They’re running our largest Hydro Lake down
The large Hazelwood Coal Units closed a year ago, so the Snowy Mountain Hydro Scheme has been working hard to fill the holes in the unreliable generation that replaced it. And they’ve been collecting tidy profits from earning RET certificates too.
What could possibly go wrong?
This — levels of Lake Eucumbene have fallen to 24%. This is the lowest since 2010. It’s not the lowest ever (so that’s alright then).
The rain will just fill it right up, unless there is an El Nino. Don’t look now… Odds are “above average”.
Who I say, who could have predicted this?!
Graham Lloyd, The Australian
Snowy Hydro’s biggest storage dam has fallen to less than 25 per cent capacity due to poor rains and high electricity generation following the closure of the Hazelwood coal power station in Victoria.
Lake Eucumbene is now at its lowest level since 2010 and on its way to a repeat of 2007 when electricity generation had to be stopped in favour of a heavily polluting fossil-fuel generator in Victoria.
The Hydro chief said they had been generating more to “take advantage of tight market conditions.” And we all know what that means.
This is tough for fishermen and tourists.
Alan Basford, who has been at Anglers Reach Caravan Park on the shores of Lake Eucumbene for 50 years, said things were becoming desperate.
“We have been very concerned for a long while,” Mr Basford told The Australian.He stopped pumping water for the park three months ago and said what usually was a 3km stretch of water out the front of his property was now “just a river”.
The fishing is still good but visitors can no longer get to the water. “We haven’t had any rain for a long time but it’s going down like mad because they are generating electricity,” Mr Basford said.
“They are generating all the time and using water like it is going out of style.”
What about that rainfall?
Heavy rains are required to replenish the Eucumbene reservoir, but the Bureau of Meteorology winter outlook is for below-average rainfall for NSW, South Australia, northern Victoria…
Look at what happened to Q2 prices on the NEM the last time we had a major hydro drought?
See that big bump years ago? That was it. Across all eastern states.
…..
We pay $1b a year to genius investigators at the ABC to help us have a national conversation to avoid these blindingly obvious risks. Find that discussion…
Jo, I love your style—sometimes you’re so brilliantly honest I swear you’d sparkle if flying in a hot air balloon! Too bad the people who should be reading your blog are the last ones who will. I feel badly for you and your other countrymen who pay the dear price for this green agenda.
490
Not only that, but mention this site anywhere on the interwebs and you’ll get the usual deriding responses from people who never bother delving into facts, they just blindly believe the Fake News Media.
270
bemused
A few years ago there was a survey of the qualifications of people who read this site. My reaction at the time was
“Gawd! Jo could run a bloody Manhattan Project if needed”
280
I’ve often joked that we could, from a technology point of view, reboot this country with the current contributors on this site.
I doubt the political class would like it though….
180
I saw that and I think it’s typical when it comes to all sites that attract enquiring minds.
60
My sons give me that “Oh dad” look when I mention it.
20
The Feds take over the Snowy from NSW & Victoria in order to build Snowy 2.0 a mad pump the water uphill scheme.
Hazelwood is shut, the lowest cost, base load is taken off the grid. Bids soar, energy hungry employers downsize.
Power prices rise to extreme levels and the Federal Government cannot get re-elected even when the opponent is a crook.
The only other source the Feds control is snowy hydro dam reserves.
These are now being run down across the board during a period of low rainfall.
This same scenario played out in Tasmania recently with Australia’s largest reservoir. A RET chasing ALP government ran down Tasmania’s water reserve at the same time refusing to consider piping the water to Victoria for more money because the company who made the offer would not bribe certain politicians. No brown paper bags, no water.
I remember when the farmers hung themselves and committed suicide as their livelihoods went under in the 1997-2006 drought.
I remember going to support meetings with their women howling in despair their children left destitute. They were VERY sobering meetings.
This is not a natural event. This is premeditated manslaughter by self interested public servants. Our politicians are just too inept to see their actions have consequences. ALL they care about is getting re-elected.
270
Yes but that was a few years ago.
00
Wonder why they just didn’t talk to the people in Taz about what happens when you play the renewable power game in drought conditions? Of course, all they have to do is heavy cloud seeding in the face of a major storm front to put everything right.
320
They ARE talking to Tas – they want to borrow their Diesel generators!!
160
Diesel for Australia!
(How many jet engines will it take to keep the lights on for $350/Mwh?)
100
Er..they are only renewables if you renew them.
00
Could it be the “Gore effect”?
100
Thinking of the “Gore effect”. Is Al Gore currently visiting S.A. Power demand of 2,040 MW with wind contributing a massive 15 MW.
160
How are the tazzy dams holding up? Im guessing they are a little more cautious with the cable playing up again recently.
130
Cautious why?, any good lefty knows you can always print more water……..
361
Tassie dams at 41% capacity. They have been averaging 1700 MW of generation during June/July, 1300 MW in April/May, 800 in Jan/Feb/March.
110
And if you go back 2 years.
00
Since Hazelwood’s closure (sacrifice) EVERYTHING has been running harder to fill the power void as Jo highlighted in March 2018 , I’d hate to see some of these great decision makers prepare for a camping trip.
271
Yonniestone:
I would love to see these great decision makers on a camping trip. The middle of the Simpson desert suggests itself as a suitable site.
(It can’t be Antarctica as we rush to rescue idiots who go there on a cruise).
150
I disagree, Antarctica’s full of absurdly deep cravasses.
20
After the Revolution, instead of Capitol Punishment for Treason, ineptitude and corruptitude, I would like to see them all sent on a one way trip to Antarctica with nothing but a pocketful of McDonald’s vouchers.
30
Obviously now is the best time for our government to “invest” in Snowy II. It must be cheaper to build new dams when there is no water to divert.
But why do I feel that there is something wrong with this deal?
220
It’s an engineering plan created by a lawyer now politician.
200
The NEG is supposed to reduce power prices, be technology agnostic and not subsides or fund any new power generation scheme. All three points contradict the governments plan for Snowy 2.0 and if they continue with such a plan would catch them out as extreme hypocrites. Only a really bad lawyer come terrible politician can spin such a blatant contradiction.
241
Bloody thumb….that is NOT a red one!
10
Pauly:
Their “reasoning” is that if the water level is low then the answer is to pump that water uphill. Where would they get the electricity to drive the pumps? Why by letting the pumped water back down through the existing hydro plant.
I am sure 97% of politicians would agree with that.
170
Its also worth remembering that desalination plants were built because of the approaching desertification caused by global warming, no due diligence.
150
Oh wait — you folks are building desal plants, because of approaching desertification, using electricity, to make clean water to pump water uphill so you can use stored hydro to generate electricity to pump more water uphill to have more generation capacity when you need it, but you are using too much electricity and there is little rain and the lakes level is going down? ANd you are the owrld’s number one coal exporter? When I was a kid some cartoons showed people on the other side of the world hanging upside down. Maybe they were right? Do they give a Nobel prize for energy management like the peace prize they gave Yassar Arafat? You guys get my vote.
31
Graeme that is a brilliant solution. I am sure the average labor supporter would believe it was possible.
20
It’s an arbitrage.
It’s not about the electricity.
It’s about the profit.
00
No3, now I understand perpetual motion. Thank you.
20
The political elite never think things will go bad on their watch. They simply need to get away with it this time and let the next fellow clean up the mess. There is a herd of unmentionable elephants in the halls of government that will soon be demanding to be fed. Ignoring them will no longer be an option. The reaction wasn’t pretty in Louis XV time and won’t be in our time.
You can’t eliminate your primary sources of energy, exhaust your secondary sources of energy. Then rely on incomplete, unreliable, and diffuse tertiary sources without paying a heavy price.
Sadly, the problems have been allowed to fester so long that a needlessly large number of innocent and not so innocent people will get badly hurt. It might not be as bad as returning to prehistoric life style but I wouldn’t count on it. Camping in the outback a week or so can be fun but living there year round with only sticks, stones, and what you can find won’t be. Especially if a few million of your previously well off neighbors are trying to do the same.
340
Well said Lionel,
I bet if you checked back in Hansard the Hawks, Keatings and Howards discussed the aging generators and did exactly what you said – left it to fester!
A very sad indictment of past leaders, I wonder what they really think of the evolved postulating boil and how the current numbskulls are trying to lance our energy system, do they wish they had done something then??
110
Come on ColA, even I am not prepared to blame Howard, or even Hawke & Keating for closing down or blowing up coal fired power stations.
Now if you want to blame KRudd for trying to use global warming & our energy sector as a spring board to UN leadership, I would agree somewhat. Put the blame where it belongs, not elsewhere.
120
Hasbeen,
I never blamed them for closing down or blowing up, I blamed them for ignoring advise/debate and leaving the problem to FESTER!
Do you REALLY think that none of them were told that population and industry was increasing and they need to consider planning infrastructure, including power? or that they need to consider that aging Coal Generators need to be upgraded or replaced?
I BET everyone of them over the last 25 years were told/warned more than once! I do remember hearing mumbles about “Loyang C”.
71
You’ll never find anything like that in Hansard, which documents the procedings of Parliament. You’re thinking of Cabinet Papers, which don’t get released until the 30 year rule expires.
I personally don’t recall any discussion of aging electricity infrastructure at the time. This is much more recent, only since the RET, or unreliable electricity subsidy, came in with KRudd.
20
Hivemind, I agree. Post RET.
Hawkie became PM in ’83. And a good one too. Pity about all the other Labor rat-bags since.
That’s well over 30 years ago. If there were Cabinet discussions, then we’d be seeing a little bit of that coming out by now – given top-hat Turnbull’s penchant for shifting the blame. He might yet try to do so. Tony Abbott would, no doubt be his first point of attack. However, that’s problematical given Abbott didn’t enter Parliament until the Warringah by-election in March 1994.
