The Morrison government has released a new roadmap for low emissions technology. The nicest thing that can be said is that it’s better than the Turnbull plan. It gives no joy to the Renewables multinational octopus, it steers a Qango in a less damaging direction, but still isn’t brave enough to just say “No” to the low-carbon bullies.
$18 billion for technologies we don’t need
The Coalition plan is an investment in five low emission technologies that private investors have mostly already looked at and don’t like:
- Hydrogen made with renewable energy,
- Batteries,
- Low-emission steel and aluminium,
- Carbon capture and storage, and
- Adding carbon to soil.
Since emissions don’t change the weather in a measurable way, no one in the world “needs” low emission steel or aluminum. It doesn’t solve any problem, apart from giving guilt-free passes to Ecoworriers to help them feel better about buying a new car. We-the-people are investing in a fashion empire dedicated to a niche market, so they can brag at dinner parties.
Of the five technologies, the only useful outcome is richer soil. Batteries are handy, but if we burnt coal for power we get all the storage and stability we need and at half the price. The renewables industry needs batteries. The Australian people need cheap electricity.
The roadmap allows Ministers to say they are reducing carbon faster than the opposition. It’s a bland defensive chess move for a group of people who feel constantly harangued to reduce the sacred carbon. Effectively this $18 billion dollars buys government ministers some comfortable answers to hold off the hostile activist-press. That’s expensive insurance.
UPDATE: To expand on this: This $18b buys a cone of protection from media hate.
The voters have never voted for climate action. Surely our PM knows that by now. What no PM wants is to be targeted by the green machine like Tony Abbott was. Winning 90 seats in a landslide isn’t attractive to any pollie if they think the Green Blob will force them out of power in two years.
What do we call this money? Extortion?
As a fuel, hydrogen has some big shortcomings
As far as hydrogen goes, as David Archibald said Great civilizations are built on Coal Gas and Nukes, not Hydrogen:
Hydrogen has low energy density, so a big, high-pressure tank of the stuff doesn’t take you far. It has an explosive range in air of 18% to 60%. It causes embrittlement of steel. There is a plot at the moment to add hydrogen to the natural gas distribution system — which then might start leaking like a sieve. It has a colourless flame, so leaks that have caught fire can’t be seen. In the days before infrared cameras, workers at a rocket fuel factory in Texas used to detect hydrogen leaks by walking with a straw broom in front of them. When the broom caught fire they had found the leak.
Chasing the Carbon Capture and Storage rainbow
Despite relentless failure and ominous laws of physics, the government is hoping to use Carbon Capture and Storage to stuff a valuable fertilizer in a hole in the ground. If they succeed it will be a net loss to the nation.
As I’ve said:
With CCS, the hard part is deciding which obstacle is the most stupidly unachievable. One ton of solid coal generates nearly three tons of CO2 in a puffy, fluffy, expanded gas form. It doesn’t take a genius to know it won’t fit back into the same hole. And even if you get it down there, it may not stay there. The gas has to be compressed, or refrigerated (or both). Underground holes are hot. Not surprisingly, this takes a lot of energy, so that to build a coal plant with the capability to “store CO2″ we must spend 60% more dollars, and then throw away 40% of the electricity as well.
We already know how this experiment turns out. The EU has tried CCS and it blew £520 million on carbon capture project that stored no carbon. The UK government blew £168m on Carbon Capture Projects that were cancelled. The US likewise has tossed millions and achieved nothing.
Wind and solar are so competitive “they don’t need subsidies anymore”.
There are minor wins: The roadmap holds the renewables industry to their own propaganda. It’s “mature” now and doesn’t need subsidies. So Minister Angus Taylor has redirected the ARENA green machine. This is the renewables QANGO set up by Julia Gillard with about $3 billion to help, cheerlead and market for the Renewables Industry. Now it will still waste money but not on wind and solar. It could have been axed.
Missed opportunities — throwing away great electoral advantages
The Liberal party (the conservatives in Australia) are still playing the role of a mini-Labor-Green Party. There’s still the slavish acceptance of the fantasy that human carbon dioxide emissions control the weather in a meaningful way, or that even if they had some effect, it was worth spending ten cents to achieve an unmeasurable cooling effect in one hundred years, even though the models all fail, warming will save lives, CO2 feeds plants, and China and India are doing nothing.
The Liberals can’t poke fun at the Labor party for grandiose fantasies to stop storms when they are positioning themselves as just being better at the same grandiose fantasies.
The new roadmap echoes the Tony Abbott strategy of finding ways to reduce carbon emissions without feeding the crocodile. Abbott put in an auction system, and let the market find the cheapest solution (at $14/ton), which Morrison keeps, but Morrison also tries to pick some winners. The plan will, no doubt, be able to reduce carbon emissions at a lower cost than Labor’s $5,310 per ton carbon tax. It will also be “more effective” than the gold-plated windmills and solar panels plan, which are spectacularly useless at cutting carbon emissions. But none of the Greens care about that anyway. Morrison will still be called a climate denier by people who use namecalling to set public policy, even though the Coalition will achieve more useless carbon reduction than the Labor-Green party.
It’s a roadmap for expensive electricity
If I’m not mistaken, the government is aiming for wholesale electricity that only costs 230% more than that sold by the 53 year old Hazelwood Coal Plant in it’s last month of operation in 2017. The new “stretch goal” (whatever that means) for batteries, is apparently “consistent with an average wholesale electricity price under $70/MWh”.
The average price for most of the last 20 years was $30/MWh. Now, apparently, it’s going to cost a fortune more just to get prices down to twice what we used to pay.
The new normal in electricity prices is far higher
The usual wholesale electricity price was around $30MWh from 1999 – 2015 | Source: AER
The small upside
Malcolm Turnbull doesn’t like it. This is the closest thing to a ringing endorsement of the Technology Roadmap that I’ve seen:
Malcolm Turnbull says Government’s energy plans are ‘crazy’ and ‘a fantasy’
Mr Turnbull said Mr Morrison’s reluctance to commit to the 2050 target was at odds with the Paris agreement, which aims for climate neutrality.
“The idea that you crash the economy by cutting your emissions is just again, that’s ideology taking the place of what should be sound environmental and economic policy,” he said.
“There is a reason just about every other developed country in the world apart from [Donald] Trump’s America is taking a very different approach.”
The ABC let Turnbull take a free swipe at Donald Trump and imply that Australia is somehow backwards in carbon reduction. They didn’t mention that Australians are the renewables superstars who have installed more renewables per capita than anywhere in the world, and pay the highest prices too.
The things they don’t mention matter so much more than the things they do.
REFERENCE
Technology Investment Roadmap: First Low Emissions Technology Statement 2020, Australian Government, Department of Industry.
AEMO Quarterly Report, 2019, Q4.
