The future of energy generation and storage

sptrawler said:

I've never said, they don't have good ideas, it is the implementation they stuff up, we would already be stuffed as the only country in the world shutting itself down with a carbon tax which was introduced back then.
Instead of just waiting and fitting in with the world, as a universal carbon tax, is just around the corner.
But the narrative always sounds better, when you don't include the reality.

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If we became more carbon neutral sooner we wouldn't have to pay the carbon taxes that the rest of the world are about to lump on us.

Anyone could see it coming, and being slow off the mark will cost us big bucks.

basilio said:

This is exceptional story of how to pull together rooftop PVs. Incorporates important technical aspects of smoothing power generation and financial structuring that resolves owner vs renter problems.

The weekend read: Powerful equation to expand C&I solar

Big rooftop PV systems on factories, warehouses and public buildings need not be limited by ownership issues nor local grid capacity, claims Australian innovator EleXsys Energy. The company is maxing out an Ikea in Adelaide, Australia, with solar and storage. And it claims its smart technology...

www.pv-magazine.com

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I think in this thread quite a while ago, we suggested all large commercial buildings and car parks etc, should have solar and battery requirement as part of their planning acceptance stage.
From memory, I think it was posted here that the old Holden plant in Elizabeth near Adelaide, was retrofitted with solar.
Yes here it is: An article from March 2021

SirRumpole said:

If we became more carbon neutral sooner we wouldn't have to pay the carbon taxes that the rest of the world are about to lump on us.

Anyone could see it coming, and being slow off the mark will cost us big bucks.

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Introducing it here 10 years ago to put our companies at a bigger disadvantage than they already were, was dumb, if we had been fast off the mark there wouldn't have been anything left to save.
But maybe that would have been better, at least we would be done and dusted, then maybe everyone could get more sensible.
Everyone could see it coming, but no one wanted to be first, because it would put an extra fiscal burden on that countries exports, now everyone is getting on the same page the burden will be equal on everyone. Especially China and its exports IMO, they are the biggest emitter.

sptrawler said:

Introducing it here 10 years ago to put our companies at a bigger disadvantage than they already were, was dumb, if we had been fast off the mark there wouldn't have been anything left to save.
But maybe that would have been better, at least we would be done and dusted, then maybe everyone could get more sensible.

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OK say no more.

Truce ?

sptrawler said:

Introducing it here 10 years ago to put our companies at a bigger disadvantage than they already were, was dumb, if we had been fast off the mark there wouldn't have been anything left to save.
But maybe that would have been better, at least we would be done and dusted, then maybe everyone could get more sensible.
Everyone could see it coming, but no one wanted to be first, because it would put an extra fiscal burden on that countries exports, now everyone is getting on the same page the burden will be equal on everyone. Especially China and its exports IMO, they are the biggest emitter.

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Bunkum!
The carbon price was placed on large emitters for the financial years 2012/13 and 2013/14.
As evidenced from our employment data over the period (below) manufacturing employment was significantly higher during these 2 years compared to the 2 years after it was abolished:
Total employment continued to rise as well.
So we were not put at a disadvantage back then, as you suggest. But, as @SirRumpole suggests, our manufacturers in coming years will likely be competing against countries that have already been pricing-in carbon.
The other failing from Abbott's carbon price abolition was a reversal of the new momentum towards renewables. Aside from residential solar we are well behind where we would otherwise have been, and that's including neglecting to plan for the necessary infrastructure to transition to renewables.
Luckily for us there elements of the private sector that continue to force the hand of government so that we aren't so far behind that we cannot catch up.

Total employment continued to rise for several years, as the mining boom continued and we were even bringing in cleaners from the Philippines.
The two biggest emitters have only recently moved toward a carbon tax, the U.S and China, Australia will no doubt fall in line when a standard tax becomes obvious as we are with net zero, this of course doesn't carry the fanfare that some political parties like, but it does make sense to many IMO.
From the article: Printed 10/ Sept 2021
Carbon Tax in China

China recently launched its national emissions trading scheme, making it the world’s largest carbon market. On the first day of its opening on July 16, the market saw 4.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide quotas worth USD$32 millions traded. The country will likely push for more market-based mechanisms to help lower carbon emissions and to help reach its zero emission target by 2060.