Nevertheless, the NEM began operation in December 1998; two years into John Howard’s PM-ship. So blame him. And, Tony Abbott.
You get the drift?
00
Moderation? Really?
Did I swear?
00
The so-called national grid (excludes WA) was an industry commission recommendation that Keating followed through on. Federal governments prior to Keating had no involvement in power generation. It was a State domain. That is why COAG remains so influential on power policy.
Once the power system businesses were corporatised and some subsequently sold to private businesses, upkeep and system development primarily fell to commercial business decisions. Such decisions were no longer under government control. However the RET and associated cross-subsidies has severely distorted the market. There has been huge expediture on generating and transmission infrastructure in the last decade in Australia. The problem is that all that investment was dusted with pixie dust in the vain hope the coal generation would become history. Time has shown that the only guaranteed level of output from ambient intermittent generation is precisely ZERO. You could expect them to produce more than zero most of the time but the only guaranteed output at any point in time is ZERO. So all that added generation has made the system less reliable as well making some coal generators uneconomic.
60
True but it will only take a few weeks before those ‘few million are reduced to a ‘few hundred’.
20
Our energy (and financial) regulators should take a short course in engineering control theory.
Always include some sort of governor or limiter.
The vision that springs to my mind is that of the sorcerer’s apprentice in Disney’s Fantasia.
190
Our energy (and financial) regulators and politicians should be held personally accountable and be required to hold very, very substantial personal indemnity insurance. They destroy health, lives, futures, industries and the environment with a devastation orders of magnitude greater than any negligent surgeon.
200
Don’t worry.Our betters are trying to sneak in new legislation which will absolve them of any wrong doing.Be ever vigilant.
50
I guess sadly someone has to be the canary in the coalmine, that the Eastern States stepped up for the job makes me shake my head for the future of Oz. One perfectly good country going to ruin under the delusion that the squeaky wheels must be right.
210
Please don’t try to take the ‘honour’ of being canaries from us in SA.
Our pollies worked hard to get us to that
laughablelaudable state.70
That’s OK. They can just turn on one of the unused desal plants to fill it up….
182
How many more coal power stations can they destroy before we have no spare generation capacity whatsoever?
232
Bill Shorten has the schedule on his desk awaiting transfer to the Department of Prime Minister.
90
If he becomes PM he will go down in history as the barbarian of Australia’s economy. Perhaps that’s why Turnbull wants to lose the next election. He doesn’t want to hold the can when our economy finally goes pear shape.
160
We are pretty much at that stage now. If the wind doesn’t blow this summer, there will be major blackouts. Last summer, manufacturing and aluminium smelting had to shut down to prevent a complete blackout and there were still rolling blackouts across Adelaide.
00
meh, thats what people said last summer, the system (such as it is) staggered on with only localised failures that rapidly got explained away.
00
Did you not see the absolute panick when AGL announced the closure of Liddel?
00
Hazelwood has one last use before it is ceremonially blown up to please the Green gods.
A Chinese movie will be made there.
http://www.latrobevalleyexpress.com.au/story/5514059/hazelwood-chosen-for-chinese-movie/
92
Not sure how ny comment earned two red thumbs..
10
It’s not you, Film critics are irrational.
30
you caste aspersions on the green gods, red thumbs is minor punishment for trivialising their god
00
In my youth people talked a lot about conservation. Conservationists might be boorish, especially the urbanites who couldn’t wait to model their latest Paddy Pallin clobber at a whale un-beaching but who didn’t realise that to protect koalas you need a gun or a poison to stop the dogs which harass and kill wildlife. I myself was boorish at times, not realising that old wattles in parks might need cutting or that a road with plenty of gravel and huge drains was far kinder to bushland than a quaint little clay alley slowly turning into an artificial gorge. One made mistakes, yet conservation was a real value. Still is for some.
Now we need to talk about a global and globalist movement of enormous force and proportions, a destructive mass neurosis best called Big Green which baulks at no amount of waste to achieve an agenda unrelated to thrift, stewardship or conservation. And we’re seeing its effects today on Lake Eucumbene. We’re seeing its effects when thousands buy imported diesel generators so they can burn imported diesel fuel because they no longer trust the supply of reliable power. And when we use the wealth generated by massive coal sales to Asia to fight a War on Coal at home, even as we flog ageing coal power plants to death while depending on them utterly. Contradictory much? What’s the expression for this sort of profound contradiction? Mass neurosis will have to do, I suppose.
210
“97% of those professing are giving the rest of us conservationists a bad name”
110
Ian, ironic that conservation is about conserving/preserving our history which is what conserv(e)atives do! Progressives destroy history – it’s against their nature to conserve anything.
70
I refuse to call them progressives. Repressives is much more accurate.
20
This should be broadcast,
Far and wide.
It’s Time, To Save the Planet!!
KK
60
Yes indeed! From the “Greenies”!
10
Yes, from the greenies.
00
Victoria are currently drawing just over a Gw from hydro which is 85% of the power Hazelwood generated right up to the day it closed down. Surely hydro, excepting TAS should only be used to meet peak demand not continuous generation especially as replenishing rainfall cannot ever be guaranteed.
For the past month at least the AEMO has relied on TAS hydro and QLD coal to keep the lights on. It must be obvious to all polititions that new HELE must be built as the fuel coal is always available.
190
Unfortunately Ian, NO ONE is pointing that out to the Sheeple in syllables they can understand.
80
I tried to yesterday. Some hopes….sheeple are far too heavily indoctrinated.
91
You need to point-out something imaginary for them to jump over, then they become more predictable.
Cooking lamb chops works too.
10
A friend of my wife teaches pre school, some as young as two. She was told she must give NAIDOC oriented lessons and invite the local “community” in to address the class. You cant start the indoctrination to early it seems.
00
old 44 @ # 28
Umm!
Where are you going to get the energy to drive the fuel supply to get more gas to run that gas generator after a few days when you have used up all your fuel and the Grids renewable Energy generators haven’t been generating because there is no wind or too much wind and / or the sky is too cloudy for any solar energy production and it is raining off and on so your solar system doesn’t generate a damn thing and its bloody cold because you haven’t any energy source left to drive the heaters to keep you warm?
Ah well you will be able to burn all those bank notes for warmth you get from selling energy to those unfortunates who are subsidising your generator and solar installation.
.
When and if the grid goes down and there is a 50/ 50 chance that it will and if the engineers are not quick enough to throw the switches to isolate the still operating sections of the eastern sea board grid then eastern Australia could be in a for a very long haul as in days and weeks for some sections of the Grid [ as happened in North eastern USA a few years ago when a faulty switch in a switch yard led to a cascading power outage over a very large part of North Eastern USA. ] in rephasing and getting the entire Grid up and operating again.
Unfortunately that is the harsh and still fortunately, potential reality of all of these heavily subsidised , feed to the grid renewable and alternative domestic energy set ups so you are very far from alone in this “old 44”.
30
How the above post of mine finished up at #14.2 instead of a reply to “old 44” at # 28 I haven’t a clue!
20
Yes!!!!
00
I once wrote to Snowy Hydro asking why they trumpeted their capacity but rarely delivered anything like it. I got a bit of a sermon response about how they were a last resort or peaking provider of power. I guess that story has flown out the window , and with Lake Euc at 25% ish its starting to become a puzzle in regard to what they do next.
00
“Delingpole: Trump Is Right – Germany’s Green Energy Suicide Is a Threat to the West”
https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/07/12/russians-benefit-while-germany-goes-green/
100
Actually the Greens is a very serious threat to the West because the Greens hate the West more than anyone else. That makes the Greens evil in anyone’s language.
81
I also find it extremely ironic and hypercritical of Germany for relying more and more on gas from Russia while shutting down their nuclear power plants yet Germany still claims to be focusing on reducing emissions and save the world from the mythical man-made global warming disaster. They must think that gas is not a fossil fuel while coal is. Also Trump’s criticism on Germany for risking the safety of the West by using so much gas from Russia must be exploding the leftist heads in the US who thought that Trump was colluding with Russia to win the elections.
91
I disagree here Peter, the world is one spent-fuel cooling-pond fire away from a regional radiological catastophe. After an inevitable and foreseeable top of scale geomagnetic storm we may see multiple spent-fuel fires occur, depending on degree of disruption. So I do not condemn Germany or anyone else for wanting to work that particular hazard out of their industrial energy infracture.
However, they should have replaced it with non-Russian gas and coal.
Note that people forget thwt Russia also supplies a lot of coal to western Europe, not just gas.
04
I wasn’t commenting on the downsides of nuclear power. I was pointing out the fact Germany was going from an emissions free power source to one that is emissions plenty. If that’s not hypercritical then I don’t know what is.
31
There I go again – not checking my spelling. I meant of course hypocritical.
10
There is only a couple of tonnes of those, actually it would be pretty easy to form them into solid ‘warheads’ put them on top of a missile and launch them into the sun, safe cheap disposal.
You could also alloy it and drop it into the Mariana trench. Me, I’m for the launch into the sun option.
20
I’m for putting it on the top of the greenland ice sheet and let it sink in. After that you can forget about it. Automatic, regulated cooling for (almost) ever.
00
Also note that the nuclear power capacity worldwide is increasing steadily with about 50 reactors under construction now. In the US 140 of theirs are having their lifetimes extended and some of them are having their capacities increased to boot. So it appears no one else is concerned as you are. I doubt the reason Germany is closing theirs has anything to do with science and more to do with Green ideology, which as I pointed out is in stark contradiction to what they are doing by importing gas from Russia in ever increasing amounts. Note too that they and other EU nations rely a lot on nuclear power from France and if France closed down their reactors Germany, France and others would have a serious crisis on their hands.