If this was Canada, I’d say they must have gotten into some real good dope…
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http://www.cleanenergyregulator.gov.au/DocumentAssets/Documents/QCMR June Quarter 2020.pdf
Lots of MONEY in being DOPEY. It would have taken thousands of “do nothing worthwhile” regulators to make up this report. Does anyone believe they are going to help turn this guv boondoggle OFF. They will want more and more, happy to stay there as long as possible, till all capital is destroyed.
The only way to stop this mess is to get out of the Paris Agreement.
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Or as Tony Abbott has advised, just ignore Paris Agreement like most other nations are doing.
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Premier Xi told the UN that China will have zero emissions by 2060, after it peaks in 2030. Morrison should lock into that timetable, to be in tune with our biggest trading partner.
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Better yet, go for 2059. We could rename our country, BGHMZ. A new type of HAL versus IBM.
Or is it all about nothing before “A” means we are all doomed.
We need a committee to look into the regulations required to ascertain what comes before “A” and what is “world’s best practice” after consulting all stakeholders.
If nothing comes before “A” we are at risk of having a non-name and thereby no “seat at the table” at the UN.
This is a national crisis.
Shut down something. Anything.
Pay us more money. More….. for less. We need more for less, not less of more.
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Any govt that throws wasteful money at stupid projects in a time of (self inflicted) national crisis due to a lame virus, would appear to be no better than marxists.
At least marxists are open about wanting to destroy the middle class….
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Its R&D monies, governments do that all the time, they are developing a better country.
If you are referring to China as Marxists then you are wrong, they have a burgeoning middle class.
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Canada, you may recall, conceived the Hydrogen Highway System and was going set up hydrogen fueling stations and all the infrastructure that entails. Mind you there was no market for this solution. Creating hydrogen from hydrogen ash is very expensive and very inefficient.
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And despite the world’s largest reserves of uranium, not a single mention or reference to development of nuclear power: zero emissions, base load capable, and the safest form of power generation by far. And as identified in several studies, now cheaper than weather dependent non-effective alternatives.
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Yes we live in a country mostly made up of people who keep switching preferences between the two major parties expecting a vastly different result on climate change policy in spite of the fact there’s a bipartisan push to reducing our emissions significantly. Either that or the vast majority actually are in favour of the emissions reduction nonsense. Then to shun the nuclear option in the face of all that only makes sense if one understands that too many voters are clueless. We get the governments we elect and deserve.
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Too many voters are clueless because they get their information solely from the mainstream media:
Nuclear – dangerous and scary
coal – dirty, polluting, unreliable and yucky
renewables – safe, clean, cheap, faster (?) and betterer
The Great Barrier Reef – mostly destroyed by human industry and global warming,
but if you give us X billions we can still save it for you
The Murray-Darling Basin – farmers bad, mangroves good
Koalas good – clearing ground debris to save them during bushfires – bad
and lastly,
Donald Trump – Satan incarnate
All thanks to the ABC, Channels 7, 9, and 10, the Age and SMH, and unfortunately , sometimes, the Oz.
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Based on my research over the last 15 years, from thier own writings it appears the Elite have basically indicated they wanted to do the following:
– reduce world population by 95%, so the remnant function as slaves to the Elite
– conserve fossil fuels so they can have them to themselves
– stop the punters from using fossil fuels through scare campaigns ( see point above )
– crash the world economy and rebuild it in a very nasty image of the pagan occult Elite
– create an oppresiive world govt ( UN )
– have the rest of humanity as play things
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When talking about voters remember that despite non stop biased media news on TV — over half of them didn’t vote for the Party Of HandOuts in The Climate Change Election.
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Vote one nation
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A Federal Government Committee have been reviewing the Howard Coalition Government’s review or inquiry into nuclear energy that recommended many small nuclear generators spread around the countryside. The new review commenced during 2019 however the ban on nuclear remains a roadblock against progress.
Recently in the NSW Parliament a majority of votes rejected a proposal to permit the mining of Uranium which again highlights the political negativity.
I therefore assume that nuclear was left out of the energy roadmap or perhaps it was not but left open for future consideration?
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An outstanding post.
So much pertinent detail, but my pick is the highlighting of the reasoning behind the government’s new “Roadmap”:
to buy votes from the taxpayers.
The taxpayers are blissfully unaware that it’s been done with a truck load of their own money
Modern politics is certainly a Guilt Free Environment.
KK
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Politics means copying the most stupid option and pretending it is the best.
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Perhaps I should rephrase? What I thought was key…
This $18b buys a cone of protection from media hate. The voters have never voted for climate action. Surely our PM knows that by now. What no PM wants is to be targeted by the green machine like Tony Abbott was. Winning 90 seats in a landslide isn’t attractive to any pollie if they think the Green Blob will force them out of power in two years.
What do we call this money? Extortion?
Thanks KK. I will add this to the post.
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I was thinking the same thing….
The definition of appeasement is feeding the crocodile in the hope it will eat you last.
The gummint just needs to grow a backbone and stop worrying about what people think…..sometimes you have to be tactical and smart, most time you just stare down bullies.
Either that or its all just show and the current gummint is a blue wrapper around a red core….I hope not….
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We are witnessing daily the ongoing diminuendo last hurrah of the green blob in Trump’s America; surely it’s time to start outright ignoring them here.
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We shouldn’t take it too seriously, its only a redirection of research and development monies. Most of it won’t be spent because, as Donald so eloquently suggested, ‘its going to get cool’.
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We hope that Scomo is really smarter than he appears and that that scenario will be realised.
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The masses have been brainwashed, the PM is playing a long game and cannot reveal his hand just yet.
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I hadn’t realized el gordo translates to Pangloss; from whence arises this irrepressible optimism?
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The world has been spending more propping up coal fired power, not less according to a report last year. Countries of the G20 are giving the coal industry three times as much money in subsidies as they did years ago, according to a a report by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). The sum spent on coal-fired power increased from $17 billion to $47 billion between 2013 and 2017. Yet we here are going the opposite direction by supporting renewables while letting our coal fired power stations close down one by one.
Yes, the push to solar and wind power to reduce our emissions are touted as being “free” but of course in reality it is at a much higher price than coal or nuclear. The majority of people don’t even know what they talking about. Is it any wonder we end up at the same place after each election? Stupid is as stupid does.
https://qz.com/1652555/g20-countries-spent-47-billion-propping-up-coal-power-plants/
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PeterS,
Did you even bother to read the report? All three categories that they considered conveniently blur the definition of “subsidies”:
“Fiscal support” includes tax breaks. By definition, a tax break is not a subsidy, as taxes can only be paid from profitable industries.
“Public finance” includes loans, guarantees, and insurance provided by “majority government-owned financial institutions”. How these count as subsidies escapes me, except perhaps, if there is a debate about comparative interest rates. However, no such analysis was undertaken in the report, which appears to simply list the gross amount of investment done. When looking at the details, three countries stand out: India (US$11.4B), China (US$9.5B) and Japan (US$5.1B). This from a total of US$27.6B.
