Resisting Climate Hysteria

[burglar]

Well the science of course!!

It's like the vibe of the science

And the vibe is awesome because the science was settled years ago. All this" new" science stuff is wrong cause like the science is settled and 97% of mothers prefer napisan. ....we..I mean..97% of scientists feel the vibe

Mw

That's right! last week we wanted to spend quadzillions to make emissions go away.
Now CC is unstoppable and we are glad we didn't spend the quadzillions after all.



:::

 

[Smurf1976]

on what was settled?

According to many at the time, "the science is settled" with regard to changing of the earth's climate.

That being so, there should be nothing new to discover and no point in further research into something we supposedly already know everything about.

That was the argument although personally I've never considered this one to be in any way "settled". I'd describe it as a plausible but contentious theory, backed by modest observations and complicated by knowledge gaps relating to the earth's climate in general (whether changing or not). I sure wouldn't say that anything is "settled" although many did claim just that.

 

[burglar]

... the earth's climate in general (whether changing or not) ...

Just Googled: Solar activity variations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_activity_variations

I just don't understand enough of this science to be posting anything half clever on CC

:

 

[medicowallet]

Great vibe!!

Weather is day to day, month to month etc.

Climate data points are 30 years, and we are using 4-5 data points to change the energy usage patterns of the entire world (well at least those stupid enough to not realise that China and India will burn all the coal they can get anyway)

Until then, let's pay increasing prices for electricity in this country when we should be paying next to nothing.

Still, the vibe of that erroneous, playing heart string tugging music mockumentary is AwEsOmE!!

MW

Attack the heart, and the mind doesn't matter.
P.S. With the settled science, it makes interesting reading when the measured data doesn't fit the predicted curve.... but then again, we can always adjust the curve to fit the data at the next review.... why do we need regular IPCC reviews if the science is settled?

 

[sydboy007]

Great vibe!!

Weather is day to day, month to month etc.

Climate data points are 30 years, and we are using 4-5 data points to change the energy usage patterns of the entire world (well at least those stupid enough to not realise that China and India will burn all the coal they can get anyway)

Until then, let's pay increasing prices for electricity in this country when we should be paying next to nothing.

Still, the vibe of that erroneous, playing heart string tugging music mockumentary is AwEsOmE!!

MW

Attack the heart, and the mind doesn't matter.
P.S. With the settled science, it makes interesting reading when the measured data doesn't fit the predicted curve.... but then again, we can always adjust the curve to fit the data at the next review.... why do we need regular IPCC reviews if the science is settled?

Why should we pay next to nothing for electricity? The networks are massively expensive to run if you want them to be reliable, and they have to be reliable otherwise the other costs probably increase more than what you save.

Also, even those who question AGW generally don't dispute the negatives of coal production and electricity production. There's very little to argue against empirically when you see the deaths caused via coal mining, the pollution and environmental destruction due to coal mining, the high levels of pollution that occur near by to coal power stations, the toxic fly ash that needs to be dealt with after the coal is burned.

Factor in that every 5 years the remaining levels of most fossil fuel resources seems to get lower and to me it seems we should at least be considering moving to alternative fuel sources because the infrastructure has such a long economic life and takes quite a long time to self liquidate. Is it sensible to build a new coal power station if the chances are good an alternative power source will be cheaper in 20 years - remember solar PV is already below the cost that the Govt had forecast it would be out in 2020 and beyond. New methods of making PV is also reducing the amounts of energy and resources needed to actually build them, also helping to keep the current cost declines to continue.

I tend to believe that AGW is occurring, simply because of the laws of thermodynamics and that increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has to trap more heat. But if you don't believe that, but do believe in free markets, then we should be trying to reduce the free lunch that fossil fuels get by making them reflect the true costs they impose on the community instead of letting them remain externalities which kill thousand of people a year and cost billions in increased healthcare.

Witht he new forms of software control and algorithms being written now, it is becoming increasingly easy to manage the variability of renewable energy on the grid. For SA they're already over 30% wind power, and the AEMO has gotten very good at using forecast data for how much wind produced electricity will be available to the market.

Back during the March heat waves the below graphs shows what can happen in the reliable fossil fuel energy sector. This is for the Millmerran coal-fired power station in QLD. The red line is what happened to wholesale power costs.

