We’ve never had another third quarter this expensive
Despite setting price records — averaging $200/MWh across the whole quarter for the whole five-state National Energy Market, there’s like a cone of silence around the price of brown coal. The ABC is happy to evangelize about 30 minute “renewable energy records”, but they don’t mention that the three-month total system costs went off like a bomb.
Somehow Australia has all that free cheap green power and yet the wholesale costs exploded. The system broke:
No other Q3 has ever been this expensive.
But one unmentionable fuel type was still cheap
The average wholesale price for all generators last quarter was 20 cents a kilowatt hour (or $200 per megawatt hour), but brown coal generators were still able to supply during that same incendiary quarter for just at 4c a KWh. That was the average “winning bid”. So last quarter brown coal was one fifth the price of black coal, and one sixth the price of gas or hydro, and no one is talking about it.
The cheapest prices were from brown coal. (Far right)
Imagine if Australia had a free market in electricity?
Ponder for a moment, if households were allowed to choose the generator they wanted to buy electricity from? Imagine if there was a company that sold brown coal power direct to the customers?
Obviously the government would have to ban it, or regulate it away, or everyone would buy it. If nine out of ten households just wanted cheap reliable electricity, and they could get it, the free market grid would be full of coal plants. If the solar and wind plants had to pay for the extra transmission lines, the batteries, and the backup generators as one package, there would be a tiny niche market for rich-hipsters and Gucci-grid show-offs.
Brown coal or lovely lignite, is immune to the international crisis in energy stocks. It can’t be loaded on container ships (it burns spontaneously). It is our insurance, our cheapest baseload power, our back-up in times of war or inflation.
And we still have 300 years of coal left to burn (of both the brown and black stuff). If we started now, we could have cheap electricity in less than ten years.
REFERENCES
Q3 2022 Quarterly Energy Dynamics, PDF
Clean Energy Regulator 2022, Small-scale technology certificates
Isn’t there a lot of Brown Coal in Victoria? It’s enough to make you weep if it is not being used properly to generate loads and loads of cheap electricity. Then, there is all that black coal……………………….
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When does CCP coal contract expire?
140
There is lots of brown coal nearby.
Page 15 of
2015_South_Australian_Fuel_and_Technology_Report.pdf
But our (State) Government has banned its use, including shutting down Leigh Creek mine.
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There is a lot of brown coal in Gippsland. Right now, other than the brown coal power stations still using it to produce Australia’s cheapest electricity, nobody wants it.
That clever chap, Daniel Andrews, recently tripled the royalty applying to brown coal making the electricity it helped generate a bit more expensive.
Removing the royalty from their own brown coal would help Victorians benefit from cheaper electricity.
80
That not so clever chap. Matthew Guy, promised to use Victoria’s natural gas “for the state’s energy transition”. What an idiot. By saying it was for the energy transition, he committed to the same suicidal energy folly as Dan Andrews. If he had said he would use natural gas and coal to bring down energy prices, he would surely have got more votes, even in Victoria. By sticking to the ‘transition’ nonsense, he had nothing to distinguish himself from the incumbent. He deserved to lose the election. Mind you, the electorate were pretty thick too – the rule of democracy is that if you want change you vote in the opposition even if they don’t look any better. Federal Australia were smart enough to remove Scott Morrison. Victoria, not so smart.
90
Massive reserve of brown coal near Ackaringa that is untouched , from memory it’s between Cadney Park and the painted desert .
30
That’s a really rotten thing to say. Must you bring colour into everything. You’ll have Aunty having to reprimand you!
250
Brown Coal Matters !
310
Brown Lignite Matters perhaps?
80
That is such a racist thing to say, if I understand the rules of the game.
🙂
50
Privileged coal?
21
Good thing there’s no white coal. Could you imagine the incendiary invective that would ignite?
80
If you watch the usage curves, you will see that generally, brown coal electricity supply just hums along at a constant rate, doesn’t bother ramping up and down to make way for wind and other.
Victoria are very lucky to have such a reliable supplier…
….so they will, of course, destroy it.
420
Someone needs to explain to Teal voters that coal is free. You merely need to pay the government for permission to dig it up, someone to dig it up, and someone to turn it into electricity. So just like wind and solar, it’s free.
501
Natural gas earns export income and is subject to international pricing – the sane amongst the rest of the world still want it and use it. It helps to keep our economy afloat.
Black coal earns export income and is subject to international pricing – the sane amongst the rest of the world still want it and use it. It helps to keep our economy afloat.
Brown coal does not earn export income and is not subject to international pricing. It is truly “free”. It is the realistic choice for keeping the lights on during our transition to whatever. Those that want to shut brown coal power generation down are sabotaging Australia.
470
“It is truly “free”.”