“State Owned Energy investment” is included because the report indicates it is “often carried out at below market value”. But again, rather than any useful analysis of what represents “market value”, the report provides a weak excuse of “limited publicly available information” and then includes total capital expenditure. Again, three countries were identified as stand-outs: China (US$8.8B, India (US$6.4B) and South Africa (US$3.4B). The total for this category was US$20.9B.
Mostly, what this report identifies is the continuing investment in coal-fired power by developing nations. Hardly an indication that this industry is dying. And as you correctly pointed out, coal power remains significantly cheaper, and hence more profitable, everywhere around the world. You neglected to mention that it also remains more reliable and available than renewables.
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Did you read what I posted? I’ll reword it slightly to clarify it for you and others who misinterpreted what I said. The world is “spending” more on coal not less because it’s better than renewables in so many ways.
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My point is that the world is not “propping up” coal fired power. Your term implies “subsidised”, and the report you linked to attempts to paint a picture of a heavily subsidised industry.
The test of an industry is to remove all government subsidies, and see if it still remains profitable. The coal industry remains profitable in all countries, except those where governments have introduced anti-competitive policies that require renewable power to be marketed first, like Australia, or in countries that have introduced vast amounts of unregulated solar PV power, creating the Duck Curve, like Australia, or in countries that installed vast numbers of wind farms that generate rapid, random fluctuations in delivered power, like Australia.
If the Australian government removed the subsidies that it uses to fund the growth in renewables, and removed its anti-competitive policies, how long would renewable companies stay in business? Sorry, that’s a rhetorical question. Every country that has removed renewable subsidies quickly sees the collapse of renewable companies, showing that they are not really an “industry” sector, but a welfare sector.
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My involvement in all this was puzzlement with the idea that the 50% increase in CO2 since 1900 was man made. It isn’t. Industrial CO2 and biosphere CO2 are easily and absolutely distinguished. Old fossil fuel has no C14 and the rest has C14. So you can prove total cumulative fossil fuel ’emissions’ are less than 5%, prove that CO2 is in rapid equilibrium and prove our tiny output cannot and does not build up in the air. The counter argument is wild conjecture presented as ‘the Science’.
Then you get the essential and absurd idea that the extra CO2 heats the atmosphere (not the oceans). There is no proof of that. In fact the last 32 years proves it does not. And the idea that this tiny alleged heating is dangerous. It’s barely detectable.
And the rapid sea rises. No evidence at all and once again, nothing any country has noticed in the last say 200 years.
All in denial of simple schoolboy chemistry and Henry’s Law governing gas exchange between the air and the vast oceans which contains 98% of all free CO2 and 1400x the heat capacity of the thin air above and recipient of 75% of the sun’s radiation. Our tiny CO2 is irrlevant. 5% of 2% or 0.1% per annum and that vanishes. Nothing we have done is visible on the graph of CO2. We are not masters of this planet. Turning off all the planes and cars for a year has proven that, as if it needed proving.
So why is our Australian government wrecking a perfectly good power system to make it impossible for us to manufacture anything with the world’s highest electricity prices, 90% from the same old coal power stations. Why are we covering the country in useless windmills? We have not built a new dam in fifty years and complain about drought proofing. We have not built a new reliable and cheap coal power station in fifty years and have huge blackouts. And the extra money from the massive retail electricity costs goes where, exactly? China?
I can see us importing power from overseas, even China, powered by our own coal. We are importing our own gas. We are idiots. And that’s the kindest view.
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Go on be honest, we as a nation are stupid fools.
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I am not disagreeing with any of your comments, but where do I find the C14 arguments that mans CO2 is only 5% of the atmospheric total? Many thanks.
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You wont from any reputable source.
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That is a disreputable comment. How on earth would you know? It’s all well established science. Simple idea but with profound implications. See later.
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well established where?
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It is a difficult subject to get your head around. Murry Salby is a good place to start.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtIgMftbUuw&feature=youtu.be
Also Ed Berry.
https://edberry.com/blog/category/climate-physics
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He might have been wanting data analysis not theatre
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Negative comment by you GA.
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Thank you ‘John in NZ’.
Yes, I believe you’re perfectly correct to supply those particular references in response to the question from ‘David’ about CO2 in the atmosphere.
[‘Gee Aye’s comment: “He might have been wanting data analysis not theatre”, indicates to me that ‘Gee Aye’ doesn’t actually analyse any data at all, preferring to trust in all the theatrical climate-crisis sensationalism spouted on T.V. instead.]
If ‘David’ would like additional information regarding this very important hole in the climate alarmists’ multi-flawed hypothesis, he may wish to read the following Guest Editorial by Dr Tom V. Segalstad, Associate Professor of Resource and Environmental Geology at The University of Oslo, Norway:
https://www.co2web.info/Segalstad_CO2-Science_090805.pdf
Titled “Correct Timing is Everything – Also for CO2 in the Air”, it pulls together the work of several scientists who have established that the Residence Time of CO2 molecules in the air averages little more than 5 years.
(The work of Drs Essenhigh, Segalstad, Stumm, Morgan, Revelle, Suess, and Sundquist, is cited.)
From this figure, derived from several independent lines of reasoning and research, it has been shown that only a small percentage of the 415 ppm of CO2 currently found in our air can be manmade.
The roughly 130 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration believed to have occurred since pre-industrial times is therefore very largely of natural origin – arising principally from ocean outgassing, in accordance with Henry’s Law.
[There’s 50 times more CO2 dissolved in Earth’s oceans than exists in the atmosphere. ‘Gee Aye’ might care to look into Henry’s Law to learn how solar-mediated warming of the oceans in the centuries since The Little Ice Age has caused CO2 outgassing.]
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Try the Royal Society, 1958. This is called the Suess effect, from the birth of the technology of Radio Carbon dating. He was amazed to see how low fossil fuel CO2 was despite two world wars. The estimated lifetime of CO2 in the air was around 5 years. It was right. Not the IPCC’s 80 years.
“Reduction of Atmospheric Radiocarbon Concentration by Fossil Fuel Carbon Dioxide and the Mean Life of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere.”
This short residence was confirmed after 1965 by the rapid exponential decay of the doubling of C14 levels after the atmospheric bomb blasts. As predicted by the article, as I remember.
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Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A. Mathematical and Physical sciences. Vol 243. No 1235(Feb 11 1958) pp. 561-574 (14 pages)
Published by the Royal Society. (Before they became a political organization.)
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This was only a decade after the discovery of the importance of Carbon 14, a radioactive form of carbon created by cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere. It has a half life of 5,730 years which is very short in geological terms but long in human terms. So it is extremely useful for dating wood and bone and an essential tool in archaeology. And it can be calibrated against the known age of historical objects. It was 2 years after the observation by Professor Suess in 1956 of the implications for the very rapid absorption of CO2 by the world’s oceans.
