Resisting Climate Hysteria

overhang said:

I'd hate to imagine the cost of doing this.

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Cost wouldn't even come into the Greens' thinking. Irrelevant as far as they're concerned.

sptrawler said:

Base load for the foreseeable future, will be supplied by our dirty fuels, nuclear being the only viable alternative.

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We aimed at 20% of electricity generation by 2020 and now circumstances have the coal fired generators scared $hitless of the likely hood of 27-28% by that date, along with the 30,000 people employed in that sector by 2020. Who no doubt would like to keep working* (see note)after that date and vote. How long will it take to get to 50% and beyond ??

It's not me you have to argue with, it's the math............. good luck.

*thats working people, poeple with jobs and families and businesses, employed people, productive poeple, skilled poeple. In an industry that makes you the home owner a producer a capitalist 'the owner of the means of production' i.e a threat to the status quo.

orr said:

We aimed at 20% of electricity generation by 2020 and now circumstances have the coal fired generators scared $hitless of the likely hood of 27-28% by that date, along with the 30,000 people employed in that sector by 2020. Who no doubt would like to keep working* (see note)after that date and vote. How long will it take to get to 50% and beyond ??

It's not me you have to argue with, it's the math............. good luck.

*thats working people, poeple with jobs and families and businesses, employed people, productive poeple, skilled poeple. In an industry that makes you the home owner a producer a capitalist 'the owner of the means of production' i.e a threat to the status quo.

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If they ever get the storage issue and batteries sorted then sky's the limit.

sydboy007 said:

Hydro might win out if you factor in using it as peaking energy and using excess renewable energy to pump water back into the reservoir - the Danes make a lot of money doing this as part of the Euro energy system.

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There's 3 pumped storage schemes in Australia at present. Wivenhoe (Qld), Shoalhaven (NSW) and Tumut 3 (part of the Snowy scheme).

But there's no need to actually do any pumping in order to take advantage of price swings. If you look at the situation right now, Hydro Tas is basically giving away as much of its' baseload market as transmission constraints allow (though there's still some baseload production certainly, but nowhere near as much as there was in the past two years when prices were much higher) but I can assure you that it's still very actively pursuing generation into the peaks.

There's also a long term trading strategy involved too. Without naming specifics, we could completely shut down one particular power station (and it's a decent sized one) for the next 4 years and hold every drop of water in storage. There's another one (with an even bigger peak capacity) where it could be done for 2 years and both of those are assuming average rainfall.

They're not shut down completely in practice, but there's no point generating at 2 cents / kWh when you've got the alternative option of storing the water for use at some future time. With the prospect of a future carbon price (in whatever form) being introduced plus the rise in gas prices that's certainly coming, there's just no point giving power away right now.

In the Australian context, the Snowy scheme was primarily built for peaking power generation right from the start whereas the Tasmanian system was built for baseload - there isn't a single generating unit in the Tas system that was designed for peak operation, not one. So Snowy has a larger peak capacity but generates only half the actual energy that Tas does.

From what I've read we've pretty much used up all the A and B grade dam sites. What's left is relativity small sites. Not sure how economic they would be. Happy to be proved wrong though.

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There's still quite a few "big" schemes that could be built, indeed the single largest one remains undeveloped and there's quite a few other decent ones too.

But from the industry's perspective (note that this is purely my own view), I'll put it this way. Hydro Tas has, as part of the centenary celebrations, just run a touring exhibition with lots of photos etc from the past century and suffice to say that the "No Dams" case is featured prominently in that complete with constantly rolling footage from the blockade and protests of the early 1980's.

And if you were to go to the most controversial hydro scheme that was actually built, Gordon, well there's a sign at one of the lookout points over Lake Pedder which tells the story of the controversy surrounding it. To paraphrase, construction of that scheme changed the way Australians think about the natural environment (from memory those are pretty much the exact words) and it wouldn't be built today. And yes, it was the Hydro itself which produced and installed that sign.