Because wind power, and solar PV, are generally smaller installations and spread out geographically, they tend to have smaller impacts on 5 minute availability if any suffers failure or production declines. The second chart shows how reliable wind power is in aggregate. Pretty much +/-5% which is probably as reliable as one can get without exponentially increasing costs.

The last graph shows just how good at prediction wind produced electricity - between 2-4%.

Considering wind farms are now cheaper to build than most new power generators - except maybe for very inefficient peak capacity - to me it makes economic and social equity sense to transition away from fossil fuels as much as we can. It's also provides economic insulation in that once a renewable energy plant is up and running the ongoing costs are minor compared to standard plants. In California they now have robotic cleaners that don't use water that go around cleaning the panels on some of the large installations out in the desert. We could be doing similar here.

 

[medicowallet]

Why should we pay next to nothing for electricity? The networks are massively expensive to run if you want them to be reliable, and they have to be reliable otherwise the other costs probably increase more than what you save.

Because as a country, we own the coal.

Nice graphs etc by the way, however I am not debating that with you (although I wonder why in Australia wind power is heavily subsidised)..

What I am saying is that any new science must be wrong, because all of the accurate science has BEEN SETTLED.

and by settled I mean finalised, accurate, and law/fact/unchallengeable.

Don't try to defend this modernist stance, it is clearly wrong.

MW

 

[sydboy007]

Because as a country, we own the coal.

Nice graphs etc by the way, however I am not debating that with you (although I wonder why in Australia wind power is heavily subsidised)..

What I am saying is that any new science must be wrong, because all of the accurate science has BEEN SETTLED.

and by settled I mean finalised, accurate, and law/fact/unchallengeable.

Don't try to defend this modernist stance, it is clearly wrong.

MW

Argue to those who said it was settle. The theory of gravity isn't settled yet, so I've only ever accepted that, on the probabilities, the likeliest cause of the global warming we've seen is due to increased greenhouse gases.

I'd say those against this view are just as "settled" in their views. They leave no doubt that the world could be warming. It's those in the middle who provide a better response either way. Extremism never gets us very far.

If you are arguing against subsidies to wind farms, are you also against the subsidies still received by the fossil fuel industries.

You could argue whether charging the resource companies fuel excise is or isn't a good thing (it is an efficient and low distorting tax), but the favours provided to the industry are high.

Until last year the NSW Govt had been trying to build the Cobbora coal mine at a cost of $1.5B and then sell the coal to power generators at just $30 / tonne. Unfortunately Origin energy made like bandits, getting the Earing power station for just $50M and another $300M in "compensation" because they would not receive the heavily subsidised cheap coal. Got to give NSW Labor the credit for such a stoopid idea for overt fossil fuel subsidies.

Environment Victoria released earlier this year, which has looked at 2013 Treasury data and forecast it forward to 2016/2017. The result? Subsidies continue to grow and if we compare 2016 to 2005 subsidies to the fossil fuel sector are expected to have grown by 71.4%.

The second chart seems to show we're an economy built on subsidies.

The AEMO has come out and confirmed that even though the RET has a direct cost to businesses, the suppression effect it has had on wholesale electricity prices over the remaining 70%+ of the market has meant the next cost is basically 0 - you do have to get your head around the merit order affect and how this impacts on wholesale electricity pricing. So in my way of thinking the RET is a near $0 cost form of greatly reducing the carbon emission and associated health costs in the electricity sector, while also helping to make the electricity network more resilient. How is it in any way a sane policy for the current Government to look at watering it down and replacing it with DA which is going to add billions in costs to tax payers?

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/ret-repeal-would-be-win-for-incumbents-pain-for-everyone-else-32803

The report points to a recent study from the University of Melbourne which suggested rooftop PV could be responsible for a reduction of $2-4/MWh in average electricity prices per 1,000MW installed across the NEM.

Under this scenario, ROAM estimates Australian households would pay more than half a billion dollars a year extra for electricity in 2020, and up to $1.4 billion more each year beyond. That’s around $50 extra per year per household by 2020, and up to $140 per year more beyond then.