Only where brown coal is available in abundance which is mostly Victorian south and around the SA,Vic, NSW border
As soon as you have to freight it, the cost climbs
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0251/2902/products/Australia-Coal-Mines.jpg
60
So you put the power station next to the mine – simple logic as they have done in Vic.
170
Not sure how they classify Western Australia’s coal. But it is unable to be exported. Much to the dismay of a certain Indian bank.
As well we in the west are not part of the “National Electricity Market” (NEM) so what happens here is rarely reported in the energy discussions in that group. Though it does appear that come eastern commentators have noticed the benefits of a natural gas domestic reservations policy.
30
ozfred – the east coast did have a natural gas domestic reservations policy a couple of decades ago. The bad news – it’s still in the ground and increasingly unlikely to be developed due to exploration and development bans by the eastern States. Good luck building gas distribution pipelines to connect them up anyway.
10
I am confused ????
What ‘input costs’ have increased for Hydro by over 300% in just 3 years?
The dams have been built, the water is in abundance – wages are stagnating, the debt servicing has only recently started to rise.
280
It’s not costs that determine spot prices. Brown coal bids $40 to ensure it gets accepted as base load. Hydro bids to cover peak evening demand and is competing with open cycle gas generators.
Plenty of solar during the day forces spot prices down, sometimes to negative numbers, but then prices skyrocket to cover the evening peak demand as shown on OpenNEM. Clcik on top left and you can see the mix of prices by State.
130
The Snowy Dams were too full. I wrote about this:
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Because they were limited in outflow they would only bid at high prices so they would not be called upon very often and would be available only when they were most needed.
So it makes sense — given the market conditions — for them to raise their bids.
So therein lies the screwed up nature of our NEM market. Even cheap “free” hydropower can’t run cheaply when it has lots of water and other sources of electricity are expensive.
I suppose if it had long term futures contracts for cheaper supply the spot market effects would limit the times it was used but not wildly affect the whole cost? Other people with more knowledge of how those contracts work may correct me… but it seems to me that buying those long term contracts is always going to be a bit risky when future dam levels are hard to predict.
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Patience.
The drought next summer may see those high water levels become VERY profitable.
30
I guess it goes to my own personal beef with Hydro Tasmania.
Tassie exports 25-33% of it’s electricity generation to Victoria and only to Victoria.
This year power prices for Tasmanians increased by 12%, but somehow (despite have a lower daily connection cost and cost per unit) Victoria’s price only increased by 5%.
Tasmanian taxpayers paid for the dams – but Victorian’s get the benefit?
Of course, the Tasmanian government raises additional revenue that can be said to benefit Tasmanians – but the reality is we would benefit more as a state and a people by withdrawing from the NEM.
Instead the taxpaying, hydro-developing Tasmanians are poised to increase exporting Tasmania’s competitive advantage via Basslink mk2 to Victoria.
80
Surely they can let the water flow downstream and pump it back upstream without causing flooding? The Federal Government is willing for us to pay for this. More solar and wind required to power the pumps. More power lines to the solar and wind farms required to connect to the pumps.
An energy tax on the Australian people paid to China. Look at it as an anti-invasion tax. Cheaper than defending the country. We become an energy rich vassal state with no industry.
This is all self inflicted. China knows we are stupid and lazy. We know we are lazy and stupid.
30
The reports are here if you want to work through them.
https://www.snowyhydro.com.au/about/reports/
Using 2020 as a reference year might give weird results because so many odd things happened that year. However if you base the reference on 2019 you get a more plausible scenario. This is from “CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF PROFIT OR LOSS” out of their annual reports.
2019 (figures in $million)
Revenue: 2848.4
Other income: 4.5
… Losses and Expenses …
Direct costs of revenue: 1794.2
Consumables and supplies: 70.3
Employee benefits expense: 214.3
Depreciation and amortisation expense: 139.1
Impairment loss recognised on trade receivables: 22.3
Other expenses: 118.3
2022 (figures in $million)
Revenue: 3499.4
Other income: 23.1
… Losses and Expenses …
Direct costs of revenue: 2660.1
Consumables and supplies: 66.1
Employee benefits expense: 228.7
Depreciation and amortisation expense: 155.0
Impairment loss recognised on trade receivables: 20.5
Other expenses: 107.8
The revenue is up by 23% over 3 years (about 7.1% annualized) which is reasonable not exceptional.
Their main cost “Direct costs of revenue” up 48% over 3 years (about 14.0% annualized) which is a bit surprising.
Scanning down the 2022 report I can find mission statements, safety messages, discussion of staff gender breakdown, several pages talking about all the executive staff, plenty of environmental discussion, a very intricate and detailed system for calculating executive remuneration, an ESG statement going for 13 pages (no I didn’t read it, only counted the pages) but not a whole lot of explanation exactly why the cost blowouts. Interesting that Snowy Hydro also runs peak-levelling gas turbine plants (fair enough) and even more interesting are these two paragraphs.