Fossil fuel is hundreds of millions of years old and has no C14. So C14 is like a reverse medical tracer. You can tell one type of CO2 from another from the presence or absence of radioactive Carbon 14 atoms, even at a normal concentration of one in a trillion.
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And to save everyone the time, here is the Abstract..
Abstract: G. J. Fergusson
It is generally accepted that the combustion of fossil fuels over the period 1860 to 1954 has produced an amount of carbon dioxide, containing no radiocarbon, that is equal to approximately 13% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The addition of this ‘old’ carbon dioxide to the atmosphere has observably disturbed the steady-state distribution of carbon-14 in nature.
In the present paper measurements are described of the carbon-14 concentration in sets of wood samples from the northern and southern hemispheres, and these show that the carbon-14 specific activity of atmospheric carbon dioxide has decreased by 2.03 ± 0.15% over the period 1860 to 1954, and that the present-day difference between the decrease in the northern and southern hemispheres is less than 0.50%.
The response of various mathematical models of the carbon cycle in nature to the addition of ‘old’ carbon dioxide at an exponential rate has been considered. Using the above data in conjunction with these models it is deduced that:
(1) The mean life of a carbon dioxide molecule in the atmosphere before it is absorbed into other reservoirs of carbon must be less than 7 yr, and is probably of the order of 2 yr.
(2) The exchange time for mixing of the atmospheres of the two hemispheres (i. e. the mean life of a carbon dioxide molecule in the atmosphere of one hemisphere before transference to the other hemisphere) is less than 2 yr.
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To explain, if you add CO2 with no C14 to the atmosphere, it dilutes the amount of C14 in the atmosphere. If the extra 50% of CO2 since 1900 was from fossil fuel, the dilution would be 33%. So 2/3rds C14, and 1/3rd no C14.
What Suess found and Fergusson confirmed is that the dilution was 2.03%. That means only 1/50th of the CO2 was from fossil fuel. 2% not the expected 14%. This is called the Suess effect (even if Wikipedia has corrupted this story with a new definition of the Suess effect and nothing to do with Professor Suess)
Also because it is radioactive, it is easily detected despite the fact that only one in trillion atoms is C14. The other two isotopes are C12 99% and C13 1%.
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Excellent answers TdeF. Thank you!
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Mankind’s 5% of total comes directly from the UNIPCC. The First Assessment Report used the term “1/20th” as a useful approximation with 95% being from natural sources.
Piers Corbyn comments that oceans in the tropics outgas CO2 when they warm up. Increased sunlight causes more warming of the surface layer and therefore more outgassing. Cloud cover directly affect warming of the ocean surface below it so TSI and cloud-cover should be factored into the climate models.
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“ . . .just about every other developed country in the world ”
Is he allowed to lie like that in front of the children?
And the grandkids – – won’t their little ears burn off?
[Note also that “every other can mean almost all or half — take a guess.]
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Less government spending (not “investing”) less money would be more better, as usual. Dead horse beaten.
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Particularly like the use of the word “compromised”.
Any functionary who is “compromised” is not bad or evil, just unfit for task and needs replacing Urgently. No big dramas.
For the good of the country.
Of course both major political parties are compromised.
The NSW government programme, backed by the Fed’s-Scomo, is currently advertising Free supply and installation of rooftop solar to be paid off progressively with your sale of electricity back to the grid: or something.
In fact it’s being paid off by the impost on the other users and industry.
I would love to see an analysis of the money flow behind this.
The little trickles and tributaries of “runoff” as the money makes its way to Chyna would be an interesting study.
Laba controls large investments via Super Super Funds: for the workers whose super payments are Ethically Invested. Nothing to see there behind the scenes; just ex Onion Bosses diligently managing the funds.
No politicians were hurt or injured whilst supporting Renewables, so everything’s O.K.
KK
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Didn’t you see Scomo saying “down, down, down” hand gestures and all to those pesky rising prices which the roadmap is delivering, a mixed message if ever I saw one.
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Hit the wrong button. See green.
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Technology investment ‘roadmap’ is typical bureaucratic language like Victoria’s Covid 19 ‘roadmap’.
… it requires the energy equivalent of about 100 barrels of oil to fabricate a quantity of batteries that can store a single barrel of oil-equivalent energy …
Australia sends unwanted coal to China that uses it to generate the electricity that is used to manufacture the wind turbines, solar panels and batteries that Australia buys back from them when the very same coal could have been used to value-add onshore and grow the Australian economy.
It’s a ‘roadmap’ to nowhere.
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Rewording an old joke
Deep thinking late drinker to barista
“You know all that coal we’re sending to China? Well the earth is spinning in space, so what if it gets out of balance and gets a wobble up?”
“Don’t worry. Ir is balanced by all the wind and solar gear we get back”
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Australia cannot line up enough of its own people to harvest crops, let alone value add to mined commodities. Much produce will go to waste this year because there is a shortage of immigrant workers to harvest produce.
The only value adding projects that have had some success are bauxite to aluminium. However these are mostly dead or on life support. There would be massive investment needed to bring that technology up to world standard. Will not happen because they are not compatible with WDGs and NO ONE is going to build a coal or nuclear power station Australia.
Outside the basket cases of Port Kembla and Whyalla, efforts to value add to iron ore have been legendary failures – BHP burnt up $2.4bn on its HBI plant. Rio just $1bn on its HiSmelt plant.
Once Covid is done the country can get back to being a holiday destination and pleasant location for buying an education. Crops can again be harvested by immigrant workers.
You never know, Australia’s Covid vaccine could be a world beater. That would make a nice income for a year or two.
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As we have learnt with CV19, Australia is a federation with the States wielding many powers, witness new borders, new police powers etc.
So whatever Timid Taylor and Marketeer Morrison promote with wasted tax expenditures, Disaster Dan and Pitiful Palachook can set their own rules, as they have done with declared targets of 50% ruinables by 2030. Now there is a report suggesting WA could shift to 90% renewables by 2030 (not endorsed by WA govt that says it has no plan for any new generation beyond rnewables).
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Its a waste of money, but if government wants to be reelected they have to play the precautionary principle game until the MSM tells the truth.
Its nice to see Turnbull as a bitter angry old man, but Australia is leading the renewable bandwagon and he shouldn’t have been dragged him into the debate.
Its going to become fairly obvious over the next few years that CO2 doesn’t make a warmer world, yet we still have no proof that the sun does anything either.
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I disagree. I’ll go out on a limb here. Almost everybody who voted Lib/Nats last time is not concerned with ‘carbon emissions’, full stop. Most know that is a furphy.
The Libs are pandering to people who will never vote for them.
If the Libs were to take a hard line and actually deliver something for the nation, they would be returned in a landslide.