“In addition to the $20 billion of investment already generated, the Renewable Energy Target will drive a further $14.5 billion of investment in large-scale renewable energy out to 2020, as well as many billions more in household renewable energy such as (rooftop) solar power,” said the CEC in a media statement accompanying the report’s release on Wednesday. “If the policy is removed, most of this simply won’t happen.”

 

[medicowallet]

Good Effort Sydboy. There are a lot of words there.

If whoever granted the mining licences actually made a percentage of coal a compulsory price for local consumption, then we could have much cheaper power at the expense of mining company profits, which would help drive production in the mining sector, and also help keep production costs here lower.

As for your data, it is often irrelevant to produce "subsidies" without also including how much revenue is generated by those industries, and I am not aware of what those figures are.

I will repeat my prior statement that I AM NOT INTERESTED in entering your debate with you, because I am truly not interested, however you may continue to have this debate with yourself if you so choose.

I am interested in the debate about the science, the settled science with the great vibe. The settled science that infers that CO2 produced by man is driving catastrophic global warming (read climate change) that we can fix.

That is the real issue, because we will be dead before we can do anything else.

The seas will boil, acid will rain from the sky etc etc

I am truly scared for myself and future generations.

MW

 

[basilio]

Always interesting to observe how people think... particularly on this forum.

For example "the science is settled" statement regarding global warming. Yep no argument from me at this stage. On all overwhelming available theoretical evidence and physical observations the world is warming very rapidly and us banging a few trillions tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is the major reason for this current warming.

Now with regard to just how fast the ice caps are going to melt with this warming ? Well that piece of science hasn't been settled yet. And it just so happens that now because our scientists are so smart and our technology getting so much better we can now see through the bottom of the glaciers and discover the huge ravines that will enable our newly warmed oceans to get in under the glaciers and create a nice (geologically) quick melt. Isn't science grand ?

All clear now folks ?

________________________________________

By the way Medico Wallet that was an excellent video clip you offered regarding weather/climate. Great summary of the science.

Cheers

 

[medicowallet]

Yep and it is all settled in the direction that the iPcc. Feels the vibe of

All settled. The vibe is clear and the science is like Don. Is Don is good

Mw

 

[Smurf1976]

Because wind power, and solar PV, are generally smaller installations and spread out geographically, they tend to have smaller impacts on 5 minute availability if any suffers failure or production declines. The second chart shows how reliable wind power is in aggregate. Pretty much +/-5% which is probably as reliable as one can get without exponentially increasing costs.

The problem is the magnitude of change rather than the rate of it.

Forecasting production is certainly useful, AEMO does it as do most of the wind farm owners themselves. No argument there, we can do reasonably accurate forecasts.

But suppose that the forecast has wind operating at 20% of capacity at a time when we need it to be operating at a higher level. That's a very real problem if we actually transition to renewables, as distinct from simply using them to supplement a predominantly fossil fuel and hydro system.

How does one go about directing a market participant (eg wind farm) to increase the wind speed at their site? Who has the actual power to issue such a direction? AEMO can't do it, wind farm owners can't do it, the Prime Minister, the Queen or the US President can't do it. God would be the only chance, but last time I checked he wasn't known for spending much time in power control rooms, indeed they don't even have his phone number.

Therein lies the problem. Wind is an intermittent energy source. We can predict it but we can't control it. I suspect that society isn't going to work too well if we come to the point of AEMO predicting that offices can open between 4am and noon tomorrow and that dinner will be able to be cooked between 11pm and midnight.

Wind can certainly work as an energy source as can solar. But to do so requires storage. And at present, storage either costs a fortune to build on sufficient scale or necessitates what the Greens despise more than anything else - big dams.

Until such time as we deal with the storage issue, plus load shifting to the extent that it's practical (and there are definite limits which get worse as the economy moves more toward a "service" economy since manufacturing is a lot easier to load shift in bulk than anything else) then we're stuck with wind, solar etc as supplements to a predominantly fossil fuel and hydro power system rather than being a replacement for it as such.