Well … that sure hints at what is going on, but if they are going to say it then spit it out and say it.
100
If only we could get this news to the people. The MSM won’t publish it. I wonder why. Are they beholden to the government? Are they communists as well? Are they trying to bring Australia down? The one thing we do know for sure; they cannot ever be trusted no matter the topic. If they will lie by omission about something as important as cheap, reliable power they will lie about any and everything. They lied about vaccines, treatments and the benefits of lockdowns. Indeed, as Jo pointed out yesterday, our senior scientific organisations lie about the fundamental data upon which governments rely for policy decisions. If only we had a Trump who was not afraid to speak the truth. I have never had a twitter account but maybe now we should use it to spread the truth now that Elon allows such a thing.
370
It was bragged about in the late 70s that Victoria had around 700 years of brown coal in and around the the Latrobe Valley. There are further reserves running from there through to Altona (west of Melbourne) right through to Bacchus Marsh. Altona was mined in the late 19th and early 20th century and Bacchus Marsh in an open cut until recently.
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I forgot to mention Brown coal was used to make gas for running vehicles in the 1st world war and supplied cheap briquettes for heating homes right through to the 1970s
300
But *runaway gurgle worming* didn’t exist until 1988/89 when a certain James Hansen turned off the A/C and opened all the windows… to present The Science™.
220
You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand that with the decline and fall of the Soviet Union, the US national missile defence system needed to promote a new existential threat to justify its public cost.
51
What happened to that process of turning brown coal into briquettes? There could be a market for them overseas, not only for household heating but maybe for electricity generation (in countries like China, India etc. that don’t believe in climate hogwash).
90
No need to turn it into briquettes for export – there’s already a huge export market for the stuff as is. The problem is successive grubbymmints banning its export as just happened to Clive Palmer’s Galilee Basin project.
171
Sorry but you are totally wrong.
There is a basic technical reason why brown coal cannot be exported. It spontaneously combusts extremely easily, which is why they try to have hardly any stockpiles of it between the mine and the power station.
Exporting it you are going to have major spon com issues while you assemble the cargo prior to having enough to efficiently load the ship. Then depending on the ability of the ship to seal the holds, you could also have major fire risk to the ship. Then again when you unload the cargo and create another stockpile.
The Galilee basin is not brown coal at all, it is lower quality sub-bituminous black coal – lower quality than other sub bituminous black coals eg Hunter Valley thermal.
30
I’m not going to argue about it Dean, given that we have been exporting “brown” (ie “thermal”) coal since 1976. Millions of tons of the stuff.
I have no idea how many ships have been blown up and sunk due to brown coal ‘spontaneous combustion’ in that time, but I know it is just as much an issue with “black” (ie “coking”) coal and we have managed to export millions of tons of that as well.
The loss of exploding ships must be enormous.
31
Victoria’s own Gas & Fuel Corp. retailed gas produced from Gippsland brown coal using the Lurgi process. Gas from Bass Strait replaced Lurgi gas and the G&FC was eventually broken up. Brown coal briquettes also fuelled the large Newport Power Station having been conveyed from Gippsland on a dedicated electrified railway service. The power station has been demolished and the dedicated electrified rail network that supported it has been largely truncated.
20
Thanks for the data AGAIN Jo, but you’re a small voice against a sea of noisy liars and con merchants and hardly anyone has heard of you or your site.
This isn’t a criticism of you just an obvious conclusion and I certainly haven’t got any answers.
When the crap really does hit the fan I’m sure voters will howl and govts will fall, but the endless billions of $ wasted for decades will never be recovered and we’ll have a hopeless very fragile electricity grid and an even bigger mountain of debt to service.
Yet our con merchants thrive and pollies continue to lie repeatedly in parliament about our terrible climate and increasing deaths from extreme weather events and rising SLs threatening Coral islands and an increase in Cyclones etc and everybody shuts up and zips their lips.
But thanks again Jo for trying to make a difference, but we need thousands more like you, but alas that sort of intelligent research, plus motivation is very rare indeed.
Of course if there was govt or private money to be made for the sceptic side of the argument we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in today.
Just look at China, India and developing countries’ soaring co2 emissions over the last 30 years.
390
Our job is to do the best we damn well can so that when things fail people know why it did. Otherwise when the crisis comes the parasites will use the crisis they created to make things even worse.
Two key messages to spread:
Brown coal is wildly cheap at 4c/KWh
Renewables are the grid vandals that make the whole system inefficient and expensive.
220
Spot on, Jo.
We can no longer stop what’s coming, but sites like this, and people like you, will ensure that the survivors know who to blame, and how to rebuild.