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Politically too risky, we have to get the MSM onside otherwise the government would become a sitting duck. If you have a hindcast of solar activity going back to the Roman Warm Period, overlay a temperature and moisture graph, then the CO2 nonsense should come to an end.
Sky News would cover it.
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When did proof come back in vogue?
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So disappointing from the politician who broad a lump of coal into parliament . Spooked by his own gimmick. No one in a position of influence in the Liberal government has the balls to address the real issue. Attack the alarmism, and you solve every problem. Stopping the spread of renewables is pretty futile if you don’t attack the indoctrination of a generation. You actually dig a bigger and bigger hole for yourself. How can you justify adhering to a process of reduction in carbon emissions whilst being one of the biggest exporters of coal in the world. This hypocrisy is evidence that you really don’t believe that the world is threatened , you are only paying lip service, you are looking for a magic pudding rather than to enunciate the truth.
Re-education is the only way you can solve the problem because if coal is not part of the solution there is no solution. The re-education is vital because unless you change the narrative as the younger generation becomes our industry and political leaders the Libs will not be able to reverse the damage that has already been caused.
Shellenberger and Michael Moore’s film have to be compulsory topics of discussion for the classroom. The sceptical arguments have to be taught and brought forward. The younger generation has the ability to question the assumptions on climate change all you need to do is plant the seed and throw some fertiliser on it.
Taking the cowards way out will not succeed in either of the stated goals of reducing emissions or lowering energy costs and won’t work politically. Telling uncomfortable truths about the climate alarmist industry is the only way forward that can achieve the goals required.
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Not quite O/T (IMO)
“Watts Available”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/09/23/watts-available/
30
Another important point rarely mentioned is the Kyoto Agreement emissions targets and that Australia is one of very few nations that signed the Kyoto Agreement and achieved all of the targets.
The UN IPCC now wants to deny Australia credits for Kyoto to be applied in line with the Paris Agreement targets that few other nations are taking seriously, because there are no penalties for failing. However, the Turnbull Government here after signing Paris in April 2016 rushed back to New York to ratify the Agreement in November 2016 after learning that the USA was pulling out of Paris. Australia committed to what was a signed but non-binding Agreement?
Penalising the economy here with emissions reduction programmes is ridiculous, and the squandering of money directly via subsidies and indirectly via rising cost of living and cost of operating businesses, which also impacts adversely in consumer cost of living, is unacceptable, left leaning woke behaviour from too many unworldly politicians who have never operated a business for profit.
80
Also, it is insulting intelligent people when the politicians claim “carbon” and “carbon pollution” as problems when they are referring to Carbon Dioxide.
Paris Agreement highlights CO2 as the target for elimination?
Unfortunately too many of our politicians, Federal and State (and Local Government) are leaning too far to the left of centre and many are on the far-left.
160
Democracy is a mixed bag, politicians tend to lean left and right even within the majors. Climate change has muddied the waters because of the green sludge, so Morrison is hoping a technological solution will silence the green/left.
Adding carbon to the soil probably won’t work, but as we live on a desert island I have no objection.
23
As a fuel, hydrogen has some big shortcomings
Yes, it sure does, and you seem to have overlooked one of the major ones…its cost !
Currently H2 costs over $10 kg, and that is from the not so “clean” gas reforming production process.
When you look at the costs and issues involved to produce “Clean” H2 from electrolysis using RE energy, it becomes a joke !
Incidentally, the cost would need to be under $1 kg to make it competitice with other fuels .
110
PS….i dont like going OT ..so what happened to…
Tuesday Open ?
Midweek Open ?
Thursday Open ?
10
There was plenty going on with the previous thread to this one! In the past Jo used to give us a Weekend Unthreaded but the others are more recent.
20
Chad. Just forgotten. Will fix. Apologies.
20
Chad,
in addition to your argument, I worked the numbers on Hydrogen today to get a better feel for the possibilities.
Hydrogen, when measured by energy per kg, looks pretty good and I found the first website I came to was pushing this virtue. It was being a little disingenuous.
1kg of H2 is energy equivalent to 0.992 gallons (US) of gasoline. Normalised, 264 grams of H2 is the equivalent of 1L gasoline. At 21C, 1Kg of hydrogen occupies nearly 12m^3. That is 12,000 litres of gas for 3.78 L of fuel. 264 grams will occupy 3170L.
Of course this is at 1 atm. In reality it would be compressed into a cylinder. The numbers I encountered ranged from 350-700 bar. If we assume 700 bar then the hydrogen will compress down to 4.5L. Remember, this is the equivalent of 1L of petrol.
My ute has a 60L tank. If I were to fuel it with hydrogen I would need a tank roughly 4.5 times bigger, i.e. 270L, to get energy equivalence. That doesn’t leave much space for passengers or load.
30
As a fuel, hydrogen has some big shortcomings…..
along with other problems ….
ask the relatives of the K141 crew .
00
A very good summary Jo, but we should also remind people that the SH ( 50% of our planet’s surface area) is already a NET co2 SINK and the NH is the NET SOURCE. See this quote from the CSIRO site at Cape Grim.
Population of the SH is about 0.8 bn and NH is now 7 bn people and entire SH emits about 7% of global emissions and OZ 1.1% and NZ just 0.1%. See Wiki link below for all countries and note graph top right, THEN LOOK at CHINA and OTHER COUNTRIES. Here’s the CSIRO link.
https://www.csiro.au/en/Research/OandA/Areas/Assessing-our-climate/Latest-greenhouse-gas-data
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions
Seasonal variation
“Carbon dioxide concentrations show seasonal variations (annual cycles) that vary according to global location and altitude. Several processes contribute to carbon dioxide annual cycles: for example, uptake and release of carbon dioxide by terrestrial plants and the oceans, and the transport of carbon dioxide around the globe from source regions (the Northern Hemisphere is a net source of carbon dioxide, the Southern Hemisphere a net sink)”.
The Cape Grim baseline carbon dioxide data displayed show both the annual cycle and the long-term trend”.
60
“David Bidstrup guest post. Energy crisis or stupidity?”
https://catallaxyfiles.com/2020/09/24/david-bidstrup-guest-post-energy-crisis-or-stupidity/
30
And
“Bludgeoning the electricity industry corpse: the government’s technology policy”
And the cartoon
https://catallaxyfiles.com/2020/09/23/bludgeoning-the-electricity-industry-corpse-the-governments-technology-policy/
20
Thanks for these links Another Ian; Bidstrup lays out Power Generation for Dummies showing us how we’ve been stooged by scoundrels and the assorted comments underline how the destruction of our education system and the perverse incentives driving over-remunerated politicians inevitably led us to this abyss.
10
My understanding is that the nation that was most advanced with the “hydrogen economy” has now mostly abandoned it as it is not practical or economical and yet Australia sees Japan as an export market for hydrogen from coal. And what happens to the CO2 from such a process you may well ask? Why, it’s left in Australia in a “carbon capture and storage” process. It’s just like burning coal in Japan but leaving the supposed badness of CO2 in Australia at our expense to store until either the end of time or the collspse of the Australian economy, the latter being more likely and far sooner.