Electric cars are another one to throw into the mix. They're not really mainstream yet, but a few are on the roads and a few homes are having dedicated charging circuits installed. Trouble is, those charging circuits are pulling some pretty serious current and there's only so much time shifting that can be done. And needless to say, most of that charging is going to happen when the sun isn't shining. It works fine as a means of increasing overnight load on a system relying on conventional power sources (fossil fuel, hydro, nuclear) but if x kWh must be delivered between 7pm and 6am to charge an electric car well then it must be delivered between 7pm and 6am whether or not the wind is blowing (and the sun sure won't be shining). Now, to the extent that we have electric vehicles raising the overnight load in the suburbs, it reduces any network benefit from distributed generation such as solar. There's no gain in reducing daytime loads if the actual peak is at night.

As an educated guess as to what we'll actually end up with:

More wind and more solar definitely. Plus an assortment of other renewables where they're available. Already happening

Some efforts to develop a smart grid, though it will be of moderate effectiveness only (used to shift loads by minutes or hours, not days or weeks). Already happening to a limited extent

Some reworking of existing hydro to direct production away from base and intermediate loads and more toward intermittent (not every day) very sharp peaks. That's more turbines, more penstocks, bigger head and tail races etc but not new dams as such in most cases apart from a re-regulating pond here and there. Already happening to some extent, mostly through uprating of existing machines

Significant new transmission investment to make all this work. More investment, more and bigger lines but not much of an increase in total volumes moved. The cost will ultimately be socialised - you'll pay for the grid running past your house whether you are connected or not. "Off grid" will still incur a grid access fee (unless there is no grid physically available) and it won't be cheap. Precedent is set by the water industry

Coal will still be around, but it will shift heavily to underground coal gasification and using the gas to generate electricity primarily due to the much greater flexibility in operation. Underground coal gasification will, in practice, compete with natural gas as a fuel source. Establishment of the Qld LNG plants is opening the way for domestic (industrial and power) use of gasified coal via greatly increasing the price of natural gas

Conventional coal and nuclear power = dead in the long term as they're simply too inflexible in operation and uneconomic with intermittent use, especially so for nuclear. But we'll keep most of the current coal-fired plants for quite a while yet since they've already been built. Such plants are already struggling economically, and not just in Australia with a few closures already happening

 

[sydboy007]

But suppose that the forecast has wind operating at 20% of capacity at a time when we need it to be operating at a higher level. That's a very real problem if we actually transition to renewables, as distinct from simply using them to supplement a predominantly fossil fuel and hydro system.

I'm a bit confused by this. I can understand an issue where the forecast is say for 100 MWh of production and it turns out to be only 60, but if you have a forecast of a certain level then I'd assume you would look to other sources to make up for the forecast deficit.

I don't see us being able to remove fossil fuel from our electricity network in the medium term, baring some massively cheap breakthrough in battery technology relatively soon. But I do believe that with the new software and systems coming out to manage the electricity networks that it will be viable to have much higher levels of variable renewable energy in the mix. How high that is, I'm not sure, but I don't think we're anywhere near that level as yet.

There's already systems being used in the USA that look at cloud cover and can predict the impact on the large solar farms there.

I'm hoping someone finally builds one of the proposed solar uplift towers. A small version worked for a number of years in Spain successfully, but no one has yet built one of the 1KM tall production units yet. There had been a proposal to build one on the border of NSW and VIC, but I've not heard of any progress. There's a small one in China producing around 200kW and an Aussie company is proposing to build a near 1KM high one in Arizona or Texas that will produce an estimated 200MWh (costing 700-800M USD). They're looking to use one to power the observatory in the Atacama dessert in Chile as well, even looking at if it is impossible to build an inflatable tower.

 

[Smurf1976]

I'm a bit confused by this. I can understand an issue where the forecast is say for 100 MWh of production and it turns out to be only 60, but if you have a forecast of a certain level then I'd assume you would look to other sources to make up for the forecast deficit.

Therein lies the problem. So far as alternative sources are concerned:

Nuclear - doesn't really work in an intermittent application. Can be done technically but the economics are terrible.

Coal - works but only to a point and the economics suffer since most of the cost of power from coal is that of building and maintaining the plant and running at low loads (or worse still, intermittently) kills efficiency. How hard you run it doesn't make a huge difference to the total cost - even at the export price for coal (which is higher than the domestic price for lower grade coal) it's still only 2.5 cents / kWh variable cost. And for lower grade coal it's 0.3 - 1.5 cents. So that's the price you really need to use for the value of wind or solar - the variable cost of running a coal plant, not the cost of building it in the first place if it still has to be built anyway.