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Joanne is correct here, umm, naturally!
And how easy is it to just ….. ‘say’ that brown coal is cheapest, and the non believers will just croak back ….. yeah you would say that.
Y’know, the longer I’m around, the more I see that green followers make these all singing all dancing websites detailing facts and showing how good green power really is.
However, drill down, and you find facts that they might not wish to be really found at their websites, all in the name of making a show that you know, the public has this right to know, perhaps not realising that they have removed their foot from their mouth, only to replace it with the other foot. But hey, none of those green supporters would even have the slightest comprehension of what they were looking at even if they do unwittingly stumble onto this part of the site.
Okay then, take this link to the OpenNEM site, and here I have already done half of that ‘drilling down’ process I mentioned, and here, you’ll have to do a little work, but hey, once you see the result, you’ll be glad you did do that work.
I can take you directly to the one plant, but I’ve done it like this to show you how to do it, so you can then follow the same steps with the other two plants.
At top left, you’ll see the three brown coal plants in Victoria, and at bottom right you see the indicated Loy Yang A plant.
Now, at the bottom right, click on the plant name, (Loy Yang A) and the plant data opens up. (the default is 3D and 30 min, as shown on that tab above the graph, and 3D is the most recent three days of power data)
Okay, on that same tab, now click ALL. What you see now is the output from each of the four Units since recording started in 1998.
Now, scroll down as far as you are allowed.
At absolute bottom right it shows $48.98. That’s the LIFETIME (well, since recording started in 1998 anyway) cost of the generated power, dollars per MWH.
Hover your mouse at the start of the graph left side and then it was $15.50/MWH
Now if you wish, same process for Loy Yang B ($50.76/MW and 14.79/MW) and YallournW ($48.18/MWH and $14.33/MWH)
Oh, and did you notice those lifetime Capacity Factor figures there. Loy Yang A at 84.3%, Loy Yang B at 97.2%, and Yallourn W at 80.9%.
All of those plants were in operation prior to the start of this data collection, and all of them were way cheaper even than the low price at 1998, averaging around ten to twelve dollars a MWH
Note how cheap power was then and right up until the beginning of wind and solar power plants, when the cost of power started to rise, and rise and rise.
The only reason that coal fired power is more expensive now is that the costs of keeping these really really really old plants running has increased, and they raised the price for the coal, and they allowed maintenance to slide, and, and, and these ancient old unreplaced clunkers STILL keep delivering.
And Joanne, sorry for such a long winded response.
Tony.
210
Do we have the cost per KWH for Solar and Wind in Q3, Jo?
00
SEE the following 3 min video from 1948 when Australia was actually interesting in progressing rather than regressing.
It talks about generation of electricity from Victorian brown coal plus production of briquettes.
Ignore the anti-energy description added to the video. Just reminisce on the days when Australia had cheap, reliable energy and was an industrial nation that made just about everything we needed.
Sir John Monash would be appalled at what’s been done to the foundation of the electricity grid he built 1920-1931.
https://youtu.be/eWXFnVT5Wj0
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Absolutely correct, David. Sir John is no doubt turning in his grave.
It might be useful to add here that now that the German government has officially recognised that “Energiewende” has failed, they are turning back to their own reserves of lignite, the same brown coal as found in Victoria, for no doubt precisely the same economic realities as stated here. Also, as has been said here and elsewhere, unlike our governments, the Germans were prudent enough to not blow up their brown-coal power stations.
Meanwhile, we continue to export our black coal to grateful buyers, and some of it is effectively returned to us in the form of wind turbines and solar panels. What kind of value-add is that?
Great article, Jo
Paul Miskelly
190
Thanks Paul.
Way back now, in 2008, when I was doing so much, I found out about UltraSuperCritical (USC) coal fired technology.
I had already had a career as an electrical tradesman, working, supervising, man managing, and teaching the trade for 25 years. And when I started all of this back in March of 2008, I learned more each day about electrical power generation than I had during all of those earlier years.
I found that the Germans had perfected USC for use with brown coal fired power plants, and one of the earlier USC brown coal fired plants in Germany was the Neurath plant with 2 Units each running a ….. 1300MW generator. And here’s the link to that information, dated 31May2008.
As part of the work, there was interest shown from Australia, those brown coal fired plants in Victoria, and at that information text there, right close to the bottom of the text is this one line:
It wasn’t about converting Hazelwood to USC, as that would entail a complete new power plant, but the use of that WTA technology, which is fluidised bed drying with internal waste heat utilization, using the waste heat from the plant to dry the coal prior to burning, to dramatically increase the efficiency of the plant itself, the water content of brown coal long being one of the major problems with brown coal fired power generation.
The process was planned for Hazelwood.
Naah! Let’s just blow the f*****g thing up instead eh!