Lack of Emissions Trading System in the US

One of the most glaring absences from the list is the US, especially considering they are one of the world’s largest carbon emitters. While President Joe Biden has made a significant push for his clean energy agenda since stepping into office – he pledged to slash US emissions by 50% by 2030, reach zero emissions by 2050, and signed an executive order to make 50% of all new US cars electric by 2030 – he has notably failed to include any carbon pricing initiatives or schemes in his clean energy plan. Democrats’ proposal of adopting a carbon border tax was largely ignored by the White House.

sptrawler said:

Total employment continued to rise for several years, as the mining boom continued and we were even bringing in cleaners from the Philippines.

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The mining boom was over 2 years before carbon pricing, and housemaids account for diddly squat employment!
As the 2021 map below shows, we are not even at the start line for an ETS or similar program.


Presently we cannot compete with Asia on labour costs, we cannot compete with the USA on market size, and we cannot compete with Europe on carbon pricing.
I am at a loss to understand your logic on how our companies might play catch up once we do implement any sort of carbon pricing, let alone a unified one, given our pricing would have to increase as a result. Moreover, Europe for example, might decrease their pricing due to already having a high price on carbon in place.

The above is a bit off topic. But when we had a carbon price in place there was economic imperative for major emitters to shift focus to renewables and gas over coal. Abbott changed that, manufacturing jobs continued their decline despite Coalition rhetoric that claimed jobs would return, and our electricity market since then has been nothing other than a bugger's muddle.

From my recollection the mining boom was over in 2015, it peaked in 2012, well in W.A that's how I remember it.

I didn't say our companies will play catch up, when we implement a carbon price, I said we will probably implement a carbon pricing method that aligns with other Countries as opposed to preceding other countries.

Where we have an advantage, we will no doubt grow, as is the case currently with mineral extraction, forward looking that advantage will probably be in renewable energy. Shame we shut down solar panel manufacturing in Sydney's Homebush in 2009, because of cheap imports from China, no doubt putting a carbon tax on the power the factory used would have helped. I mean seriously.
What might have helped would have been if Kev gave them a break, as it was a "clean energy business", instead of sending them offshore.
You know who I mean, clean, green back of the napkin Kev.
Lets bring in a carbon tax and shut down solar panel manufacturing FFS, how ironic.

Where countries that manufacture goods using carbon intensive energy e.g China, one would assume they will incur an extra cost on their product.
If we have a surcharge put on our coal, that surcharge will no doubt be passed on to whoever buys it and that in turn makes their unit costs higher, which will drive more push to cleaner energy.
As can be seen in the rest of the world at the moment, their electricity market is the biggest bugger's muddle of all, so what point you are driving at escapes me.

sptrawler said:

I'm certainly looking forward to seeing some of these companies, like coregas, do something to mitigate their carbon footprint other than talk up a storm.
They have been in business for a long time, making hydrogen from natural gas and their parent company isn't short of a quid, so why haven't they invested in some renewables in their process already?

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Correct me if I am wrong, but I always thought that making hydrogen from natural gas creates a byproduct called Co2.
They may as well just burn the natural gas and be done with it.
Mick

mullokintyre said:

Correct me if I am wrong, but I always thought that making hydrogen from natural gas creates a byproduct called Co2.
They may as well just burn the natural gas and be done with it.
Mick

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Exactly what I was getting at, coregas (WES) applauding the move toward clean hydrogen, when they could have been moving toward it for years, instead of making dirty hydrogen. It is just some failed to pick up on the irony.

sptrawler said:

Introducing it here 10 years ago to put our companies at a bigger disadvantage than they already were, was dumb,

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Not if we put a carbon tax on imports like what is being done to us now.

SirRumpole said:

Not if we put a carbon tax on imports like what is being done to us now.

