooner, such as speed restrictions…
Paulo Chiarelli, director of climate change at Brazil’s foreign ministry, told Climate Home News this was driven by concerns the cost of moving to a low carbon shipping sector would hit developing countries hardest.
The strategy should “give a signal to the private sector that the transition is inevitable,” he said. But “the trade in food and food security should not be threatened in any way by whatever measures the IMO agrees.”…
Sources said that during informal meetings, delegates at the IMO have explored ways to address Brazil’s concerns while setting a vision compatible with the goals of the Paris climate agreement. That could mean offering targeted exemptions, rebates or assurances on costs…
Internationally, a coalition of European and Pacific island countries is leading the charge for higher ambition.
The Marshall Islands – a small island state with the world’s second largest flag registry – Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu have been joined by New Zealand in proposing the most aggressive timeline for slashing emissions: full decarbonisation by 2050…
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/03/08/brazil-fights-emissions-cap-shipping-citing-cost-concerns/
10
A government driven age of opportunity? When was that ever successful?
30
“Giant Spanish Bank spends €100 b on Earth’s weather, cos they are nice people”
My headline of the year so far. Sums up 21st century popular thinking to a T.
00