20
Wxc,
Do you really imagine that nuclear engineers are so dumb that they do not see the risk, so incompetent that they cannot plan for it and so hateful of their fellows that they would want that to happen?
Even if the scenario you described is unlikely to cause much harm. Many people who have not worked with nuclear have horribly distorted images of harm and fear. Are you one? Geoff
00
Germany imported 50 million tons of local last year as well as burning local lignite/brown coal for power. OK in the home of wind power but not so here apparently.
00
So, if Germany uses fossil fuels in their country to generate electricity, then the electrons are “dirty”.
But if the Germans use electricity generated from fossil fuels in Russia, then the electrons are “green”.
It is that same school of thought that eats, sleeps and breathes the collusion illusion!
70
No different to what SA is doing. They claim how good they to blow up their coal fired power station and move to renewables yet they rely so much on coal fired power stations in other states to keep their people alive as well as employed, fed and comfortable with the extremes of weather. The only difference is that Germany is shutting down their nuclear power stations as distinct form SA blowing up their coal fired ones, and Germany is importing gas as distinct from SA importing electricity generated from coal. So they are almost identical in the delusion about how “environmental” they are.
80
There is a live webcam of Lake Eucumbene here:
http://www.rms.nsw.gov.au/maritime/using-waterways/web-cameras/eucumbene.html
62
From an address by secretary of Prime Minister & Cabinet Martin Parkinson to a room full of commonwealth public servants:
White elephantiasis on stilts: the NBN, Inland Rail (benefit-cost ratio just 1.1:1 if no cost-overruns etc.) and the Western Sydney Airport, and now Snowy 2.0, what could possibly go wrong?
110
How are public serpents and politicians even allowed to make such major engineering decisions without consulting appropriate technical experts or doing economic analysis?
112
The leaders of both major parties want to boast they are smarter than anyone else when in fact it’s the exact opposite. Yet people will still most likley reward one of them by voting for his party to form majority government expecting a different result. Pure insanity.
40
Great point DM … more checks and balances to guard against despatch-box dopes … and less PR consultants making up policy ‘choices’ as they go along.
30
Under the ACCC mandate, hydro is not ‘firm’.
20
Coal is ‘firm’, bring it on.
‘Deputy PM Michael McCormack says there is a “green light” for government-investment in new coal projects after this week’s ACCC report.’ Oz
60
He still says that Snowy 2.0 is going ahead but at least he is saying coal is not excluded from the mix unlike ALP and the Greens who are ruling out any support for coal. How come he isn’t receiving the same flack from Turnbull and others for effectively saying the same thing about coal as Abbott did? Turnbull must really hate Abbott so much.
50
The Nats are a forced to be reckoned with and Turnbull knows he has little choice but start building Hele.
Except for the Oz all the MSM has gone quiet, as they ponder the unthinkable.
50
Turnbull giving up and becoming coal power friendly? I would be pleasantly surprised. Personally I think he would rather see his party lose the next election so that Labor and the Greens can continue to renewables scam. Let’s hope that’s not the case but it does depend mostly on the voters, not the politicians. So let’s wait and see whether the public are awake or still asleep and brain dead. The next federal election will be very telling regardless of who are the leaders of both major parties. It will convince me one way or another whether Australians are as dumb as they appear to be or they are actually smart enough to see through the BS. Too hard to tell at the moment which one is closer to the truth. The polls indicate the former but we all know polls are too unreliable so I don’t place that much weight on them.
40
Hmmm ….
‘Australians are as dumb as they appear to be or they are actually smart enough to see through the BS.’
The Coalition will lose the next election unless they pull a rabbit out of the hat. Malcolm is aware of the predicament and will say we need new coal fired power stations to bring stability to the system.
Alternatively he may say we don’t need new coal fired power stations and the ginger group will cross the floor and the Coalition could collapse. Its what we call a win win situation.
Sleep easy, its in the bag.
20
Could also have a hung parliament. As I said anything is possible since it’s impossible to read the real sentiment and logic of the public at the moment. The election will expose it all. I do sleep easy but it’s not because I am confident this nation will avoid a crash and burn scenario. That’s in fact more likley than ever before for a number of reasons. I sleep easy because I know there is precious little I can do. It’s all up to the voters so I’ve resigned to the fact what will be will be, good or bad.
20
Go Tassie! Pity Hawkey and Brownies troupes stopped the construction of the Gordon below Franklin Dam
62
So, once they empty the water we’ll lose what little spare generation capacity we have.
And we’ll lose water for irrigation as well.
The Snowy Scheme is not being run in the way that the proper engineers of the past intended.
122
Traditional hydro is a reliable and affordable renewable, but unfortunately the greens won’t let us build any more dams. So even with growing population we are going to eventually rely on high cost desal water that will consume large amounts of electricity.
For electricity generation, over the last 18 months, hydro has delivered an average of 1,450 MW, compared to wind 1,200 MW, large solar 100 MW, gas 2,200 MW and coal 17,000 MW. But monthly hydro has varied from 800-2,500, with lower delivery during summer months of low rainfall. So hydro is best used for evening peak demand, but increasingly it is being used around the clock – during June the daily minimums were 1,000-1,5000 MW with daily peaks of 4,000-5,500 MW from a nameplate of 7,800 MW according to Anero.id.
101
When the dam empties the finger will be pointed at climate change was the cause and thus the self fulfilling prophecy will continue. This laughable situation will not end until there is nothing left, just like that old saying “how do you stop a dog chasing cars, let it catch one”.
What of the future? I view this as the swiss cheese model we use in flight safety, Hydro in NSW will grind to a halt or perhaps common sense will prevail and be severely limited thereby increasing the load on QLD to keep NSW afloat and in effect prop up the eastern seaboard. The extra load on our aging coal and gas plants will cause reliability issues (Torrens island is near on 50 years old).
So will this “whodathunkit” moment be when all the holes in the cheese line up and we suffer an uncontrollable grid collapse?
More than likely i would say.
All the best to you all.
160
Yes if left to continue the current path Australia will suffer a crash and burn scenario and that ought to wake people up. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is hungry from more coal so I suppose once our industries and businesses have closed down we could send the Greenies to the coal mines. Let’s wait and see if we can avoid the crash and burn with the forthcoming details that are yet to be worked out for the NEG.
40
No crash and burn on my watch, the cavalry has arrived.
If the NEG has a few Hele and a Liddell buyback and upgrade, then there won’t be a need to topple Turnbull.
Business flourishes and the Coalition win the next election on the strength of it, winning back those Liberal voters who had deserted them.
Albo becomes leader of the Opposition.
31
Sounds good but they can’t get it started in time. Doug
30
It will take a few years to build three coal fired power stations and cost about $3 billion each, roughly the amount the ordinary taxpayer defrauded the Commonwealth over laundry expenses.
In the meantime we’ll have to struggle on.
10
Yes they have a golden opportunity with the NEG to reverse things and make renewables look so bad it would destroy the Greens and keep the ALP out of office for at least one more term. Let’s see if the LNP stuff it up or not.
20
Anyone got a tissue?
11
Who’d a thought that there was an analogy linking politicians, death, dogs and cars and common sense?
Great.
KK
50
How much water would you like left in the dams when the snowmelt arrives?
Dams are there to hold the water to be used for irrigation and generation. Anything they hold when they start to fill up again is wasted capacity.
00
And????
Aren’t you going to tell the good news.
Or is it just too small??
KK
10
not sure what you are trying to say, but Lake Euc hasnt been this low at this time since the last drought
so , are you saying we have an immense snow cover that we need to make room for?
10
Emptying the dam(Lake Eukombene)in order to maximize profits! This is an disgrace.
Those supporting this action in the name of climate change must surely be ashamed.
And they call themselves environmentalists.
GeoffW
100
They might call themselves environmentalists but the reality as we all know is they are economic and social vandals.
60
They are actually environmental vandals too. Everything the greens bring about makes fore far more damage, not less.
61
Geoffrey W – No, they have no shame, and they are not environmentalists because they (Snowy Hydro) were privatised and given the legal right as private owners of a chunk of our national strategic energy infrastructure to operate it to maximise their profits, apparently regardless of the national interest. So, who sold off the Snowy Hydro infrastructure? The same federal government that is supposed to protect the same national interest. So there is no sense of responsibility or accountability by any of these clowns. This is called parliamentary democracy. You and I might call it something else entirely.
60
The “Con-Conservationists”
30
read all, lots of detail. love how theirABC segues to wind:
12 Jul: ABC: Tasmanian energy companies warned Liberals against leaving national power market before poll
By Alexandra Humphries
Hydro Tasmania raised concerns that the changes could jeopardise investment in the sector — including energy developments as part of the government’s “battery of the nation” initiative.
Submissions were made to Treasury late last year by Hydro, Aurora, renewable energy generation developer Climate Capital, and the Australian Energy Council as part of a review of the Tasmanian wholesale electricity market regulatory pricing framework.
While the terms of reference for the review did not explicitly mention de-linking from the NEM, it is inextricably linked with the wholesale energy market framework…
In February Premier Will Hodgman announced the Liberals’ election commitment to de-link Tasmania by mid-2021, promising it would mean reduced prices for consumers of up to 10 per cent…
Acting Energy Minister Peter Gutwein confirmed the Government remained committed to plans to de-link Tasmania from the price-setting arrangement…
Mr Gutwein was speaking after announcing the $280 million Granville Harbour wind farm development had been cleared to begin substantial construction on Tasmania’s West Coast.
The development is expected to create 200 jobs in construction and 10 ongoing positions…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-12/energy-bodies-warned-liberals-against-electricity-de-linking/9986432
10
See how they get away with that ‘meme’ that wind power is cheaper than coal etc etc.