80
David:
Even worse, the idea is to convert brown coal into hydrogen, which means lots of CO2. “Carbon capture” hasn’t worked anywhere that I have heard, other than in the fevered imaginations of Greenies. And if it did work we would have heard about it ad nauseam.
80
If unreliables such as wind and solar are consudered “mature technologies” (if they could really be considered viable technologies at all) and no longer need subsidies, they will turn their attention to wasting the same money elsewhere like with “green” steel and aluminium.
But without subsidies the whole solar and wind scam will collapse. Big Green won’t allow that to happen and subsidies will be rapidly reinstated.
When that happens we’ll have to pay subsidies for BOTH wind and solar subsidy farms plus subsidise “green” steel and aluminium.
70
The belief in “green” steel and aluminium is what happens when you no longer teach real chemistry, economics or common sense.
110
Australians have never been averse to self-destruction.
40
New technology for CCS is not required, the existing technology, photosynthesis, has been doing an excellent job for millions of years. As well, the technology probably works way better for CO2 emissions from coal and gas fired power stations, where the CO2 emissions are probable no more that a few 100 metres in the atmosphere, than the CO2 emissions from a plane, where the emissions could be nearly 17 kilometres in the air.
80
It is often said that government isn’t very good at picking winners and shouldn’t try to do it.
For example, in the current discussion of the NBN offering gigabit speeds to households, we can see how short-sighted and wrong Mr Abbott, among many, turned out to be:
Now we have the all of the political parties prognosticating about the ‘best’ technologies to use to fix a non-problem.
Perhaps if they pass legislation that forces the decision makers (themselves) to personally compensate the rest of us when they are proven wrong, then they will be more circumspect and let the market decide winners and losers. No hope of that, of course.
Add that politicians back their adamant ‘this will work’ explanations by saying they are ‘listening to the experts’ and following ‘the science’, I offer these doozies:
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943
“Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.”
Darryl Zanuck, executive at 20th Century Fox, 1946
“Almost all of the many predictions now being made about 1996 hinge on the Internet’s continuing exponential growth. But I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.”
Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com, 1995
50
John, i agree that politicians should not be making technology decisions,…but you chose a poor example, and miss quoted T Abbot who i believe made the correct decision on the NBN.
His actual comment ( in reply to a press question about cost controls) was..
Note the highly relevant ….”FOR THE AVERAGE HOUSEHOLD”
Further , he actually said in that same conference..
Now, the cost projections were certainly wrong, but the objective of getting more people connected, much faster than “fiber to the home”, and at a much lower cost, was sensible,
Without that decision, half the nation would still be running ADSL today.
If you read the transcript of that 2013 press release, you will also find that he also stated there would be further upgrades for “fiber to the home or business” after the main rollout.
Again, exactly what is now being proposed….not a full FTTH “backflip” that the media are howling, but selective upgrades to those who want/need them.
90
The ABC is going its hardest to prove Abbott was wrong. The current NBN has served most households well during the CV19 lockdowns. We would still be waiting for what Labor was promising. Talking about decisions on technology made 7 years ago simply shows how imbecilic reporters have become. Listening to the questions at Dan’s daily press conference gives insight into the mental dwarfs who aspire to be journalists.
The NBN modem I am using defaults to 4G or 5G. So the copper connection to the household is not even critical.
The core of the NBN is the backbone and technology there is constantly moving. Universities in Australia have developed switching an order or two magnitudes faster than existing switching:
https://www.swinburne.edu.au/news/2020/05/australian-researchers-record-worlds-fastest-internet-speed-from-a-single-optical-chip/
So locking in any computing/communication technology for decades does not make economic sense. Most South East Asian nations bypassed copper to the home technology. All three of my sons have lived in homes without wired connections going back more than a decade.
40
Oh looky….there is your real “climate changer” …putting all that smoke in the air…sure to cool things off…
Arsonists start “climate change” fires in california…
https://www.wnd.com/2020/09/arsonists-found-behind-number-west-coast-blazes-authorities-say/
“Three men have been charged for arson in Oregon. Two of the fires set have caused great devastation over many acres of forest and Oregonian homes.
“ABC News reported that Michael Jarrod Bakkela, 41, received “two charges of arson, 15 counts of criminal mischief and 14 counts of reckless endangering for a fire that was set [Sept. 8] in the Phoenix area
“The News Tribune of Tacoma, Washington, reported the arrest and charge of Elias Newton Pendergrass, 44, on Sept. 1 for a fire near Mapleton, Oregon. He “faces a charge of first-degree arson.” The Sweet Creek Fires have destroyed more than 500 acres and caused emergency evacuations.
EVs everywhere but no way to charge them.
Thats a new level of dumb…
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/09/23/californias-gavin-newsom-bans-gas-powered-vehicles-effective-2035/
“California Governor Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday that the state will ban sales of gas-powered vehicles, effective in 2035. Newsom said that the “audacious” goal was necessary to achieve the state’s goal of 100% renewable energy by 2045.
10
The historic cost comparisons for wholesale electricity are becoming meaningless. The NEM market settling price is gradually becoming less representative of the retail cost of electricity. Using it in a comparison like the AER chart above has increasing irrelevance.
The fuel cost of WDGs is ZERO. The subsidies they garner are applied at a retail level not at the wholesale price. Their wholesale price can fall to minus $40/MWh and they still make money. WDGs do produce low cost electricity, which is often reflected in the wholesale price. However many of their costs are applied outside the WHOLESALE market.
The transmission network has needed and will need massive investments to make use of the geographically dispersed grid scale WDGs. There are current investments in battery storage, synchronous condensers and major interconnectors to improve system stability. All due to the intermittency of WDGs.
AEMO’s costs have been rising at 12%pa; well above inflation rate. The current level is a mere 60c/MWh but it was half that value when Hazelwood closed. The reason for the rising cost is the level of intervention in the market through directions to generators and large loads. This cost of DIRECTIONS is not included in the wholesale price. All these DIRECTIONS come at a cost and are levied outside the wholesale price. In the end consumers pay.
Distributers are needing to upgrade their networks to accommodate the increasing reverse power flow from rooftop solar.
Every rooftop that connects reduces the power purchased at retail level. That means the cost of the system has to be spread across a diminishing number of consumers.
So the only relevant price comparison is at a retail level and should always include the connection fee. Ultimately it is your bill that matters. That bill is increasingly being separated from the reported wholesale price. This is the current situation in Victoria:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-26/what-victoria-default-power-price-rise-means-for-consumers/11736716
I believe some retailers in SA reduced prices in July; it is an unusual year. Deflation was inevitable in the Covid era but lower prices for electricity is an extraordinary outcome if true.