On the other hand, if you talk to the harder line environmentalists then they too have come to see the other side over the years. Not every single one of them, but certainly there's plenty who now see it as a very "grey" debate versus the "black versus white" arguments of the 70's and 80's. You put a river under water, that's the downside, but you get reliable renewable energy as a result and that's the upside.

There's no realistic chance that a major new scheme will be built anytime soon and I think that everyone knows that regardless of their view as to whether that should or shouldn't be the case. But in the long term, say the next few decades, well I think that most expect we'll see a re-run of the great dams debate at some point.

Nobody's going to push to build a dam that loses money, and losing money is exactly what it would do in an environment of baseload electricity being worth 2 cents / kWh and low inflation. But those things are cyclical and at some point someone will probably want to dam something.

My personal expectation is that we'll carry on "business as usual" with fossil fuels until such time as either technology makes them obsolete or we reach a crisis point where BAU simply cannot sensibly continue. If the latter occurs, well that's when "anything that works" comes into play, big dams in the wilderness included.

Personally, I'll say this. It would be an outright tragedy to flood pristine wilderness simply in order to generate electricity that is wasted running computers all night that nobody is using and the like. We need to get our act together with efficiency first, then decide the best means of producing sensible amounts of power that are actually needed.

overhang said:

I'd hate to imagine the cost of doing this.

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The Greens most certainly think about costs. If solar and wind were given the same incentives, grants, tax concessions, fuel rebates and suport it would be cheaper than oil, gas and coal. But few will accept change or thinking outside the square. And wave power is another.

Lets just think of the amount that goes into producing oil today. In Alaska it takes a barrell of oil to produce two. Are we hitting a wall perhaps.

Now lets think real big, like when Kennedy said they would land a man on the moon. The engines (rocket power) had a special gas stream to cushion the heat of the fuel burn and metal casing. Sure in learning to do that some exploded and lives were lost, but they did it.

Now to thermal, I mentioned the other day. With big casings and weighted slide valves, and we have the materials now to develop massive generators for real grunt power. But the establishment do not want or are led by the established modes of power production, oil lobby and big investors tied to something they understand.

I remember my Dad in the 60s telling us about a bloke who developed an engine in the 40s that ran on water, and this was combustion, not steam. It was bought out and buried by the oil industry. Another was able to fire up a light globe forty miles away. Again bought out and buried.

Some of my thoughts are fed by an engineer freind who works for Rollsroyce in the UK and of course my Dad who worked on planes in the Airforce during world war 2.

There are many within the Greens that I discuss such issues with. Do not be led by political propaganda and a Press very much driven by the oil lobby and big money. Why do they continue to build big freeways, so that fhey can build new housing estates, thwn block them up with traffic, use more fuel and the cycle keeps winding up. Well the news of expansion peoblems coming out of China the last few days and the shocking gridlock we have here in Melbourne tells me we are going to hit a wall soon and unless more people start thinking as greens then we will haave no one to blame but ourselves.

The following article from Martin Ferguson is well worth a read,

THE hypocrisy and bald zealotry that often masquerade as energy policy “debate” in Canberra have been of an unusually high quality of late.

The “Climate Pact” signed by the USA and China to reduce greenhouse gas emissions appears to be the root cause.

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http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...gy-policy-debate/story-e6frg6zo-1227130067405

IFocus said:

If they ever get the storage issue and batteries sorted then sky's the limit.

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At last, something I agree 100% with you on.

If we can get similar energy density from batteries, as we do from fossil fuels, the sky is the limit.

Solar, wind and even tidal power will become viable.

drsmith said:

The following article from Martin Ferguson is well worth a read,



http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...gy-policy-debate/story-e6frg6zo-1227130067405

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YOU'VE REACHED A SUBSCRIBER-ONLY ARTICLE.
Would you like to become a subscriber for 50% less for the first 12 weeks†? Sign up now and access the full breadth of The Australian's content in minutes.