People have no concept whatsoever of the technical aspects and only look at the ‘up front’ cost, that $280 Million, and say, well, look they’re perfectly right. That’s way cheaper than a new HELE coal fired plant which could cost as much as $3.5 Billion. (we here know some of the technical aspects, but the average populace does not, as I have found out)
This proposed wind plant has a Nameplate of 112MW, and at the average 30% Capacity Factor, (CF) that translates to an actual power delivery of 33MW.
So extrapolating out that cost, for a 2200MW Two Unit HELE plant at the same cost as that wind plant, that’s a cost equivalent for the HELE of $16.8 Billion, considering the HELE will run at a CF of around 90%.
And the HELE will have twice the life span, even if the wind plant does last the hoped for 25 years at best.
Tony.
150
TonyfromOz –
thanks for that info. to clarify, though, could you add a line stating –
how much HELE would you get for the $16.8 Billion you mention?
(excuse my ignorance if you feel you have already explained that)
am still concerned too little emphasis is put on lifespan of coal vs “renewables” in public pronouncements/MSM coverage, etc.
50
90% of 2,200 is 1,980 MWh
33% of 112 is 33 MWh
33MWh will cost you 280 million dollars, 1 MWh will cost you 8,484,848 dollars
1980 MWh times 8,484,848 dollars equals 16.8 billion dollars.
Ergo
16.8 billion divided by 3.5 billion (ROM costing of a HELE plant) = 4.8 HELE plants
70
got it. thanks.
30
Tony you have to understand the left in the West don’t like things being cheaper. They prefer things to be more expensive to milk the public of their wealth and subdue them to the level of a slave.
40
.
Re politicians, bureacrats and a certain section of academia;
.
Never attribute to malice, that which can be reasonably explained by stupidity.
Spider Robinson
———
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein
30
OK we have compared the cost of the plant and I have no doubt that the coal fired HELE plant would be far superior. It’s 4.5 times cheaper & runs 24×7 but my question is ‘how do we account for the cost of the coal?’
I would like to be informed so that I can use the argument for the coal/HELE plant.
Thanks in advance.
GeoffW
10
“Battery of the nation” ??? I choke every time I see that. What? 400-500MW? like trying to start my truck with a AAA battery. Good grief.
10
O/T
Klimatariat Propagandists
‘RMIT academic and adjunct fellow at think tank the Institute of Public Affairs, Sinclair Davidson says that ABC employees and journalists are five times more likely to vote for the Greens than the general population.’ ABC
60
el gordo –
I was just about planning to post this link. on and on it goes. can’t recall theirABC ever fact-checking the so-called “concensus” among “climate scientists” that CAGW is real!
13 Jul: ABC: Fact check: Are ABC employees or journalists five times more likely to vote for the Greens than the general population?
In making the claim, Professor Davidson referred to a study published in 2013 which surveyed 605 journalists from a variety of organisations on their voting intentions.
Fifty-nine of these journalists were from the ABC, and only 34 of them answered the question on voting intention, with 25 either undecided or electing not to answer.
Of the 34 who did answer, 41.2 per cent, or 14, said they would vote for the Greens…
Upon releasing the findings in 2013, the author of the study himself, Folker Hanusch, inserted numerous caveats about using sub-samples of the survey, including that the margins of error would be larger than those for the total sample…
University of New South Wales statistician Jake Olivier compared the survey results with those of Newspoll over the same survey period, and found ABC journalists were 2.4 times more likely to vote for the Greens.
But he cautioned that the sample size of ABC journalists was too small to make strong conclusions about this result…
Principal researcher: Matt Martino
Additional research by Lauren O’Keefe
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-13/fact-check3a-abc-greens-voters/9931782
40
Aunty is proud to be overly green in appearance, ignorance and arrogance combined, the old dear just scored an own goal. It will all come out in the Royal Commission, yet to be called.
20
Stefan Molyneux explains why most journalists are left minded twits.
Surprising? Journalists’ Brains Show A Lower-Than-Average Level of Executive Functioning!
40
The underlying secret of how Australia is going to get by on “ephemeral energy”
“Instead, keep the money in Australia by:
1) Spending it at garage sales or
2) Going to footy games or
3) Spending it on prostitutes, or
4) Beer or
5) Tattoos.
(These are just about the only Australian businesses still operating in OZ.)”
(Via an email)
60
Sounds a bit like Mexico.
30
Almost, Mexico have gun sales at garage sales so they have more things to spend their money on
40
You forgot about giving it to drug dealers for the next fix
00
Bogan life profile
00
I have a 5Kw solar system that generates between 50 Kw and 0.3Kw a day with a feedback rebate of $0.715 and have just had a 10/Kw emergency gas generator installed to cope with the upcoming crisis.
Now i can sit back and laugh at the peanuts who keep telling me renewables are the way to go.
40
The last 3 months I used about $4 electrickery, roughly 19kWh. They reckon a single human should use about 1,240kWh. But the real killer is the supply – $120 for $4 electrickery. Not a fair trade eh?
I should disconnect myself from the grid and save a fortune.
30
Be careful fellas,
I got caught in town when a tornado went through and caused a town-wide blackout and extensive damage, including trees down. My chain saw was at home, but I realised I didn’t have enough fuel to go home and collect it, so I went round to fill up. Sorry, no pumps. So no fuel. Other people were worse off. They couldn’t get food. Woolworths et al closed as their checkouts couldn’t operate. No coffee shops
Luckily I could stay in town and find fuel (and coffee) the next day.
Suggestion – keep you vehicle fuelled up.
Cheers,
Dave B
50
David-of-Coolyal-in-oz @ # 28.2
Thanks for the verification of my posted reply to “old44”, a reply which finished up at # 14.2 for reasons completely unknown to myself.
In that post I also pointed out that fuel for all those standby back up engine powered generators would not be available after a couple of days as the power to drive the fuel pumps was no longer there in a wide area full scale blackout situation.
The only power available for those who think they will be self sufficient with an engine generator and solar panels will be for a few hours each day with power from the solar panels provided of course it is not cloudy or raining or mid winter in the further south latitudes so that the solar panels also become nothing more than an extra load on the roof .
Of course if nobody has cleaned their solar panels for a long time then they can also expect this;
Oops! Thats an extra 50% of time required to repay the expenditure on those solar panels or the missing cleaner is missing out on one third of the income he / she might have recieved from the selling of the surplus solar panel energy.
And don’t fall off that roof cleaning those solar panels;
Ref; Green deaths: The forgotten dangers of solar panels
20
My standby generator run on natural gas. Providing we don’t have a Longford type disaster at the same time I will do fine.
20
G’day ROM
Yes I remember your reply, and comsider mine above as supportive rather than new. And only last weekend I refuelled my vehicle as soon as I got into town when I realised I’d not followed my own advice.
Cheers,
D
20
good advice, I tend to over stock with fuel in summer which is the key risk period for us for power and possible fire pump usage
00
from AFP: Globally, since 1992, 72 percent of plastic waste has ended up in China and Hong Kong, according to a study in the journal Science Advances.
US waste handlers say they expect China will close its doors to all recycled materials by 2020 — an impossibly short deadline…
Other scrap importer countries such as Indonesia, Vietnam or India are incapable of absorbing the tens of millions of tons that China had previously taken…
9 Jul: LA Times: George Skelton: Environmentally minded Californians love to recycle — but it’s no longer doing any good
That’s because there’s no longer a recycling market for a lot of the paper, cardboard, plastic and other junk that’s left curbside…
“People are engaged in wish recycling,” says Mark Oldfield, public affairs director at CalRecycle, which runs the state’s recycling program. “They think: ‘This should be recycled. I’m going to put it in the bin.’”
“It’s amazing what people put in recycling bins,” Oldfield continues. “Dirty diapers. Broken crockery. Old garden hoses. Some of the worst offenders are old batteries.”
But what constitutes forbidden material is more nuanced than soiled diapers and corrosive batteries. Oldfield says it includes pizza boxes blotched with cheese and grease, plastic wrappers for food, shredded paper, unclean jelly jars, broken glass, unrinsed bottles and newspapers that have lined bird cages. Even paper envelopes with plastic address windows.
Recyclers these days don’t want items with mixed material such as paper and plastic, or cardboard and tape. It doesn’t pay to tear the stuff apart. Off to the landfill…
“China doesn’t want our garbage anymore,” says Steve Maviglio, a political strategist who is advising the recycling industry. “It’s time we cleaned up our own mess.”…
***“A year ago,” Potashner says, “we were getting $100 a ton for newsprint. Now we’re getting an average $5…. Revenue has fallen off the cliff.”…
Collapse of the China market is just the latest recycling problem for California.
There’s continuing struggle with the popular beverage container recycling program that originated with passage of California’s convoluted so-called Bottle Bill 32 years ago.
Under it, people can ostensibly cart their used bottles and cans to a recycling center and collect the nickel apiece — or dime for larger ones — that they deposited when buying the beverage at a store.
But the program itself needs recycling. It’s not generating enough money, in many cases, to make recycling pay. Scrap value has dropped — especially for plastic. When oil prices tumbled, it became cheaper to make plastic bottles from all-new material than recycled matter.
Nearly 1,000 recycling centers have closed in the last two years, about 40% of the total, leaving consumers in many communities with no local place to leave their bottles and redeem their nickels.
Glazer has a modest bill that he says is “better than doing nothing at all.” His measure would return fees to their 2015 level.
That’s a carrot. There’s a stick in a bill by Sen. Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont). It would require all beverage containers sold in California to contain a minimum amount of recycled material. CalRecycle would establish the minimum…
The bill is particularly aimed at plastic containers. The goal is to establish a bigger market for plastic recycling in California. It also would help reduce greenhouse gases, the senator says, because “we wouldn’t be burning more oil to make plastic bottles.”
Gov. Jerry Brown, in his new state budget, shifted $15 million in bottle bill money to private firm incentives for processing and purchasing recycled plastic.