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Us put a carbon tax on China, yeh that would have been a hoot, jeez Rumpy get a grip.
We $hit ourselves when they put an embargo on our crayfish, imagine if we started our own tax back then on Chinese crap coming here we had already shut everything down.
All China would have done is put an sanctions on sending junk here, the shops would be empty in a week, look what happened with toilet roll and we make it here.
If we adopt a carbon tax and or a carbon goal, it makes sense to just conform with what is accepted by the major players, to try and drive the World agenda from Australia just confirms how we are perceived overseas, suffering from 'short man syndrome'.

sptrawler said:

Us put a carbon tax on China, yeh that would have been a hoot, jeez Rumpy get a grip.
We $hit ourselves when they put an embargo on our crayfish, imagine if we started our own tax back then on Chinese crap coming here we had already shut everything down.
All China would have done is put an sanctions on sending junk here, the shops would be empty in a week, look what happened with toilet roll and we make it here.
If we adopt a carbon tax and or a carbon goal, it makes sense to just conform with what is accepted by the major players, to try and drive the World agenda from Australia just confirms how we are perceived overseas, suffering from 'short man syndrome'.

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OK, the world is now going down the carbon tax route and we will be dragged along like it or not, so Barnaby and the Nats will have no choice but to suck it up imo.

sptrawler said:

What might have helped would have been if Kev gave them a break, as it was a "clean energy business", instead of sending them offshore.
You know who I mean, clean, green back of the napkin Kev.
Lets bring in a carbon tax and shut down solar panel manufacturing FFS, how ironic.

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Manufacturing employment was barely affected by Big Kev, but screwed after Abbott got in so you are clutching at straws on that one!

sptrawler said:

Where countries that manufacture goods using carbon intensive energy e.g China, one would assume they will incur an extra cost on their product.

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Except that China is a much more efficient manufacturer than Australia using the CO2 metric in its energy consumption:
Twenty years ago China fossil fuel per capita electricity footprint was at 82%. Today it's 18 percentage points lower, due to renewables, despite massive increases in total electricity consumption over that period. In fact over the past 5 years China's renewables capacity additions have increased three times more than coal's:

sptrawler said:

As can be seen in the rest of the world at the moment, their electricity market is the biggest bugger's muddle of all, so what point you are driving at escapes me.

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It's true that shedding has been severe this year in China, but for as long as I can remember China has had difficulty keeping the lights on, or industry ticking over, across the nation throughout the year. However, unlike Australia, China has a plan.

With Kev I was actually just referring to the loss of our solar panel manufacturing, which considering Labor were concerned about emissions was something one would think they would have embraced.
With regard Abbott, in hindsight it was a master stroke to stop subsidising the car industry, it would be a completely stranded industry now, whereas the solar panel manufacturing would have been booming with the rooftop uptake that has happened.
Most of Australia's manufacturing was lost during the rapid tariff cuts from the 1980's to early 1990's, under the Button plan. Manufacturing dropped from 30% of GDP to 6% of GDP.

Interesting podcast from the ABC, our current situation from the 1970's starts at about the 20minute mark.

SirRumpole said:

OK, the world is now going down the carbon tax route and we will be dragged along like it or not, so Barnaby and the Nats will have no choice but to suck it up imo.

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Spot on IMO, and I would guess Barnaby knows it he certainly sounds like he does, but he has to be seen to be voicing the concerns of his electorate and trying to get the best deal he can for the loss of their industries.
Politics really, the tide is certainly flowing, there is no way it will be stopped and Barnaby will know he has a better chance of gaining concessions while in Government than if he ends up in opposition.

sptrawler said:

With Kev I was actually just referring to the loss of our solar panel manufacturing, which considering Labor were concerned about emissions was something one would think they would have embraced.

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Nothing stopped cheaper PV manufacture from occurring and in any case what happened here was nothing compared to what occurred in Europe and the USA through industry restructure as large scale became dominant over over smaller operations.

sptrawler said:

With regard Abbott, in hindsight it was a master stroke to stop subsidising the car industry, it would be a completely stranded industry now, whereas the solar panel manufacturing would have been booming with the rooftop uptake that has happened.