And you do persist with posting opinion pieces as fact.

theaustralian.com.au/opinion/greens-hypocrisy-evident-in-energy-policy-debate

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Found something not hidden behind a pay wall, news not opinion.

thenewdaily.com.au/news said:

Tony Abbott’s climate change stance has been labelled “eccentric”, “baffling” and that of a “flat-earther” by senior British conservative politicians.

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http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2014/11/21/uk-politicians-slam-abbotts-eccentric-climate-stance/

So_Cynical said:

YOU'VE REACHED A SUBSCRIBER-ONLY ARTICLE.
Would you like to become a subscriber for 50% less for the first 12 weeks†? Sign up now and access the full breadth of The Australian's content in minutes.

And you do persist with posting opinion pieces as fact.

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I'm just posted it as a matter of interest.

Have you read it ?

Don't forget that Martin Ferguson was Labor's Minister for Resources when they were in government.

drsmith said:

I'm just posted it as a matter of interest.

Have you read it ?

.

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We can't read it because you are linking to a pay per view site. Not all of us want to pay for flawed and biased news when we already have someone else throw into our yard/street in the morning, where we can't find it under bushes or under water puddles.

It's bad enough we suffer ourselves by reading rubbish that is filtered by the likes of Chris Dores of the Courier Mail, but to compound it by reading the Australian, which also cherry picks ALP hate articles to satisfy it's largely pigheaded reader demographic is a bit much to warrant the extra dollars paid.

Tisme said:

We can't read it because you are linking to a pay per view site.

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You don't have to be as pure as that but you've clearly drawn your own conclusion in any case.

Andrew Bolt has published a segment of Martin Ferguson's article above,

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailyteleg...armist_frauds_wishing_the_ends_not_the_means/

Martin Ferguson is advocating that NSW and Qld sell off their remaining electricity grids.

That's worked really well in NSW where the price of power has shot through the roof since the distribution network has been privatised.

I don't know who has got to Martin Ferguson, he's obviously acting in the interests of private concerns not consumers.

SirRumpole said:

Martin Ferguson is advocating that NSW and Qld sell off their remaining electricity grids.

That's worked really well in NSW where the price of power has shot through the roof since the distribution network has been privatised.

I don't know who has got to Martin Ferguson, he's obviously acting in the interests of private concerns not consumers.

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Martin Ferguson should be leading the Labor Party........He is the only Labor Party member with any brains.......the socialist left drove him out........A great loss to the Labor Party

SirRumpole said:

That's worked really well in NSW where the price of power has shot through the roof since the distribution network has been privatised.

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There's probably an exception somewhere, but in general terms the introduction of retail competion and/or privatisation (the two being linked ideologically and often also in practice) sends prices up rather than down.

In SA they jacked up gas prices simply to make competition work. Put them up x%, then have this "competition" to bring them half way back down. Ordinary households and small business would have been far better off by retaining a single monopoly supplier.

In Tas they tried to privatise and introduce competition at the retail level. It failed for reasons best explained by saying that nowhere else can an ordinary household get peak power for roughly half their load for under 15 cents / kWh and the rest for 24 cents. In the most directly comparable state in terms of population but with private operation of the industry, SA, even paying 30 cents for the whole lot would be an outright bargain.

Australia used to have the most efficient thermal power stations in the world and we were outright leaders with hydro engineering as well. That gave us the third cheapest electricity in the OECD, beaten only by Canada and NZ with their much higher proportion of hydro. But after all these "reforms", we're running old power stations that would otherwise have been closed years ago, we've even bought second hand plant from overseas, and we're a long way down the list in terms of efficiency both technical and economic.

The reformists have had over 20 years of messing about with electricity and gas now. Their ideas sounded nice on paper but have failed in practice.

the compromises China is already making.

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...es-china-need-to-do-to-meet-its-carbon-pledge

Tony Abbott’s climate sceptic government may pause to consider that China will add enough zero-emissions capacity every year to power the whole of Australia.