Nice touches, but they’re Band-Aids.
Consumers — taxpayers — will need to put more into the pot to pay for sustainable recycling and creating a bigger market for California trash.
We’ve got to stop dumping useless, filthy crud in blue bins.
It’s either that or spend more money for ugly landfills.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-skelton-recycling-problems-california-20180709-story.html#
read all of the following:
12 Jul: FrontPage: China Throws the Recycling Scam in the Trash
Now you get to do the work that China won’t.
by Daniel Greenfield
California’s Department of Resources Recycling sent a letter cautioning that the “economics of recycling” had become “unfavorable” thus “challenging what recycling means to Californians.”
It also warned recycling facilities that, “public health and safety should be their number one priority”.
In Massachusetts, mountains of trash recycling are piling up and there’s talk that trucks may stop picking it up. In Pennsylvania, a “recycling crisis created by China” was blamed for a refusal to accept paper. In Seattle and Phoenix, recycling is going into landfills. Fees are going up in Portland. In Pasco, recycling was abandoned before its start. In a Kansas City plant, one out of four items is going into a landfill. In Sacramento, where all of California’s recycling rules are made, most recyclables no longer are.
Fort Worth’s recycling brought in nearly a million last year. Now, it’s expected to cost $1.6 million…
Recycling has become economically unsustainable, but that doesn’t mean it’s going away.
There’s too much money in environmental scams. And recycling is the biggest of them. The China crisis is being met with the three R’s of progressive policymaking; rent-seeking, regulations and robbery…
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270714/china-throws-recycling-scam-trash-daniel-greenfield
30
12 Jul: Reason: Starbucks Bans Plastic Straws, Winds Up Using More Plastic
A Reason investigation reveals that the coffee giant’s new cold drink lids use more plastic than the old straw/lid combo.
by Christian Britschgi
In July, Seattle imposed America’s first ban on plastic straws. Vancouver, British Columbia, passed a similar ban a few months earlier. There are active attempts to prohibit straws in New York City, Washington, D.C., Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco. A-list celebrities from Calvin Harris to Tom Brady have lectured us on giving up straws. Both National Geographic and The Atlantic have run long profiles on the history and environmental effects of the straw. Vice is now treating their consumption as a dirty, hedonistic excess.
Not to be outdone by busybody legislators, Starbucks, the nation’s largest food and drink retailer, announced on Monday that it would be going strawless.
“This is a significant milestone to achieve our global aspiration of sustainable coffee, served to our customers in more sustainable ways,” said Starbucks Kevin Johnson CEO in a press release announcing the move…
As is to be expected, Starbucks’ decision was greeted with universal adulation.
The World Wildlife Fund and Ocean Conservancy both provided ebullient quotes for Starbucks’ press releases. Liberal magazine The New Republic praised the move as an “environmental milestone.” Slate hailed the Starbucks straw ban as evidence of as a victory for a bona fide anti-straw movement, one that would hopefully lead to bans of more things plastic in years to come.
Yet missing from this fanfare was the inconvenient fact that by ditching plastic straws, Starbucks will actually be increasing its plastic use. As it turns out, the new nitro lids that Starbucks is leaning on to replace straws are made up of more plastic than the company’s current lid/straw combination…
At most, straws account for about 2,000 tons of the 9 million tons of plastic that are estimated to enter the ocean each year, according to the Associated Press—.02 percent of all plastic waste. The pollution problem posed by straws looks even smaller when considering that the United States is responsible for about one percent of plastic waste entering the oceans, with straws being a smaller percentage still.
As countless experts have stressed, truly addressing the problem of marine plastic pollution will require going after the source of this pollution, namely all the uncollected litter from poorer coastal countries that lack developed waste management systems…
Straw banners have proven stubbornly resistant to this logic. Instead, they have chosen to rely on either debunked statistics (such as the claim that Americans use 500 million straws a day, which was the product of a 9-year-old’s research ***LINK) or totally unproven notions (like the theory that straws are a “gateway plastic”) in order to justify petty prohibitions on innocuous straws. And they have been helped along by an uncritical media. Coverage of Starbucks’ strawless move saw The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and National Geographic all cite the 500-million-straws-a-day figure…
For instance, straw bans will likely hurt disabled people who lack the motor skills necessary to pull off a flawless cup-to-lip motion. While reusable straws exist, they are hard to clean and not always handy when one needs them…
Why not use more eco-friendly disposable straws? Because they are terrible. Paper straws are known to collapse halfway through a drink. Compostable straws cost six to seven times more than their plastic alternatives, don’t keep for long, and fall apart when exposed to high heat…READ ON
http://reason.com/blog/2018/07/12/starbucks-straw-ban-will-see-the-company
from link in above:
***25 Jan: Reason: The actual number of straws being used is unclear. Calderon, along with news outlets writing about this issue — from CNN to the San Francisco Chronicle — unfailingly state that Americans use 500 million plastic straws a day, many of them ending up in waterways and oceans. The 500 million figure is often attributed to the National Park Service; it in turn got it from the recycling company Eco-Cycle.
Eco-Cycle is unable to provide any data to back up this number, telling Reason that it was relying on the research of one Milo Cress. Cress—whose Be Straw Free Campaign is hosted on Eco-Cycle’s website—tells Reason that he arrived at the 500 million straws a day figure from phone surveys he conducted of straw manufacturers in 2011, when he was just 9 years old…
Cress, who is now 16, says that the National Restaurant Association has endorsed his estimates in private correspondence. This may well be true, but the only references to the 500 million figure on the association’s website again point back to the work done by Cress…
20
***500 million:
Sept 2017: ABC: Meet Molly Steer, the nine-year-old fighting to save Great Barrier Reef marine life
ABC Far North By Anna Hartley
It all began when Molly saw a showing of the documentary, A Plastic Ocean with her mother Julianne…
“We use ***500 million straws each day. If you lined them up end-to-end they’d wrap around the world four times.”
“I want to get rid of all the plastic straws in the world.”…
The science: what makes straws deadly
Marine biologist Gareth Phillips said straws were one of the biggest threats to ocean life partly because of their small size…
“We have polluted every ocean on earth. [By using straws and single-use plastic] we are literally poisoning the planet and ourselves.”…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-06/cairns-schoolgirl-molly-steer-fights-to-save-great-barrier-reef/8869688
VIDEO: 3mins11secs: 12 Jun: ABC: Straw No More Campaign
Meet 10-year-old Molly (Steer). She’s determined to do something about plastic pollution and started a campaign to rid the country – if not the planet – of plastic straws. And people are really listening.
TRANSCRIPT plus
46 congratulatory comments from ABC readers
http://www.abc.net.au/btn/story/s4853672.htm
10
12 Jul: Townhall: Five Things to Teach Your Kids about Climate Change
Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from author Marc Morano’s new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change.
https://townhall.com/columnists/regnerypublishing/2018/07/12/five-things-to-teach-your-kids-about-climate-change-n2499545
10
Reminds me of a doco I saw from the BBC recently. Some NZ green worriers were
relocatingabducting an entire albatross colony and putting it on a “safe” island, because “..rising oceans and storms will get worse ‘coz Climate Change™©®, sobs, wails, much teeth gnashing” etc. They didn’t say how much it cost, but it would have been hefty. Here’s a similar one from the equally green atrocity Nat Geo:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmOg2KrQM7k
Tampering with Mother Nature for a belief in witchcraft should mean jail time.
80
I shake my head in dismay when I read of the outright stupidity and utter hubris and the outright ignorance of the green worriers grossly destructive solutions to non existent problems.
The Albatross colony is there where it is for the damn good reason that the Albatrosses think its currently the best location for an Albatross colony. Full stop!
.
And can they actually point to a line or an indicating mark on that island to verify that a dramatic sea level rise is under way or is it a case of scientists [ ?? ] have been predicting a dangerous sea level rise as a result of their model’s outputs for the last 37 years so it must be coming soon.
80
Well if anything like that was done under any other guise they would end up behind bars quick smart. Goes to show the Greenies are often exempt from truth, justice and the law simply by calling out it’s all in response to a mythical man-made global warming disaster. That’s how they can get away with “stealing” billions of our money to build useless solar and wind farms.
30
There seems to be an incredibly arrogant line of thinking that means a virtuous few are to decide what species shall be frozen in time and need to be “saved” It must be great to know so much and have others finance your whims.
00
Ban Saturn’s Titan. Space is full of “fossil fuels”.
10
this looks to me to be heading towards a similar situation as tasmanias a few years back..
50
The attack on our energy supply is presently being covered up by wasting money, water, diesel, gas, coal itself and much human breath.
Worth noting that rainfall is low in much of Eastern Oz (not late 1830s-low when the ‘bidgee dried up, or 1902-low when even Kidman couldn’t find grass…but low). The monopoly money called fiat (let it be) may soon have to be repaid by those who can’t make money just appear as interest rates lift at last. Oil prices can spurt alarmingly just when you get used to a comfy plateau (it’s a war thing). Coal plants in Australia make Cliff Richard look young. Human breath is not in short supply, so chatter away.
Gee. Could this get serious?
While all this develops, it’s worth noting that the Turnbull Spring will be three years old in a few months. Malcolm is still there, Frydenberg is still there, Ben Ean Julie is still there.
These people still have their jobs. Really.
No. Really.
50
from cached version:
12 Jul: BusinessGreen: Over 45,000 businesses at risk of EU energy efficiency fines
Tens of thousands of businesses across Europe could be at risk of fines if they fail to comply with upcoming energy efficiency reporting rules. That is the warning issued this week by certification specialist and risk management consultancy DNV GL, which argued that with 18 months to go until the latest deadlines under the European Energy Efficiency Directive companies should start planning to ensure they are compliant with the rules.