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Nope - we were not competitive in solar and even your ABC link showed that despite prohibitively high manufacturing tariffs it was difficult to be profitable in the '80s. Moreover, your point about manufacturing declining as a share of GDP was being replicated across most western economies, so we merely reflected global trends of the times.

That aside, your claim that a carbon price "10 years ago to put our companies at a bigger disadvantage than they already were" is not supported by data. On the other hand nations that embraced green technology experienced massive new-job creation. Furthermore, Coalition policies after Abbott abolished the carbon price actually increased the price of electricity more than the carbon price:

While the above charts "Annual volume weighted average spot prices - regions" rather than metred prices it gives the lie to everything the Coalition promised on electricity prices.

As per usual Rob we have different opinions on things, a bit the same as my take on the media always being negative and you then go on to say it is only my perception of the media.
So I know you will disagree with me, but I did find this article which explains why the media are always so depressing and negative and it is written by a journalist.
From the article:
Negativity bias

Why is news so often negative? Journalists and editors are trained to focus on negativity. Often this is good. Journalism should focus on the problems in society.
“I don’t think this is unique to COVID coverage by any means. It is absolutely consistent with how the media cover anything,” says Denis Muller, senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism.

Part of it is readers. During negative events, like pandemics, news demand dramatically increases. News organisations respond to the desires of their audience.
“Empirically, we know media outlets that concentrate on positive news don’t last very long,” Dr Muller says.

What’s going on? Negativity bias. People are much more drawn to, and more affected by, negative events than positive ones. Losing money hurts more than winning money feels good. Being abandoned by a friend is much more painful than the joy that comes from making a new one.
Our brains are wired to pay more attention to risks than benefits. It may be a gift from our evolution. A person who ignores a positive outcome lives with some regret. A person who ignores a negative one – say, a lion – does not get to have those same regrets!

What’s all this negativity doing to us?
It is clear COVID-19 has not been good for our mental health. High-level evidence suggests cases of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorder have risen by about 25 per cent globally due to the pandemic.
I don’t think we can pin this on negative media coverage. Scientifically, it’s almost impossible to disentangle the effects of negative news coverage from the effects of people dying and things being bad.

But there is some evidence the more news we consume during a crisis, the more likely we are to later develop PTSD symptoms afterwards. When people perceive news as negative, they feel worse.
Perhaps the biggest effect of negativity, argues Dr Muller, was the focus on AstraZeneca’s rare clotting issues.
“The extent of the exposure made the incidence of clotting look far greater than it was. This almost certainly contributed to vaccine hesitancy and to the creation of a stereotype about AZ as the vaccine of last resort,” he says.
What can we do?
In the spirit of not being negative about negativity, let’s ask: if there is a negative bias, what can we do about it?

One solution: “constructive journalism”. Journalism that is “calm in tone, being less focused on scandals, conflicts and outrage”. It remains critical and balanced and focussed on the problems faced by society, but offers both problem and solution in the same breath.

rederob said:

Nothing stopped cheaper PV manufacture from occurring and in any case what happened here was nothing compared to what occurred in Europe and the USA through industry restructure as large scale became dominant over over smaller operations.

Nope - we were not competitive in solar and even your ABC link showed that despite prohibitively high manufacturing tariffs it was difficult to be profitable in the '80s. Moreover, your point about manufacturing declining as a share of GDP was being replicated across most western economies, so we merely reflected global trends of the times.

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Well it's good to see you agree with most of what I pointed out, as you say we are not cost competitive, so putting another cost on top would have made it worse.
I still think some industries are sensible to support and subsidies, in much the same way as is happening now through agencies such as ARENA, fortunately the pandemic has brought to a head the problem with the rush to the bottom which all sides of politics have followed.

Dubbo sounds like it may be getting an interesting generating plant, if it goes ahead.
From the article:
ASM is exploring options for the Dubbo Project to be a true carbon-neutral operation. As part of this, we are investigating the potential for largescale renewable energy generation – solar, wind, hydrogen and biogen. This would complement the power cogeneration plant that is already part of the plant’s design. Generated energy would be used onsite, stored and/or exported to the grid.