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Where there's a will there's usually a way.

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/envi...t-year-ever-three-more-records-broken-n252776

Even if it's freezing in your personal universe, Earth as a whole just broke three "warmest" records and is likely to see 2014 go down as the warmest since record keeping began in 1880, scientists reported Thursday.

Driven by record warm oceans, combined sea and land temperatures in October were the warmest on record, according to data released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. On top of that, January-October was the warmest first 10 calendar months, while November 2013 to October 2014 was the warmest 12-month block.

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Came across some figures which put this whole debate about energy (as distinct from climate per se) into some perspective.

World energy consumption 2009 = 16 TWh

Forecast world energy consumption 2050 = 28 TWh

Reasonably available resources:

Solar = 23,000 TWh / year
Wind = 70 TWh / year
Ocean Thermal = 11 TWh / year
Biomass = 6 TWh / year
Hydro = 4 TWh / year
Conventional (wet) geothermal = 2 TWh / year
Tides = 0.7 TWh / year

Coal = 900 TWh / once only
Uranium = 300 TWh / once only
Oil = 240 TWh / once only
Gas = 215 TWh / once only

Looking at those numbers, many points are apparent.

1. The oil resource is relatively limited especially given the critical nature of it for transport fuel.

2. Gas is also quite limited and would be wisely reserved for high value use in process heating, petrochemicals, fertilizer manufacture, transport etc.

3. Uranium is not a long term solution since it is just another non-renewable resource, and a relatively limited one at that. That said, the current rate of resource extraction is, relative to the resource base, far lower than that of oil or gas thus giving it a longer remaining lifetime.

4. Coal is the only non-renewable resource that could be considered as plentiful relative to world energy consumption.

5. The long established renewable technologies, that is biomass and hydro, cannot of themselves supply all energy but they can and do make a significant contribution. They are of future importance particularly in the context that they are easily able to be stored for use when required.

6. The long term supply of energy must involve a significant contribution from wind, solar or some other technology not listed above. That is not to say there is no future role for other sources, but if we're going to maintain the current and forecast energy usage indefinitely then we're going to have to rely significantly on wind and/or solar to do it.

Not considered above are issues with efficiency of conversion. Eg a coal power station only turns 40% of the energy in coal into electricity whereas for hydro it's at least double that. So developing 1 TWh of hydro, saves 2+ TWh of coal. Etc. There are issues like that with all fuels - eg it takes a lot of energy to turn gas into LNG whereas shipping oil is far more efficient.

I haven't verified those figures, they're just something I came across, but they look to be right at least in a broad "order of magnitude" sense at least for "conventional" energy sources (coal, oil, gas, uranium, biomass and hydro). It's harder to assess accuracy with things like geothermal or tides since basically no country has evaluated its' own resources fully and certainly not globally - any estimate being an educated guess at best.

Smurf1976 said:

The long term supply of energy must involve a significant contribution from wind, solar or some other technology not listed above.

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Molten salt reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor
Pebble-bed reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble-bed_reactor
Traveling-wave reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor

The New wave of Nuclear power.

So_Cynical said:

The New wave of Nuclear power.

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Those alternative approaches do have their advantages certainly, largely in that they extract more energy from what is still ultimately a finite resource. In that sense, they "buy time", and quite a lot of time at that, to switch to something more permanent.

The downside however is cost. Looking at those links, the eventual decommissioning cost alone blows the economics to pieces. If we're going to spend that sort of money, then wind + solar + pumped hydro is a cheaper way to do it.

If we ever do build a nuclear plant, of whatever technology, in Australia then my bet is that it will be built in NSW and will essentially be a government project. Built by private firms yes, but government will be very heavily involved financially with the only question being in the details.

Such an approach of subsidising a specific low-CO2 energy source could be described as "direct action" on the CO2 issue (and I suspect that nuclear power is exactly what the Coalition has in mind at some point).