Tony.
160
What could have been is soul destroying Tony. I always look for your well researched and documented comments and coming from an insider they are invaluable as a source for debate. What hurts most is that you are one of undoubtedly many who understand the situation yet are unable or reticent to tell others the truth of the matter. The fact that the bosses of the big power companies are speaking out now is encouraging but they should have been doing so before the last election. Then again who listens? Victorians voted for Dan’s attack on reliable electricity.
10
As the clueless-beyond-belief federal anti-Energy Minister Chris Bowen might say (and perhaps did?).
“Solar and wind are the cheapest form of energy. That’s why the electricity price keeps going up.“
320
True. And why not?
It’s what EVERY federal minister, Labor AND Liberal, have been saying since 2007 when Howard started it all.
150
Howard was much more clueless, far more damaging to the country and much less conservative than most people think. I wouldn’t even rate him a conservative.
161
Fair enough.
But what about Rudd, Gillard, Abbott, Turnbull, Morison and now Albanese?
They’ve ALL been singing the same “anti carbon” song for fifteen years now.
How do you substantiate your belief that one lot of these lying mongrels is somehow “better” than the other?
90
I have no such belief. They are ALL bad.
110
Agreed.
Now if only we could convince the general population of that fact.
They will continue to vote for either Lieberal/Liebor and wonder why the result is the same old, same old.
60
Not so fast on the Hon Tony Abbott if you don’t mind, MV:
TONY Abbott has told a climate sceptics’ forum in London that global warming may actually be a good thing, while doubling down on his view that climate science is “absolute crap”.
The former prime minister likened climate scientists to the “thought police” in his address to the Global Warming Policy Foundation on Monday night and said that a “gradual lift in global temperatures” may be beneficial.
His comments found some traction with the former minister for Industry, Innovation and Science Matt Canavan.
October 10, 2017 – 2:01PM
News Corp Australia Network
https://www.news.com.au/national/politics/tony-abbott-tells-climate-sceptics-forum-global-warming-may-be-good-and-climate-science-is-crap/news-story/dc42c5598f4c63e0e9689d6eacaf3b07
And, he’s correct. Always was, always will be.
81
Yes I do mind, Sam.
Prior to becoming Leader of the Opposition in 2009 Abbott is on record as saying global warming was, quote, “a load of crap”. But then in the 2010 election against Julie Gillard, Abbott became a “true believer” and promoted an emissions trading scheme (ETS) to “save us” from global warming. In the 2013 election he again campaigned for an ETS until Krudd dropped it and Abbott followed suit. In 2015 in his final act as PM, Abbott signed into effect the ETS more or less as originally envisaged by Howard in 2007.
It was only in 2017, two years AFTER he had been deposed by Turnbull and relegated to the backbench that he made the comments you refer to. He pulled the same stunt over our replacement subs.
I keep repeating myself, but please stop taking any notice of what these lying, dishonest pricks SAY, and look more closely at what they DO.
61
Well, you might mind, MV. That’s your perogative.
However, Tony Abbott has been a voice of sanity in the Liberal Party for a very long time.
Politics is politics. His own views inevitably have to give way publicly to the will of the Cabinet Room.
In Abbott’s case, that makes the optics look as you uncharitibly paint them. However, his views have remained pretty much constant: “Climate research is crap”.
That’ll do me.
30
Prerogative.
10
The myth promulgated by the Left* is that brown coal is “dirty” (a non-scientific descripion I know but that’s what they say).
That’s one of the reasons they hate lignite even more than anthracite and everything in between, but they HATE IT ALL, including energy itself (for non-Elites).
As has been pointed out on this blog before, it is not “dirty” (sic).
*SEE https://environmentvictoria.org.au/our-campaigns/safe-climate/problem-brown-coal/
140
Please remember David that the left are not and never can be considered the same as us with similar aspirations but having a different plan for achieving it. No. The left are socialists/communists whose aim is diametrically opposed to us. They want to destroy what we have achieved so that their communist masters can take over eventually. Everything they do is designed to weaken us as individuals and our nation as a whole. Name one policy emanating from the left that is beneficial to the whole. There are none. There are plenty that are detrimental.
20
Here’s an article that Lomborg wrote for the New York Post in 2019 about the horrendous costs of net zero for New Zealand. That NZ cost would be 5 trillion $.
The costs for Aussies would be about 55 trillion $ and USA more than 650 trillion $.
And this is the NZ govts own estimate and don’t forget this will fix NOTHING, but will waste endless TRILLIONs of $ forever. But China and Russia and Iran etc will be very pleased. Here’s the 2019 article.
“The climate summit is underway in Madrid, and activists are sounding their usual calls for world leaders to achieve carbon neutrality as fast as possible. It’s a fool’s errand.