Under Article 8 of the directive, all firms with at least 250 employees or revenues over €50m and an annual balance sheet of over €43m will have to meet an annual energy audit obligation by December 5th 2019. The rules are thought to cover over 45,000 firms, including many that operate in more than one member state and will have to report under multiple jurisdiction(s).
Precise requirements will vary from member state to member state, but broadly businesses will be obliged to measure their total energy consumption and identify savings across their estate every four years…
Under the directive regulators have the power to issue fines of up to €1m for non-compliance…
“Since each of the 28 EU member states has different compliance requirements, submitting the correct information can be a cumbersome task,” said Prajeev Rasiah, executive vice president for DNV GL’s energy business in North Europe, Middle East and Africa. “To simplify the process, our tool gives businesses access to a single knowledge hub of comprehensive information and policy experts who have deep knowledge of the regulatory variations and timescale requirements for all 28 Member States.”
It remains to be seen whether the UK will still have to comply with the directive post-Brexit, but both the UK government and the EU have repeatedly stressed that they want to see shared environmental standards maintained as part of any new EU-UK trade deal.
https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3035741/over-45-000-businesses-at-risk-of-eu-energy-efficiency-fines
12 Jul: ClimateChangeNews: Karl Mathiesen: UK seeks post-Brexit climate tie-up with EU
Cooperation on climate change is a “shared interest” between London and Brussels, according to a paper released by the UK government on Thursday
The document, which sets out in the most detail yet the UK’s ambitions for a deal it will negotiate with Brussels in the coming months, said the government “recognises the UK’s and the EU’s shared interest in global action on climate change and the mutual benefits of a broad agreement on climate change cooperation”…
If the EU accepts UK participation in the energy market (by no means a given), the white paper says the UK would continue to participate in the EU emissions trading scheme. This would bolster a wide range of businesses who have been working inside the scheme since 2005…
New Brexit secretary Dominic Raab, who took over from Davis this week, has ties to a free market network that funds climate sceptic and anti-EU groups, DeSmog UK reported (LINK) on Monday…
One of the consistent bugbears of the UK’s red top press has been the EU’s imposition of manufacturing requirements for fridges, freezers, toasters, TVs etc. This includes energy consumption.
The EU even put new kettle and toaster regulations on hold before the 2016 vote in order to avoid bad news stories that could sway the vote.
That intervention failed to convince the Brits. But now May has said the UK would accept EU rules as part of broad customs arrangements she is calling a “common rulebook”.
The same proposal would be a relief to the wind power and electric car industries, said think tank E3G’s Pete Clutton-Brock, who have complicated cross-channel supply chains a customs border would make impossible.
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/07/12/uk-seeks-post-brexit-climate-tie-eu/
10
Not just factories et al, but your OWN HOME could be redefined as a business and come under the same legislation:
Victoria is spearheading this. Page here:
https://www.change.org/p/daniel-andrews-dump-victoria-s-local-government-act-2018-bill-that-will-give-councils-authority-status
30
Sounds like a Marxist terror programme.Council officers terrorising residents forcing unnecessary house upgrading for “climate change”.
10
One solution could be to pump water from the Labor and the Greens desal plan at Wonthaggi to Snowt 2.0 and that would combine both white elephants.
40
I thought of that too but decided not to post it since even the Greens are not that stupid, at least I don’t think they are.
30
No sillier than the diminishing returns if Snowy 2 uses its own stored power to pump up water!
21
Hmmm, perhaps the Greens are that stupid. Perhaps we will soon hear plans for them to build desal plants powered by solar and wind farms to fill up the Snowy dams.
10
Yep.. Sounds like green circular reasoning.. 😉
30
Never underestimate they.
10
Genius! Sydney could pipe theirs South also, maybe 100% renewable ACT could help with pumping.
00
I know this is really old school but the electricity industry used to serve its customers a lot better when there was effectively one management from the coal heap to the cooktop. Coal would have been used to offset the impending water shortage. Now a separate profit taker is running the water to empty. That’s one of the “commercialisation” pitfalls.
Another is the scramble by the poles and wires owners to speed up the return on assets as opposed to the more orderly charging process when the public owned the asset.
Then we have the artificial concept of the “electricity retailer”. What was this artifice ever going to do but cost customers more?
The “wholesale market” was simply a concept that some form of market structure could provide cheaper bulk energy than a mature planning and dispatch organisational structure. Most likely a pipe dream but they had no chance to test the proposition in reality because Gore mesmerised the politicians and along came pollution of a reliable system by renewables.
So Oz’s once proud electricity industry has been crippled by a quadruple whammy.
80
Investor owned utilities.
Even when the greens strike, some order can be maintained.
There is a power plant nears my home.
It runs 24-7-365.
It runs on coal.
The company owns a mine in Kentucky.
They own a 100 car unit train.
It runs in a big circle, plant to mine and back.
The greens hate coal.
In spite of scrubbers and the latest technology, they hate coal.
They hate cheap reliable power.
So my local plant will have to give up coal.
They are converting to natural gas.
They have purchase a fracking field.
They have leased pipeline space.
Our energy price may actually go down, as out tax laws have change to favor capital investment.
The plant won’t be cleaner, but there will be less effort in cleaning up, and less particulate to dispose of.
The company also continues to make a good profit, and pay a nice dividend.
The company had to build a solar field adjacent to the plant.
The greens told us that it would reduce the cost of power.
The company told it’s investors that it would not increase the cost, except for the capital assessment,
because of sophisticated load shedding.
The greens don’t read investment documents, so they are happy with the show.
So lets see….you charter a company, charge them with providing electricity as efficiently as possible, regulate them
to provide universal service and not squeeze out monopoly profits, and let them be publicly owned so the shareholders provide
continuing market discipline.
Yes, the greens are trying to ruin the US grid too, but it’s slower here. Our last election started the pendulum in the other direction, perhaps in time.
No mystery, except in that common sense and successful models are completely opaque to a sizable part of our culture.
Here’s what, tho.
When the greens were about saving whales, adopting puppies, and picking up litter they were cute.
Now they are about destroying civilization and they are a menace.
They gain a lot of strength from people who still support the cute part of the myth.
If there is success in bringing down the culture, there will be a violent reaction.
A lot of people whose real interest is in picking up litter and adopting puppies will be hurt buy guilt by association,
and guilt by vote.
The one thing about our last election was that a politician told the blunt truth, in a simple easy to understand way.
He stated a problem (that ‘everybody’ understood), he stated a solution (that ‘everybody’ understood), he assigned blame and
questioned motives. In a tweet, within the attention span of his audience. He is still doing this.
Example: Germany is bad. They send billions to Russia, get 70% of their fuel from Russia, then want us to spend billions to defend them from Russia while they contribute nothing. This must stop.
Oh, the horror of truth telling.
Oz might profit by the same.
20
I’m sure someone would have noticed this before. Oil rich nations like Saudi Arabia have very cheap petrol for obvious reasons. How come a coal, gas and uranium rich country like Australia that exports so much of it doesn’t have the cheapest power prices?
80
You are not supposed to notice and talk about such things
00
novel length, unintentionally funny:
12 Jul: CarbonBrief: Simon Evans: The Carbon Brief Interview: Chris Stark
Chris Stark has been the chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) since April 2018. The CCC is the UK government’s official climate change advisor. He was previously the director of energy and climate change for the Scottish government and before that worked across Whitehall, including in the Treasury.
•On his “daft list” of cost-effective action not being pursued: “Top of my list would be onshore wind. Finding a route to market for the cheapest renewable electricity technology, it would seem to me, to be the most important step that government could take in the short term and I do believe it is daft that that is not happening at the moment.”…
•On enforcing the UK’s carbon budgets: “There is plenty of scope through the parliamentary route for the Climate Change Act and the carbon budgets to be enforced properly. There is also scope to bring government to court…In every case, the ultimate sanction is that government needs to make a new plan, which is exactly what we need.”…
•On the economic case for decarbonisation: “So, this is a kind of curious situation, that we know the world will have to decarbonise. It’s not often in life you get a dead cert like that…Surely, we can build a set of economic advantages from that in the UK.”
•On the current voluntary approach to farming emissions: “Policies, particularly in agriculture, have relied on a voluntary response, and that hasn’t happened. So I think we need to accept that and move on to something that looks like a tighter policy framework.”…
•On the UK government’s “Road to Zero” transport strategy: “I don’t regard the 2040 phase-out of petrol and diesel vehicles as being that ambitious. I mean, that’s 22 years away.”…
•On climate policy after Trump: “The reaction to Trump has been really positive, it seems to me, in the sense that everyone’s thought more about the climate issues, and especially China.”…
Carbon Brief: Thanks for taking time to talk to us today, Chris. You’re pretty new to the job, so I guess quite a lot of people don’t really know where you come from. So can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got here?
Chris Stark: Yeah, of course. I am new to the job. I think this is week 10, possibly week 11, I haven’t quite worked that out. But, anyway, we’re some way short still of the fabled 100-day mark. But this is actually me returning to London, so I am detoxifying from being a civil servant at the moment and very happy not to be one at the moment. So, public servant, not civil servant…
CB: When do you first remember hearing about climate change? Was it at school, university, TV, from relatives…?
CS: Gosh, I don’t know if I can answer that question. I think it’s always something I was aware of…READ ON
https://www.carbonbrief.org/the-carbon-brief-interview-chris-stark
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Hi Jo
Western NSW has been in a drought for a while now so why would anyone think it a good idea to flush what water remains in the snowy scheme dams away for hydro power? Government run/staffed quick buck artists I suppose. So the cycle repeats, after a drought when the rains return people forget about the last dry spell until we are in the middle of a new drought and then it’s time to panic!