30
1 through 5 are all energy consumers. I missed something – how is this an energy plan?
20
Australia is dumping energy potential on a daily basis because available energy exceeds energy demand. For example, South Australia has ‘curtailed’ about 10,000MWh in the last 24 hours. This energy potential is literally FREE. All thiese projects are looking at the means of getting some value from this FREE energy potential.
As more WDGs are added to the network, more FREE energy will become available.
In fact, the wholesale price of electricity in the NEM regularly goes negative. That means consumers actually get paid to use electricity. The SA battery usually charges when prices are negative. So the energy is better than FREE, they get paid to take it.
Right now all coal generators are willing to accept prices as low as MINUS $1000/MWh so they can stay dispatched at their minimum stable output. It gets expensive to shut coal generators down or operate them at low output so they offer a block of energy near the floor price to ensure they get dispatched. That forces grid scale wind and solar to curtail.
A very serious stability problem is emerging in SA where rooftop solar are approaching the capacity ti drive demand to zero. That has potential to cause instability in the network. If that occurs then the whole network could shutdown. November this year is emerging as a high risk period for the SA grid.
40
Where does free energy come from?
00
From an email
”
I saw this comment on the Tim Blair blog. It is so good it needs more exposure
Blacked Out Country
I love a blacked-out country
a land of futile schemes
of wind and solar madness
and debt beyond our means
Of politicians’ subterfuge
with carbon as the culprit
they demonise and sermonise
from their climate pulpit
this governance by proxy
to the gods of climate change
becomes the orthodoxy
so ludicrous and strange
I love a blacked out country
a land of scams and schemes
of diesel, wind and solar
and Twitter Facebook memes
where feelings and emotions
rule reason and all fact
and evidence ignored
is consensus down the track
I love a blacked out country
where Greenies reign supreme
and Labor apparatchiks
destroy the Aussie dream
Paul
1 hour ago
“
140
“where feelings and emotions
rule reason and all fact
and evidence ignored
is consensus down the track”
Descriptive of the “latest expert advice” that goes with the Qld veg management act as well IMO
20
Brilliant.
21
🙂
00
If Australia can convince the rest of the world that solar is the ONLY energy of the future then that presents the opportunity to value add to an unlimited resource in Australia.
It would require 400km wide band of solar panels across NT to supply ALL the global primary energy needs, or better a narrower band stretching from WA to Qld. Having a single block would present storage issues but linking a smaller band across NT/Australia with similar bands in the Sahara and Atacama deserts and Baja California (maybe Nevada as well) would overcome most of the intermittency issues.
That geographical diversity in high insolation locations may overcome the weather and seasonal dependency of solar.
That gets energy sorted until the sun goes out.
20
Adding carbon to the soil is just an ongoing strategy, a win/win situation.
https://carbonfarmersofaustralia.com.au/carbon-farming/soil-carbon-method/
20
Has Willis Eschenbach further explained how the global temp is governed by thunderstorms etc in the tropics?
He actually follows the data and finds that the linear trend in watts/sq metre suddenly takes a right angle turn after about 27 c is reached in the ocean sst.
Dr Lindzen and his Iris effect study also seemed to find the same result. Certainly this doesn’t seem to have anything to do with extra co2 in the atmosphere.
Willis has been banging on about this phenomena for years and now more data actually further supports his theory.
I wonder what Jo and David think about Willis’ findings?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/09/23/watts-available/
00
In this project, A$496 million is going to be spent to produce 3 tonnes of “green” hydrogen from brown coal.
https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2020/05/15/morrison-government-paves-the-way-for-brown-hydrogen-industry/
According to Wikipedia: As of 2020 green hydrogen costs between $2.50-6.80 per kilogram and blue hydrogen $1.40-2.40/kg compared with high-carbon grey hydrogen at $1–1.80/kg.
At the most expensive price for “green” hydrogen it would cost $20,400, not $496 million, or over 24,000 times as much.
Sounds like a bargain!
20
There is no benefit for any political party in trying to out green the “Greens” , Bill Shorten has already proved that.
20
How to make green steel.
1) Get a piece of steel.
2) Paint it green.
3) Et voilà !
30
Hi Jo
Thanks for the review of the latest government policy statement on how to waste billions on changing the temperature in 100 years. However I have to disagree with idea that Tony Abbott lost power due to being attacked constantly by a green left media mob. He lost the prime ministership to a slippery rat in his own party who convinced enough weak minded members to vote him out. Abbott had been constantly attacked by the media from the first time he was elected to parliament but it did not stop him getting to the top and winning a landslide election.
That’s not to say that the media didn’t have a disproportionate influence on the weak minded politicians however the almost universal support of the media did not stop Turnbull meeting the same fate as Abbott. This idea that politicians are cowered by a rabid left media lets the politicians off the hook and gives the media an overly inflated role in government. If they weren’t so lazy and could be bothered to get themselves informed about the issues then they would have no problem dealing with hostile questions from the media. Kelly does a pretty good job at handling the media because he has looked into the subject of CO2 emissions and educated himself on the subject.
If the government were really sceptical about the global warming hypothesis they would not need to spend another 18 billion to give themselves “cover” from some media mob. Fact is that 95% of politicians are true believers in the cause and are ready to spend whatever it takes to fix a non existent problem. Let’s face it, the only reason the LNP won the last election is because the ALP made themselves unelectable for all sorts of reasons. Unless Australians suddenly start voting for a third party in large numbers i.e. >30% then we are stuck with the choice of dumb or dumber.
50
Road map to a green future or the highway to hell?
10
A few weeks ago Senator Malcolm Roberts [One Nation] reported to the Senate of the Australian parliament that after four meetings with CSIRO staff from top to Divisional and the Chief Scientist, no one could provide any experimental evidence the CO2 was any sort of climate threat, relied on unvalidated erroneous models and discredited papers, misleading parliament and all others that CO2 emissions should be reduced.
Thus the whole scam from the UN down to the greenies should be tossed out, with Australia generating its power from the cheapest source – coal. See:
No one except Craig Kelly MP and Sky News Outsiders have taken any notice.
70
The link was lost:
00
The roadmap’s typical of Morrison in that it’s cagey and sly…designed not to answer the many problematical questions…it’s vague…to protect him and insulate him from inconvenient probing….but it also seems to be a bureaucrat’s wishlist.
Steggall’s called for the planning to be taken out of partisan politics and placed in the hands of bureaucrats…and I think that suits Morrison fine…knowing the all-Left bureaucrats have his number.
And so there’s no commitment at all to new coal …the only dependable…fully dispatchable…affordable fuel and technology that inherently provides all of the services …frequency and voltage control..system strength and stability and restart services… in the course of its general operation…
There’s no reference either to the CO2-to-solid carbon research that would complement new coal plants by further reducing the emissions and producing new materials.
It seems impossible to find anything on the progress of that research at RMIT…I wonder why…could it be that it’s an unwelcome technology as it could interfere with the killing of coal?