From California to France to Chile, environmentalists laud leaders for already making the promise, and sometimes even passing legislation, to stop putting more greenhouse gases into the air than they take out.
Democratic presidential hopefuls are adding their voices to the chorus. Front-runner Joe Biden promises to “ensure the US achieves a 100 percent clean-energy economy and reaches net-zero emissions no later than 2050.” Some of his competitors, including Cory Booker and Julian Castro, envision completing this Herculean task at least five years earlier.
Climate change is a real problem. It is man-made, and it will have negative consequences. But trying to stop emitting CO₂ by 2050 or sooner is a very expensive way to do almost no good.
We just have to look to New Zealand, the only country to have actually made an estimate of the cost of achieving carbon neutrality.
New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, received plaudits this year for passing legislation designed to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. To her credit, her government asked a respected economics institute to estimate the cost. This revealed that getting to 50 percent below 1990-levels in 2050 would cost at least 5 percent of GDP annually by 2050.
Why so expensive? For the same reason it is expensive anywhere: Weaning economies off fossil fuels and onto pricier, less efficient forms of energy reduces growth and prosperity. The impact quickly adds up.
For New Zealand, the cost is similar to today’s entire expenditure on socialized education and health care. And getting all the way, rather than halfway, will likely cost 16 percent of GDP by 2050. That is more than New Zealand today spends on social security and welfare, health, education, police, courts, defense, environment, and every other part of government combined.
Across the century, the cost for the small island nation of 5 million souls would add up to at least $5 trillion. And this assumes New Zealand implements climate policies efficiently, with a single carbon tax across all sectors of the economy over 80 years.
SEE ALSO
Climate activist Greta Thunberg waves as she arrives in Lisbon aboard the sailboat La Vagabonde.
Greta Thunberg says voyage to US ‘energized’ her climate fight
No economy has ever introduced climate policies that effectively, because politicians love to pick winners, promote ineffective solutions like electric cars and lavish subsidies on poorly performing technologies.
What will this achieve? Let’s assume that in every one of New Zealand’s elections between now and 2100, governments are chosen that continue to fulfill the promise of going to zero by 2050 and staying there. Imagine, too, that New Zealanders don’t rebel against the inevitably large tax hikes on energy — no “yellow-vest” protests.
In these artificial conditions, if New Zealand meets its promise of zero emissions in 2050 and stays at zero for five decades, then the greenhouse-gas reduction, according to the standard estimate from the United Nations’ climate panel, will deliver a temperature cut by 2100 of 0.004 degrees.
New Zealand is considering spending at least $5 trillion to deliver a physically unmeasurable impact by the end of the century.
The math is comparable for most economies: enormous costs and very small benefits. Of course, huge nations like China and America going carbon-neutral by mid-century would indeed generate measurable impacts by 2100, but the costs would also run into the hundreds of trillions, and in the case of China, mean more poverty. Unsurprisingly, most governments and presidential candidates shy away from publishing any real analysis of their promises.
The climate challenge will not be solved by asking people to use less and more expensive energy. A sensible middle ground must be found that could include policies like a low and rising carbon tax. But we must ultimately focus on the reality that the best way to fix climate change is innovation that lowers the price of clean energy below that of fossil fuels.
In Paris in 2015, world leaders promised to double spending on research and development into green energy. They are on track to miss that target. The Madrid conference should focus its energy on innovation — rather than wild-goose chases”.
Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center.
161
Sorry, here’s that link to Lomborg’s 2019 NY Post article.
https://nypost.com/2019/12/08/reality-check-drive-for-rapid-net-zero-emissions-a-guaranteed-loser/
70
That is all well and good Neville, Lomborg knows his economics and is very sensible about decrying current mitigation policies, the uselessness of Net Zero and limitations of ruinous renewables.
However, he is wrong about two key propositions here, that humans are causing climate change and that CO2 is able to drive current global warming, this is because he has no expertise in this science, he just takes it on trust- sadly misplaced.
Modern science does not support the AGW theory, only the GCM-models tuned to this theory support it, whilst observations show modern warming is cyclic, independent of CO2 levels, and not at all dangerous.
This not my opinion, it is established record, particularly demonstrated by the satellite data, that is the least manipulated global record we have, and doesn’t suffer from the urban heat island effect, that is ruining the ground temperature datasets.
So, all this useless political squabbling about carbon issues and energy, is a totally wasted effort, trying to mitigate a non-problem! This is a definition of ultimate stupidity, and China is lapping up the economic spoils!
We in the West have a lot to learn, and in Australia our virtue signalers are leading us straight over the economic cliff to irrelevence- well done guys!
30
I believe there are large Brown Coal reserves near Heywood. If Fluidised bed combustion is used it nearly as efficient as Black Coal. This efficient combustion system was banned by the Looney Greenies in the eighties to cripple coal fired power generation.