Forget about the tourists and fishers, what are the farmers who rely on irrigation water from the snowy going to do when the rains fail this time? The snowy scheme was designed to turn the rivers of the snowy mountains inland to irrigate the western plains. No water in the dams = no crops = lots of angry farmers and big increases in the cost of agricultural produce. All water flushed away to make a quick buck out of high electricity prices for the government owned hydro.
Does it take some scary kind of illness to come up with these management practices. Or is just being a public servant with no fear of job loss enough?
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The problem doesn’t arise because the downstream storages are all overfull. There’s plenty of water there.
The whole thing is working the way it’s supposed to.
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You are very smart gnome.
You seem to know something which has evaded the rest of us.
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So with the irrigation ponds all full, and snow currently above lake Eucumbene expected to replenish water levels quite soon, is this article a non story ?
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Based on your comments Mr Gnome, would it be reasonable to assume that the present water level in the lake is normal for this time of year?
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my main concern remains the ***pension/Super funds:
11 Jul: Bloomberg: Banks Pivot Toward Greener Finance in Climate Action Push
By Anna Hirtenstein
Some of Europe’s largest banks are unveiling plans to lend and manage money in greener ways as pressure mounts to account for risks associated with climate change.
“It is coming, it’s a trend that’s started,” said Louis Douady, head of corporate social responsibility at Natixis SA in Paris. “The intention is to adapt our balance sheet to climate transition, so clearly we want to have a change in our business mix.”
Financial institutions are beginning to get on board with the global fight against climate change, a movement that was until recently the territory of non-profit organizations and environmentalists. Natixis, UBS Group AG and ING Groep NV are among lenders unveiling large-scale environmental finance and investing initiatives as central banks and regulators step up their warnings on climate risk…
***Banks are still trailing asset managers such as pension funds and insurance companies in putting climate concerns into action. Institutional investors with $68.4 trillion under management have already signed up to the Principles for Responsible Investment, pledging to incorporate environmental, social and governance factors, known as ESG, into their investment decisions…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-11/banks-pivot-toward-greener-finance-in-climate-action-push
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Must be something about Q2. When you look at the chart the highest prices for Q2 for the last few years have been the renewables luvies in SA and TAS.
Why power is expensive in TAS (if you arent in drought) escapes me.
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Someone called Malcolm e-mailed me to say he was going to fix electricity prices. Cheeky me offered some advice:
” Hi PM ,
How did we let our energy prices get so high/out -of -control?
Privatisation?
Greed..AGL and Vesey?
Mesmerisation of you and your colleagues by Flannery/Obama/Gore (FOG)…where are the relevant scientific qualifications of these guys to warrant your confidence in their leading us into the fog?
Oz used to have cheap reliable electricity…how did we get to where we are now?
Adolf Hitler mesmerised Germany (and a lot of the British aristocracy in the 1930’s) and Albert Gore has repeated the dose on a wider stage in the 2000’s. Perhaps one of your economic advisers can assess who has done the greater damage to humanity…Hitler or Gore. Better still get yourself some worthwhile free-thinking climate science /physics experts to take a realistic look at climate/CO2 reality. I am still waiting for you to answer my request of some years ago to get one of your scientific advisers to examine the analysis of CO2’s behaviour by Dr John Nicol. Please add David Evans, Judith Curry and Henryk Svensmark to that list.
By the time you have absorbed the wisdom of these experts you may have got your thinking to a point where you can really restore Australia’s energy integrity….political courage permitting.
Cheers
John Watt”
Don’t expect a reply from my trusted leader do I?
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Should have asked him why are we exporting so much coal and gas to the world if we are supposed to be reducing our emissions to save the world from overheating. There is a clear contradiction there and the only common sense solution is to stop the exports or stop the reduction of our emissions. Of course he wouldn’t even know the meaning of the word “oxymoron” even though he is one.
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Should have asked him why are we exporting so much coal and gas to the world if we are supposed to be reducing our emissions to save the world from overheating. There is a clear contradiction there and the only common sense solution is to stop the exports or stop the reduction of our emissions.
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Gawd, how I love it that WA is not part of the “national grid”, or the soon-to-be-disastrous “national energy guarantee”.
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I think the distance makes it too impractical as the losses would be too large. Perhaps it would be a different story if we had several very large nuclear reactors right in the middle of Australia. Not a good idea though to have all of them in one place for reasons of national security and the like.
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I think TonyFromOz says they are drinking the kool aide of rooftop solar. They are approaching max penetration before the grid falls over.
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Liberal MP Tony Pasin has been on Sky today, supporting coal, as has Deputy PM Michael McCormack and Craig Kelly. all on different programs, but it’s impossible to find stuff on Sky.
plus The Australian is behind a paywall:
ACCC energy report: Michael McCormack says there is a ‘green light for government-investment in coal
The Australian-10 hours ago
“The ACCC has suggested … it could be coal, it could be gas, whatever it is, though the … South Australian Liberal MP Tony Pasin said it was “more likely” the …
according to news.com.au the following, poorly-written AAP piece is by Matt Coughlan:
13 Jul: SBS: AAP: Nationals leader fires up over coal power
Nationals leader Michael McCormack insists coal has to be part of the solution in tackling Australia’s skyrocketing power prices.
Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack believes the competition watchdog has given the green light for the government to support new coal-fired plants…
The Nationals leader said the report showed coal was one technology the government should support if it moves to underwrite power generation…
“Coal has to be part of the mix. We’ve got plenty of it, we’re exporting plenty of it, why don’t we use more of it for our domestic power needs?” Mr McCormack told Sky News on Friday.
The government insists it is technology neutral and will let the market decide which forms of power generation come into the market.
Mr McCormack said coal created thousands of jobs, while also noting gas and other technologies had to be considered.
The Nationals leader support for coal is at odds with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and other senior cabinet ministers who have been careful not to single out any form of power generation.
Resources Minister Matt Canavan, a Queensland Nationals senator, and coalition backbenchers are continuing to make the case for coal.
Cabinet minister Christopher Pyne says the government can’t afford to be ideological.
“The ACCC didn’t suggest the subsidy of a coal-fired power station,” Mr Pyne told the Nine Network.
The watchdog’s report claimed power prices could fall by about 25 per cent if all the recommendations were adopted by federal and state governments.
“That can only happen with the government’s policy of not picking winners, but supporting all technological outcomes that put more power into the system,” Mr Pyne said.
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said the focus should be on lowering prices and improving reliability, not getting “too obsessed with the inputs”.
However, the government’s national energy guarantee would give coal-fired power its best chance to attract investment in years.
Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese said no one in the business community was interested in new coal-fired power plants.
“This is a fantasy of Tony Abbott and the far right of the Liberal Party,” Mr Albanese told the Nine Network.
***Meanwhile, an Australia Institute report found rooftop solar had delayed and reduced peak demand in the past summer.
Just when Australians were turning on air-conditioners, rooftop solar in east coast states reduced peak demand by more than 2000MW – the equivalent of a large coal-fired power plant.
The report suggested incentives for solar panels and batteries would show the government was serious about energy security.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/nationals-leader-fires-up-over-coal-power
RMIT-educated (LinkedIn) Matt Coughlan isn’t interested in promoting his piece on Macormack/coal on his Twitter page but, what he does promote, says a lot about him. why does AAP employ him?
Twitter: Matt Coughlan, AAP journalist in the Canberra press gallery. Former horse racing reporter. Love Jamaican music.
https://twitter.com/CoughlanMatt?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
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pat:
“The government insists it is technology neutral”
“The Nationals leader support for coal is at odds with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and other senior cabinet ministers who have been careful not to single out any form of power generation”
“Cabinet minister Christopher Pyne says the government can’t afford to be ideological.”
Yet they propose giving subsidies to wind turbines until 2030?????????
I know who I will be voting for in the coming by-election and it won’t be Liberal (or Labor or Greens).
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all because of “a period of low wind and solar output”, but Giles has a ****solution!
13 Jul: RenewEconomy: Tesla big battery powerless to stop S.A. price gouging
By Giles Parkinson
“I’ve never seen anything like it; with -$1k to +$14k in consecutive 5-minute periods. Chaos ensued.”
That was the response of a senior Tesla Energy executive this week after the extraordinary scenes in South Australia’s electricity market on Monday, when the fossil fuel generators had a party and prices swung from $14,200/MWh to minus $1,000/MWh in a matter of minutes.
The upshot of these price swings was that the cost of South Australia’s wholesale electricity averaged $710/MWh that day – more than 10 times its recent average.
The price spikes, as we reported at the time, was caused neither by a period of high demand, nor by a shortage of supply. The generators simply profited from a series of network constraints, ***and a period of low wind and solar output, to fill their wallets.
As we reported on Monday, and again on Tuesday, they were able to do so because most of the gas plants were not running at full capacity and the main diesel generators – three of them operated by the federal government-owned Snowy Hydro – had a price gouging party.
As analyst Allan O’Neill writes in this in-depth observation on WattClarity, most of the units at AGL’s Torrens Island gas station were running, but were dialled down. One of the two big units at Pelican Point was offline.
That gave room for the diesel generators to control the bidding, and enabled everyone – including the Torrens Island and Pelican Point generators – to profit.
The Coalition government, predictably, blamed renewables, or the lack of them, for the price hike. Resources Minister Matt Canavan raised it on Q&A when defending the need for base-load coal…
Canavan is truly delusional if he believes this has anything to do with the lack of baseload or the cost of gas. It has everything to do with market bidding strategies and the lack of competition.
The irony is that it was the government-owned Snowy Hydro that was at the heart of this bidding strategy, using its three diesel generators to repeatedly push the price up to $14,200/MWh in the first five-minute period of the each 30-minute pricing period.