Oil - works but far too expensive.

Gas - works as long as we use open cycle gas turbines, which incur a 50% fuel penalty (and 50% more emissions) than an efficient gas-fired plant. So we can use gas to balance renewables certainly, but there's zero gain with a one third renewable / two thirds gas mix compared to simply using 100% gas in a more efficient plant.

Hydro - works almost perfectly in an intermittent application, hydro plants can be ramped from nothing to full load and back again incredibly fast (seconds in some cases). But hydro is a limited resource especially in the Australian context and not all plants we currently have are actually capable of intermittent operation in an efficient manner.

It's the duplication that adds to the cost of renewables. From a purely economic perspective, we're not saving the cost of power from coal per se, we're just saving the actual coal itself which is cheap. We still incur the big cost of having the power station there in the first place.

Part of the reason there are so many wind farms in SA is the wind resource itself but another big factor is the dominance of gas in SA. Without wind, SA would be roughly 70% reliant on gas for electricity and the capacity of existing transmission between SA and Vic doesn't change this hugely (noting that coal costs in SA are also relatively higher than Vic).

Wholesale market prices (annual average) in SA and Vic as follows:

1998-99 = 156.02 (SA) / 36.33 (Vic)
1999-2000 = 59.27 / 26.35
2000-01 = 56.39 / 44.57
01 - 02 = 31.61 / 30.97
02 - 03 = 30.11 / 27.56
03 - 04 = 34.86 / 25.38
04 - 05 = 36.07 / 27.62
05 - 06 = 37.76 / 32.47
06 - 07 = 51.61 / 54.80
07 - 08 = 73.50 / 46.79
08 - 09 = 50.98 / 41.82
09 - 10 = 55.31 / 36.28
10 - 11 = 32.58 / 27.09
11 - 12 = 30.28 / 27.28
12 - 13 = 69.75 / 57.44
13 - 14 to date = 62.34 / 51.67

So prices in SA have been, with one exception, higher than in Vic for the 16 year existence of the National Electricity Market. And suffice to say that part of the reason for building the Vic - SA interconnect in the first place was for SA to access cheap off-peak electricity from coal-fired generation in Victoria.

Ultimately we have to go renewable, no doubt about that whatsoever in the long term. But the variable cost of coal (or an efficient gas plant until 2017) is way lower than the cost of building and operating wind or solar.

Of course, if you can build something renewable that actually contributes to firm, dispatchable capacity (Eg solar with storage) well then everything changes since now you have an actual alternative to coal or gas rather than simply a means of using less fuel in a plant you still need anyway.

That changes the economics drastically - solar with storage, geothermal or hydro compete directly against the entire cost of building and operating a fossil fuel power station. In contrast, intermittent sources like wind are really only competing against the cost of fuel itself which is relatively cheap. Big difference there.

 

[burglar]

... Electric cars are another one to throw into the mix. They're not really mainstream yet, but a few are on the roads and a few homes are having dedicated charging circuits installed ...

If we look to America, the charge speed in "charge stations" is x3 normal.
I note that some of the latest "charge stations" are in McDonalds' in Florida.
Hava burger, while we charge the Tesla!


In the lab, nanotechnology in batteries will be improving that by several factors.

The pace of these changes is dictated by the volume of car sales.


tesla/roadster/charging

 

[sydboy007]

If we look to America, the charge speed in "charge stations" is x3 normal.
I note that some of the latest "charge stations" are in McDonalds' in Florida.
Hava burger, while we charge the Tesla!


In the lab, nanotechnology in batteries will be improving that by several factors.

The pace of these changes is dictated by the volume of car sales.


tesla/roadster/charging

The issue wiith electric cars is the batteries.

Lithium is the lightest metal hence provides the highest capacity for a given weight. Lithium is fairly rare, difficult to handle, hard to recycle. Unless they come up with ways to drastically reduce the amount of lithium required I just don't see electric cars being anything more than a niche product.

Having said that, if they do improve the charging rates it might be Ok to have small batteries in electric cars. Most worker commutes and day to day trips are something like 15-20KM, so instead of having a battery capable of a 80KM trip you could drop back to 40KM.

But then you get into issues of how do you build an electricity network that can handle such a massive power draw. Maybe increased solar PV will help with that, but it's another limiting factor.