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Beijing is going all out for new coal plants.
https://notrickszone.com/2022/11/25/china-to-double-coal-fired-power-plant-capacity-aims-to-avoid-european-us-blunders/
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They build.
We unbuild.
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Thanks for the link E G and certainly no mad drive to NUT ZERO for the CCP and in OECD countries we’ll certainly suffer in the future on cold STILL frosty winter nights during El ninos and during cloudy weeks during la ninas.
Not much of a joyous future relying on their clueless S & W lunacy.
110
Obviously Governments have money to Waste!
Just received email, and no I have not previously used their Services.
Hi Your Name Here
We have previously helped you out installing products under the government-backed Energy Savings Scheme or helped you save money by changing over your energy retailer or provided you a quote on Solar.
Well, we have some more good news!
We are now upgrading consumers’ old inefficient electric heat pumps to a brand new highly efficient heat pump for only $33 under the Gov-Backed Energy Savings scheme.
The heat pump is valued up to $4000. You only pay $33.
4 requirements to qualify:
✅ You live in an approved postcode area
✅ You have a current Electric Hot Water System (If you have a Gas hot water system you can convert to Electric heat pump for only $1500)
✅ You are a homeowner or renter
✅ This is the first time you’ve claimed an electric heat pump through this initiative
Proven to reduce your energy costs ($500+/year)
Please click on the link below to register your interest. One of our Heat Pump specialists will contact within the next 24 hours to get your $33 installation arranged.
https://solar.elitesmartenergysolutions.com.au/nswfreeheatpump/
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – 4.7/5 Stars (160+ Google Reviews)
Steve Hill | CEO – Elite Smart Energy Solutions
W http://www.elitesmartenergysolutions.com.au
E [email protected]
P 1300 013 832
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I suspect only about twenty percent of the Australian population who are net tax payers have any clue where all the “free” and never ending and increasing amount of “free stuff” comes from.
Spending will continue until inevitable economic collapse and following that, foreign invasion such as by the Chicomms.
When that happens, many will stand in the streets flying CCP banners and welcoming the invaders.
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Old Ozzie I wouldn’t give them your details like bank account nos etc.
This seems to be very smelly to me, but I could be wrong.
50
Neville, I can’t vouch for that one in particular, but that’s the general tone of the marketing we see for this “free stuff” in Vicdanistan.
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Neville,
I have been receiving phone calls from usual overseas suspects saying NSW Govt is promoting this concept
Seems Legit
Save $100s on your power bill! Upgrade to an energy efficient hot water system for only $33 thanks to the NSW Government’s Energy Savings Scheme (ESS).
Standard system sizes (215L) are only $33 – fully installed! (RRP $3299). Extra Large 430L systems also available for only $599 (RRP $5499).
Supplied and installed with no extra or hidden costs when replacing an electric hot water system installed outside.
https://nswhotwaterupgrades.com.au/
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The Energy Realists of Australia have started a serious study of the cost of power, especially the comparative cost of unreliable versus coal and nuclear.
The notorious CSIRO GenCost study is the official source of absurd claims by the Government and others that wind and solar are cheaper so we will point out the errors and false assumptions in that report.
We will also survey and summarise the best studies we can find around the world; these demonstrate that coal and nuclear win the power price contest. A local study tells the same story, it is reported here and here. And here is a link to the summary of the report by the authors.
140
Thanks Rafe and crew.
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Umm, here’s a wonderful idea.
How about we use the brown coal to ‘make’ Hydrogen.
Then we could use the hydrogen to generate power.
Consume huge amounts of power turning the coal to Hydrogen.
Get small amounts of power back from using the Hydrogen to generate power.
Can anyone see what I’m seeing here?
Tony.
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Anyone who can see that Net Zero is Not Zero, perhaps.
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I can.
Another perfect scheme for government subsidies.
I wonder sometimes what percentage of the population don’t understand that government subsidies come out of their own pocket? It wouldn’t surprise me if 5% or more believe it costs them nothing.
“it’s free I tells ya”!
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You’re looking at it from the wrong point of view, Tony.
Sure, for ordinary Australians it’s just another gerubbymint sponsored ripoff.
But consider the position of those who currently make their millions by harvesting grubbymint protected subsidies for ineffective windmills. Now they will have three new sources of subsidy harvesting. From their point of view, what’s not to like?
YOU don’t like it? Tough turkey.
You are not part of The Big Club.
Warning – coarse language.
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Indians play hard ball with WA government over Griffin’s future.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-26/failed-griffin-coal-indian-owners-seek-almost-1-billion/101695318
If the matter is not resolved then the government will have to import coal from NSW or Indonesia.
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Revoke the mining license.