This guaranteed a price of at least $2,500/MWh for the 30 minute period. But to get their share of the profits, the gas and diesel generators then had to bid the price down to the market floor – minus $1,000/MWh – so they became “must run” generators and get the credit from AEMO…
Rarely, however, does it happen at this scale and this length of time. This bidding was repeated nearly a dozen times over the next few hours, led by utility that is owned by the government that is claiming its focus is on reducing prices.
Never has a claim seemed so hollow, particularly as it is accompanied by calls for new coal fired generation…
So how did Tesla go on Monday when the bidding went wild? Hard to say, but it is understood it “followed the peaks”. So it probably made money. But as that executive noted: “The case for 5-minute settlements has never been clearer.”
****Imagine if there were more batteries, and more demand response, and even virtual power stations. At least then, when the prices spiked due to need, it would be the consumer that could share in the profits
https://reneweconomy.com.au/tesla-big-battery-powerless-to-stop-s-a-price-gouging-14476/
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Giles is always promoting ‘demand response’ also known as blackouts as the be all and end all solution to ‘flexible’ dispatch in a post base load environment.
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I remarked on this at the time. Within an hour the price had 10 excursions above $10,000 and 7 to -$1,000. How is this the fault of thermal generators as quoted?
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Diesels (and OCGTs – peaker plants) can only supply when there is a shortage of conventional generation backed up by an inability of renewables filling the gap in demand.
If there was plenty of wind in SA then there would have been no need for diesels. If there had been plenty of coal fired available then there would have been no need for diesels. This is the end result coming for Australia under current plans, lots of renewables and lots of diesels for the slack times ( e.g. Tasmania, also the UK with their STOR system ).
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As I understand it Labor won’t have coal fired power in any of its states so that’s your COAG consensus on which the federal decision regarding the NEG hinges we’re told.
So there’ll be floor crossing in the house and further bargaining but I won’t be surprised should the renewables investors’ downward pressure on prices abracadabra be enough to carry the day again; after all, when money’s being minted facts can wait.
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***no joy in the following by summer-party-pooper McCarthy:
12 Jul: Guardian: Fahrenheit 100: could this be the summer Britain wakes up to climate change?
I hoped 2003’s record heatwave would make people more aware. Yet they promptly forgot all about it
by Michael McCarthy
(Michael McCarthy is the author of The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and ***Joy)
PHOTO CAPTION: People enjoy the sunshine on Porthcurno beach, Cornwall, last month.
I don’t know anybody who remembers 10 August 2003 and its significance, although the date has never faded from my mind. That was Britain’s hottest ever day, the day the current British air temperature record was set: it leapt from the old record of 37.1C, set on 3 August 1990, to the new figure of 38.5C.
Those bare numbers may not mean much to you, though they may well appear more meaningful if you convert them to fahrenheit. For the old record was 98.8F,but the new one was 101.3F, and that meant that the 100F barrier had been broken in Britain for the first time ever. It seemed to me then, as it does now, that this was a hugely symbolic crossing of an environmental threshold; yet the population instantly forgot all about it…
The current heatwave bids fair to be the longest period of sustained hot weather since the fabled summer of 1976. But will it actually be the hottest? Might we actually see a new British record air temperature? Local records are already being broken and there was a brief flurry of excitement 10 days ago when it appeared that the Scottish national record had been smashed with a temperature of 33.2C (91.7F) recorded in Motherwell, but now the Met Office has rejected the claim because a vehicle with its engine running was too close to the thermometer…
For anyone interested in following and watching out for this, I have a suggestion: keep your eye on the fahrenheit as well as the celsius measurement it will mean more. I say this as a baby boomer who grew up with F rather than C…
In our native land of showers and cool summers, 100 degrees fahrenheit represented an unknown country.
The round number certainly helped. In celsius terms, 100F is 37.8C, and of course 37.8C as such isn’t any sort of figure the mind will register, any sort of boldly marked frontier whose breaching will seem significant. But once you represent it in fahrenheit, the move up from two digits to three has a symbolical significance of real power…
That’s what I thought, anyway, in the years I spent writing about climate change and being something of a temperature nerd, waiting for the 100 mark to be hit, for “the ton to be up”. When the 100F threshold is broken, I thought, everyone will see at once that we are in new territory in terms of climate; everyone will perceive the reality of global warming, in an instinctive way. And in August 2003 the day finally came, and I remember vividly how hot it was; and the day went; and people carried on with their business just as before, and have forgotten it completely…
Yet my own view is that we did indeed enter new territory that day; and if we have waited 15 years to get back there (and maybe we will wait still longer), it merely illustrates what we know, that climate change proceeds in a non-linear way, in irregular jumps rather than a smooth ascent. But watch out for it, this sweltering summer (probably in the first week of August); watch out for it on the old-fashioned fahrenheit scale as well as on the modern celsius. And if you see that the ton is up, and 100F is exceeded, be assured that even if a new outright temperature record is not set, the world is changing in the profoundest of ways.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/12/fahrenheit-100-summer-britain-climate-change-heatwave
Amazon: The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy – Michael McCarthy
The moth snowstorm, a phenomenon Michael McCarthy remembers from his boyhood when moths “would pack a car’s headlight beams like snowflakes in a blizzard,” is a distant memory. Wildlife is being lost, not only in the wholesale extinctions of species but also in the dwindling of those species that still exist.
The Moth Snowstorm is unlike any other book about climate change today; combining the personal with the polemical, it is a manifesto rooted in experience, a poignant memoir of the author’s first love: nature…
Arguing that neither sustainable development nor ecosystem services have provided adequate defense against pollution, habitat destruction, species degradation, and climate change, McCarthy asks us to consider nature as an intrinsic good and an emotional and spiritual resource, capable of inspiring joy, wonder, and even love…
Drawing on the truths of poets, the studies of scientists, and the author’s long experience in the field, The Moth Snowstorm is part elegy, part ode, and part argument, resulting in a passionate call to action.
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12 Jul: EurActiv: On climate change, ‘red alert is on’, says COP21 president Laurent Fabius
By Claire Stam
The world community has taken action against climate change but it must “triple its efforts” to reduce emissions and Europe needs to take the lead, COP21 President Laurent Fabius said ahead of the crucial United Nations’ annual conference (COP24) in December.
“The figures are not good, the red alert is on. Current mitigation plans are not enough, the world must triple its efforts and Europe needs to show the way. It needs a long-term strategy and must inform on its short-term choices,” Fabius said at the closing session of the stakeholder consultation public event organised by the European Commission in Brussels on 10-11 July…
“Fighting climate change is a necessity but it is also an opportunity for all of us – present and future generations – while we need at the same time a transparent discussion that honestly assesses the risks and opportunities of energy transition,” added Laurent Fabius…
Mauro Petriccione, director-general for climate action at the European Commission, said that during the two-day event, “we spoke about short-term and long-term actions. The EU has been doing a lot like the clean energy and effort sharing regulations bringing us to 2030. Now we need to put these short-term actions in a long-term perspective.”
EU Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete said in his closing remarks that Europe is ready to face the challenge ahead.
“We have listened and will continue to listen as we prepare the strategy,” he said, adding that Europe’s long-term 2050 strategy will not be just a modeling exercise to meet the Paris Agreement but will set a vision for the transition towards decarbonised EU economy and society.
“The long-term strategy is a comprehensive vision for delivering not only a decarbonised energy system but also a competitive European economy that will work for all Europeans,” he said…
“The Paris Agreement was deliberately ambiguous on carbon neutrality, but it’s now necessary to clarify what it means,” (Fabius) said.
Article 4.1 of the Paris Agreement refers to the mitigation aim and states that Parties are “to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, recognizing that peaking will take longer for developing country Parties, and undertake rapid reductions thereafter […] so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks […] in the second half of this century […].”
The language on “balance” between sources and removals by sinks was used as a proxy for “carbon neutrality” or a “net zero” goal, both of which proved to be too politically controversial to be included…
Fabius observed that the business community is now really invested.
“Most CEOs understand that climate action is not only a social, economic, and moral consideration but good business sense too. I just got back from China and there, they are saying that ‘green is gold’,” he said, adding that this major shift has consequences, “we need to take into account social aspects.”
https://www.euractiv.com/section/climate-environment/news/on-climate-change-red-alert-is-on-says-cop21-president-laurent-fabius
12 Jul: ClimateChangeNews: Which countries have not ratified the Paris climate agreement?
Nearly three years after it was agreed, more than a tenth of global emissions are generated in countries that have not formally adopted the deal
By Soila Apparicio
Liberia is about to join 178 other parties in ratifying the Paris Agreement, after its senate voted in June to approve the deal…
There are 197 signatories to the Paris Agreement. But once Liberia makes it official, 19 nations will remain yet to ratify, including some major emitters. In total, these countries account for 11.5% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
International agreements can be signed, but they only become binding through ratification. That can take an act of parliament or some other formal acceptance. Different countries have different processes…
Here are some of the hold outs.
Russia
Russia is the largest emitter that has not yet ratified the Paris Agreement, with approximately 5% of global emissions in 2015…
As of 12 July 2018, the countries yet to formally ratify the agreement were Angola, Colombia, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, Iran, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Nicaragua, Oman, Russia, San Marino, South Sudan, Suriname, Syria, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/07/12/countries-yet-ratify-paris-agreement/
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Laurent Fabius is old enough to know better (born 1946); it’s gotta be the finance credentials that put him here.
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Back in the 1960’s, when I was a kid in Tasmania, the state, which was 100% hydroelectricity, with more than a year capacity in its biggest dam, basically ran out of water and rationed power to industry and, to a lesser extent, homes. In a panic, several old liquid fuel gas turbines were bought and installed by Government and also a generation ship, and industry installed several steam turbines co complement those it already had. Despite the most reliable 24×7 renewable generation and huge energy storage, nature will sometimes win and deny the energy source needed, whether it be rain, wind or the suns rays. Something else, based on fossil fuel or nuclear, is then essential.
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