The Morrison gang of great environmentalists would rather bury billions of tonnes of CO2 all over Australia near precious aquifers and populations.
Morrison seems to be playing a cruel cat and mouse game with the people who want to build a HELE plant in Collinsville…keeping them on the feasibility study string in order to shield his own miserable self from the flak he’d take if he told the truth…..that he’s killing coal as per the diktat of the Global Socialists.
Australia is denied use of coal in the future even as China’s and India’s billions and most of the rest of Asia will be enjoying the comparative advantage and reliability of generating electricity from cheap efficient Australian coal.
Typical of Morrison too…to throw a small crumb to a nuclear option…to keep that sector off his back.
It seems more like a musing and mulling document to me…with slight lip service to some of the RE problems but zero to large realities..
eg…unextinguishable Lithium fires in underground commercial car parks [let alone homes]….. or underneath hi-rise residential buildings…in the middle of the night…perish the thought.
… there’s a lot of dependence on hydrogen as per the vested interest Garnaut diktat…with none of its huge problems of leakage…huge storage needs…embrittlement of metal…cost etc…yet solved
…..no acknowledgment at all about the fact that the massive build of wind and solar they foreshadow here and worldwide ..in its manufacture emits exponentially-increasing quantities of hugely-worse GH gases than CO2…ie sulfur hexafluoride…23000 times the potency of CO2 and resident >1000 years in the atmosphere and nitrogen trifluoride…12500 times the potency of CO2.
So it’s not as if there are no environmental downsides to the intermittents…they’re myriad.
Apart from SF6 and NF3 emissions there are the numerous other toxic substances in wind and solar operations…
…there’s battery pollution and that will be huge with the short-lived EV batteries as well as the megabatteries
…there’s water availability for electrolysis to produce hydrogen
…the question re whether there will be enough of the strategic minerals required for manufacture of solar and wind and for the mammoth manufacture and turnover of IT and other electronic equipment worldwide
…whether there’ll be enough fuel for data centres
…whether Europe’s plans to build artificial islands in the North Sea…Baltic….Atlantic offshore of the Netherlands etc …will encourage more island-building by China to further destabilize the Pacific.
The Europeans are hardly going to help Australia and the US to stop China from that exercise…so useful for their military purposes …when Europe itself is desperate to do likewise for their own energy purposes..and anyway China would probably claim that more benign purpose too.
…. the pretence that gas is cleaner than coal
….with the 7X Australian demand build of RE required to cover for intermittence..RE for EVs…for the electrolysis of water for hydrogen EVs…for hydrogen exports….how will they stop RE from eating itself alive…so many generators chasing a demand ..competing each other down towards zero and negative prices…yet still having to be profitable? Will the taxpayer subsidize them or will the taxpayer try to find and fund ever more demand…anything to stop them from pulling the plug on a vulnerable Australia?
And with all that there’s still no way to provide seasonal storage to fill the gap in availability the storage technologies always have.
Once we get to the calamitous destination of all bulk energy provided by wind and solar…then…about 15% of the time…..the storage asset is empty when we want it to discharge electricity or discharge water to generate electricity… and another 15% of the time it’s full when we want to charge it….and there will be these times of being empty [unserved demand] and times of being full and unable to be charged so the excess energy is spilled]….every single month.
To get to this wondrous new age…there’s nothing the Australian government won’t do…no amount of taxpayers’ money is too massive to waste.
The one thing this derelict government will not do…will tell any lie to avoid doing…they won’t tell the Australian people what the evidence is that justifies making Australia the only country on the face of the earth that’s committing economic and social suicide for a hoax that must not be questioned …to make Australia the only country…bar none…whose government has done it the deliberate harm of forcing us to be totally dependent on a 100% weather-dependent intermittent electricity ‘system’ with weather-dependent props…totally dependent on the most undependable thing on earth…the weather.
Every other country on earth will have multiple alternatives in huge hydro or nuclear or interconnectors to other countries.
It will be curtains for Australia as a first world country….IMO.
50
Credit to you, Jo, I have this quote firmly framed in mind for next time I am at dinner with an Ecoworrier … which may be Sunday coming … unless I can excuse myself!
“Since emissions don’t change the weather in a measurable way, no one in the world “needs” low emission steel or aluminum. It doesn’t solve any problem, apart from giving guilt-free passes to Ecoworriers to help them feel better about buying a new car. We-the-people are investing in a fashion empire dedicated to a niche market, so they can brag at dinner parties.”
40
Malcolm Turnbull is right when he say that the Government’s energy plans are ‘crazy’ and ‘a fantasy’, but not for the reasons that he himself believes. The are ‘crazy’ and a ‘fantasy’ because they are unnecessary, costly and counter-productive to boot.
10
One way around this is to store H as water and split it with a plasma arc e.g. lightning or a specially designed ignition circuit. I’ve mentioned this before but if you blow water vapour into a welding arc you get a savage ball of white-hot something.
The Russian Multiplas 3500 welder injects steam into an electric arc and produces a 7000ºC nozzle of “fire” which is more than double that of oxy-acetylene so it’s a great plumbers’ tool. It has already been demonstrated that you can run a conventional steel Internal Combustion Engine on 50% petrol 50% water. Volvo have a ceramic ICE in their R & D section which gets us away from corrosion and embrittlement issues. The explosive range of H plays to our advantage in the plasma-ignition steam-enhanced ICE.
The conventional ICE has been around for a century and I suspect will be around for many decades to come. There is plenty of oil and gas left if we use it sensibly but the car manufacturers have no incentive to sell us super economical engines. In 1992 a Ford mechanic demonstrated his new high temp plasma ignition system to his bosses. He thought they’d be pleased with his 15% better fuel consumption but instead they told him to stop messing around and do something useful. Nissan, NGK and few others have patents on a variety of high temp ignition systems with tungsten electrode spark plugs but none of them are considered marketable cos you and I are happy to spend Au$100/week on fuel.
All this guff about electric cars is political. It will do nothing to “save the planet” or reduce fossil fuel consumption. Most Governments, including the current Au one, have no progressive scientists in their midst so perhaps they don’t realise just how daft their plans are.
00
John,
Hydrogen as a fuel ( even in mixed combo’s) for ICE’s , is a dead Duck. !
All the major ICE manufacturers that were developing tech for that possibility , have given up, there are too many side effects to make it economical.
And there is much incentive for auto makers to reduce fuel consumption and emmissions.
Many of the current car manufacturers are producing new tech ICE’s with incredible efficiency and fuel economy,
for example , Mercedes are able to obtain 50+% efficiency using various energy recovery systems.
It is not uncommon to have an ICE return 5 L/100km (or less) today whilst 10 yrs ago double that would have been considered good.
10
What are these side effects, Chad?
00
Corrosion. Costs of safe-handling under high pressure. Supply chain.
00