 

[basilio]

Large industrial batteries for cost effective storage of wind/PV ect exist and are being rapidly commercialized.

What is lacking is the recognition that NOT moving rapidly in the direction of renewables is just going to shorten whatever time we have to adapt to the global warming already in the pipeline.

MW. I don't know what stuff you read and somehow accept as real but if your argument against the reality of global warming is insufficient evidence of warming .... then clearly no logic or evidence will ever persuade you.

But what else is new in this discussion ?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterde...nd-iron-chromium-megawatt-scale-flow-battery/
http://blog.sfgate.com/energy/2014/05/23/enervault-unveils-large-scale-flow-batteries/
http://phys.org/news/2014-05-graphene-large-scale-electricity-storage.html
http://www.aquionenergy.com/grid-scale-batteries

 

[medicowallet]

MW. I don't know what stuff you read and somehow accept as real but if your argument against the reality of global warming is insufficient evidence of warming .... then clearly no logic or evidence will ever persuade you.

when reality matches the data predicted, I'm all on board.

But having been a scientist for a very long time, and having conducted research that has been presented internationally, I can assure you that a good theory is just that. It is only validated by observation.

Do I think the world is warming, yes, are we contributing, yes.

Are we contributing to dangerous global warming? unsure
Is what we are doing the main driver? unsure
Can we stop it if we wanted to? unsure (but I think very unlikely)
Are the IPCC reports accurate? no
Are they chasing their tail to try to match the measured data? likely


If the IPCC was correct, why do they need to keep revising all the time?

If the doom and gloom predictions are to be validated, can what we actually reflect just at least match what they are predicting?

I follow and practice evidence based medicine. I have no problem with people who are smarter than me guiding what I do. BUT if I notice that there are issues with how a study is conducted, or what I observe across a decent sample is not what is reported, sure a heck I will question it.

MW

 

[sydboy007]

Do I think the world is warming, yes, are we contributing, yes.

Are we contributing to dangerous global warming? unsure
Is what we are doing the main driver? unsure
Can we stop it if we wanted to? unsure (but I think very unlikely)
Are the IPCC reports accurate? no
Are they chasing their tail to try to match the measured data? likely

Your views match mine reasonably well. With a system as complex as global weather it's more about the probabilities than definitive answers. I personally believe the horse is so far down the road that all we can do is hope to adapt to a hotter world.

For myself I tend to view the issues around fossil fuels as a financial one. They're running out fairly quickly, new sources are increasingly expensive to bring online, new sources also seem to chew up more resources just to get the same level of production. I hate that we're providing billions of dollars in revenue to Governments that treat their citizens poorly, and have medieval views on woman. I'd love to close out borders to them and just ignore them for a few centuries until they've gone through their version of the dark ages.

The current fuel systems we have in placed received massive subsidies to get them to where they are, and still receive massive subsidies. I certainly don't want us going the path of the UK and installing nuclear power with a base cost of $160kWh wholesale pricing which is what they have saddled their economy with to get 2 new reactors built by the private sector.

I've yet to see anyone provide scientifically verifiable evidence that wind farms cause any health issues to those living near by so I say lets bring on as much capacity as we can, build the IT systems to cope with a far higher level of variable energy production, start examining the grid scale battery technologies out there, and if we can't bring ourselves to stop the fossil fuel subsidies, then at least start providing them on a similar scale to the renewables sector.

I'd also like to believe we might actually be able to create some IP in this space to help pay for the lifestyles we've become accustomed to, but the multi decade long neglect of the CSIRO makes me believe that's not too likely, especially since Science doesn't even rate a ministry position in the current Government.

 

[Smurf1976]

If we look to America, the charge speed in "charge stations" is x3 normal.

Many will point to electric vehicles as being an ideal load to run at night. Most car use is in the day, the cars can't be charged while they're being driven, hence the logic of charging at night.

But right throughout the economy there are many examples of being able to purchase the exact same good or service at a markedly different price depending on how you buy it.

Eg at one of the major supermarkets, you can buy a 2 Litre bottle of a certain brand of soft drink for one price, or you can buy the 1.25 Litre sitting right next to it at a higher price not per litre, but a higher price as such for the item. And you can pay an even higher price for a single bottle if you get the 600mL one instead.