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Interesting. If common sense was ever invoked in WA then the closing plants would be replaced with new modern coal plants and the unreliables allowed to compete without subsidies. Upping the price paid for coal by 50% would not increase consumer costs as much as new unreliables and backup.
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Cough cough sputter sputter!
Dear old ancient clunker waste of space Yallourn W coal fired power plant, perhaps one of the first to go eh.
Ancient. Useless. Every other similar noun to those.
It’s now 49 years old.
Thank heavens above that wind power is replacing that relic of the past.
49 years!
510TWH in total generated power at a lifetime Capacity Factor of 83%.
And when you see your power bill written in KWH consumed, that 510TWH is 510,000,000,000KWH.
Wind power will replace that bygone era, thankfully.
Currently, the total Nameplate for wind power in Victoria is 4037MW, and hey, see how it has already replaced Yallourn W Nameplate of 1480MW , in fact, replaced it 2.73 times over, thankfully.
And that Nameplate of wind generation in Victoria delivered a Whoppingly Humungous 8.313TWH of power over the last 12 Months.
Sooooo, for a source of power generation that is already 2.73 times LARGER than this four Unit coal fired power plant, then wind, to deliver the same generated power to Victorians, will only take, umm,
So, every single existing wind plant in the State of Victoria would need to supply that power for the next 10 years (with an averaged whole of Victorian wind fleet ten years already delivered) and then will need to be replaced in toto, and then replaced again in toto, and run to the end of that lifespan, just to deliver the same amount of power, but that’s only if those wind plants exceed their design capabilities.
Oh Maths ….. it’s such a worry!
Tony.
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Australian governments are directly subsidising the Renewable industry.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/11/24/free-money-aussie-governments-desperately-pump-priming-their-green-energy-revolution/
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And penalising coal/gas fired power stations by reducing their output when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining and calling on them to generator more at other times, overall impacting adversely on operating costs and profit.
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Brown coal doesn’t do much “up and down”.. it remains pretty constant apart from the occasional dip.
Its the backbone of the electricity supply in Victoria.
Remove that backbone, and you have a floppy, unsupportable mass of irregularity, capable of nothing.
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Meanwhile, China plans to DOUBLE their coal fired electricity output.
https://notrickszone.com/2022/11/25/china-to-double-coal-fired-power-plant-capacity-aims-to-avoid-european-us-blunders/
And the utterly stupid Australian government (all of leftist bents) want to shut down some of our measly, insignificant number of coal fired power stations.
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I don’t believe politics has much to do with energy policy in this country. There’s a cabal of people within the Department of Energy who have been anti-coal for probably 30 years. They are also unfortunately, anti – nuclear. It’s why when Labor / Greens are in government “ green” energy policies accelerate. When LNP are in government they apply the brakes somewhat , but to little avail. In true “ Yes minister “ style any respective Minister for Energy ( and emissions reduction) is just a PR spokesman for the department. Chris Bowen can tell all the half truths he likes because he knows he’s got the department has his back. The previous LNP proposed all sorts of gas and coal fired generators to be established in various states, but it went nowhere because the public service weren’t backing it. Most people probably didn’t even know that proposal existed.
41
Energy Australia raises a warning flag, but our political betters are deaf and blind.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/11/25/renewable-energy-revolution-energy-australia-warns-against-retiring-fossil-fuel-early/
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A large number of black coals may also ignite spontaneously. In fact, captains of the cargo ships for these commodities have a sat phone flasher to contact shore-located senior lab chemists urgently for advice when a heating onboard the ship is detected. Stockpile management of many black coals give real consideration to measured capacity for spontaneous combustion.
The basic reason brown coal is not exportable is its’ low quality – low Specific Energy, high Total Moisture. The domestic power stations that burn it are deliberately designed for this. This is why the alumina smelter was located in Portland, Vic.: supply of cheap power in order to try and earn some export from the abundant lignite.
Please, Nova, learn some basic geoscience *before* you pontificate. I know I’ve pointed this out before so it’s obvious there is no will for it.
18
Truly perplexing – given that Australia is the world’s second largest exporter of thermal (brown) coal.
23
The “thermal” coal we export for Newcastle and Queensland is black coal, not brown coal.
Brown coal is found in Victoria and around the area of the NSW, VIc and SA borders
It is not exported because it contains a lot of moisture and the weight/energy makes it very uneconomical against the black coals of NSW, Qld, Indonesia etc.
60
Labour went to the last election promising to reduce power prices.
Now they blame the war in Ukraine on rising prices.
Yet, the price of coal has gone down since the election.
See this screenshot
And then couple their logic with the renewables are now supplying more power to the grid – overseas coal and gas prices should have no impact on the cost of renewable electricity.
Why do so many people just put up with this?
We really are the apathetic country…
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