That's a fairly extreme case, the nominal price of a small one being higher than a bigger version of the same product, but there are many more less extreme cases. Apart from fuel, practically anything sold at service stations costs considerably more than buying the same item elsewhere. Chips, chocolate, tissues, cigarettes, ice cream or whatever - servo prices are higher than other retailers for the exact same item. And yet people are clearly willing to pay the extra.

And so it will be with electric car charging. Pay $x to charge cheaply at home overnight or pay a higher price to charge during the day or in a public car park. There will be no shortage of people choosing the higher priced option, even though the car has sufficient charge to not actually need recharging until that night.

In all these energy discussions, something often missed is what I call rationality bias. Engineers, either on the energy supply side or on matters of efficiency, along with those inclined toward "green" matters, both make the same mistake. They tend to assume that if something is cheaper or otherwise better then consumers will adopt it - WRONG!

CFL lighting and heat pump water heaters have been around since the 1980's and solar water heating has been around a lot longer than that. But it took government regulation to make them "popular" - the market alone didn't achieve it. There may well have been a financial saving, but consumers tend to stick to what is familiar or convenient unless the cost of the less efficient option in absolute $ terms is so high as to be causing considerable pain. Hence things like solar hot water never achieved much without government regulation and things like LPG in vehicles has never got that far either - and it won't unless the price of petrol goes high enough to give consumers little choice other than to change.

It's the same elsewhere, consumers choose convenience over price or quality unless the price is seriously high or the quality bad enough to be a problem. Witness the boom in MP3 music (inferior quality but very convenient) over the higher quality sound of CD's as just one example - aiming for the best sound was fashionable for a while during the 1970's and 80's but it's given way to outright convenience since, in practice, the sound quality of MP3 is good enough for most.

If it costs $5 to charge an electric vehicle during the day and $2 to charge it overnight then a lot of that charging will in practice be done during the day. As such, electric vehicles won't contribute as much to load leveling on the grid as many assume - sure there will be some off-peak charging but there will be some additional peak load as well.

 

[Smurf1976]

For myself I tend to view the issues around fossil fuels as a financial one. They're running out fairly quickly, new sources are increasingly expensive to bring online, new sources also seem to chew up more resources just to get the same level of production.

That is itself evidence of resource depletion. We've used up the best (most easily accessible and highest quality) sources and are now looking to what's left.

In the Australian context, ideas of exporting lower quality coal not even remotely close to a port or even the coast in Qld is one example. A proposal to export inferior grade (sub-bituminous) coal from Tasmania is another one. Nobody would be even slightly interested in these resources, apart from local use near the source due to the avoided cost of transport, if there was an abundance of higher grade resources still available for development.

The same can be said in a more extreme way with oil and gas (far less abundant than coal).

Oil - we're drilling in ultra deep water. We're spending a fortune trying to maintain some sort of order in various countries with large oil fields. We're mining sand and washing the tar out of it (then having to put all that sand somewhere - it's an almighty mess to be honest). We're emulsifying bitumen underground in Venezuela then once it's above ground processing it into something that resembles crude oil minus the water. And so on. Nobody would be interested in any of this beyond a research stage if we still had plenty of easily accessible, high quality oil available like we used to.

Gas - coal seam and shale gas says it all. More expensive and more environmentally risky than conventional gas. We're using it for one reason only - there isn't enough conventional gas available to meet demand like there once was.

We're not about to run out of fuel tomorrow, no chance of that. But slowly but surely we're using up the best deposits and moving on to progressively worse options. Mine sand to get some low quality oil out of it via a hugely expensive process. Risk the ground water to get gas. Mine coal, put it on a train for a few hundred km just to get it to where it can be put on a ship and it's inferior quality coal anyway. We've already picked the low handing fruit, now we've got the ladder out and are starting to realise that pretty soon we'll need scaffolding to do the job.

Where all this does clash with the CO2 issue however is low grade coal. From an energy security and resource use perspective, rationally we'd be doing everything we can to save oil and then gas, with brown coal being the preferred fossil fuel since there's plenty of it. But the CO2 issue has given rise to the silly idea of baseload gas-fired power stations to replace brown coal - irrational from a resource perspective (and not likely to really happen given the costs).