Australians are the Renewable crash Test Dummies
As I said for free and two months before the ANU, with a 50% annual growth in renewables, Australia is ramping up unreliable power faster than anywhere.
Now comes a paper: Australia: the renewable energy superstar showing that, per capita, Australia is installing unreliable generators in a blitzkrieg pace, more than twice as fast as Germany is, and 4-5 times faster per capita than the EU, USA, Japan and China. No other dummies are even in the race. The largest coal exporter in the world is working harder than anyone to destroy its largest export earner — which would be noble if only there was more to it than being a magical spell to ward off storms.
This is a legendary paper and very helpful. Save the link, copy the reference, send it to your MP, your friends, your newspaper! Why not head to the launch at ANU at 5:30pm, 14th Feb?
Never again can anyone get away with national flagellation for “not doing enough”. Henceforth Green and Labor M.P.’s will stop calling us a national joke, a pariah, and a disgrace. (Though, actually, all those things are true, for the opposite reason. China is laughing at us, and we are a disgrace to our children for blowing up national assets, squandering resources and teaching them witchcraft.)
Per capita, Australia (all shades of red) is installing renewables
Australia is installing renewables so fast it’s even faster than the second top country which is also, Australia.
Apparently the net cost of adding renewables is zero according to the experts at the ANU. In a consistent world this one document would also immediately end all subsidies. No more RET, SRES, LRET, low interest loans, tax breaks, forced market rules or golden interconnectors.
Except, of course, they’re totally wrong on the cost. Australians have the most expensive electricity in the world for a reason. Somehow Chinese hackers or a renewables marketing team must have snuck into the ANU to write most of the report. Of the six summary conclusions, the first two are obvious and the last four are fantasy. They are only “straight-forward” or “sustainable” if you have $10 trillion dollars to spare and you can’t think of anything better to do with it.
The full gloss PR story:
Australia: the renewable energy superstar
Summary:
- Australia is installing renewable energy (solar photovoltaics and wind) far faster per capita than other countries.
- The Australian deployment rate is 4-5 times faster per capita than the EU, USA, Japan and China.
- Stabilising the electricity grid when it has 50-100% renewable energy is straightforward using off-the-shelf techniques that are already widely used in Australia.
- The electricity sector is on track to deliver Australia’s entire Paris emissions reduction targets five years early, in 2025. This is one of the world’s fastest sustainable rates of emissions reduction.
- Remarkably, the net cost is zero because expensive fossil fuels are being replaced by cheaper renewables.
- Australia is on track for deep and rapid greenhouse emissions reductions through deep renewable electrification. Much of the world can readily follow the Australian path. Renewable energy offers real hope for a future liveable planet.
The net cost is zero?
The net cost is only zero if you ignore the glorious subsidies, the extra transmission lines, the rising FCAS bill, the blackouts, the emergency demand management, the damage from surging voltages, the wasted capital expenditure, the squads of flying diesels, synchronous condensors, and the burden that unreliable energy dumps on the whole grid. In the US windpower makes gas power $30/MWh more expensive. Blakers et al might think this is a part of the gas bill but obviously it’s a hidden renewable cost. We can argue the toss with cherry-plucked analysis of wholesale price bidding games, but the end result is a retail price and on that, history is devastating. Coal gave us 30 years of falling prices, and renewables wiped all those gains out.
Renewable energy saves on fuel, but wastes infrastructure, land, labor and resources. How can that be cheap?
Like an infection, unreliable power damages the efficiency and economics of every other generator. And even though solar energy is semi-reliable, it still wrecks havoc on the grid: see the Duck curve, the 1000MW generator that goes AWOL and the warnings. For most of the year solar energy is the extra energy that arrives when we know we don’t need it.
Plus the rise of subsidized unreliables pushes out the unsubsidized sector leaving the market ripe for bid squeezes that cost nearly a billion dollars a day.
One of the world’s fastest sustainable rates of emissions reduction?
What’s sustainable? Not the price, our industries, or our 50Hz supply. Not our lifestyle.
We can have sustainable rates of carbon reduction but we can’t have a sustainable civilization at the same time.
The world can readily follow the Australian path?
Sure if they happen to be a first-world nation with vast empty space that’s 15 degrees from the equator, in the roaring 40s, and with $100 billion to throw away. Sure.
h/t Marc Morano, ClimateDepot
REFERENCES
Blakers, A., Stocks, M., and Lu, B. (2019) Australia: the renewable energy superstar, APO Analysis and Policy Observatory, ANU, [PDF]
Yep, it’s going to be a mess. The more energy you take OUT of the wind, the less wind there will be. We live on a closed planet, and energy cannot be created or destroyed, simply moved around. When you use miles of solar panels on “useless” soils, you deprive the earth of energy, and the animals and plants that do survive there die off. When you put up miles and miles of wind turbines, you interrupt the air flow for a wide area, disrupting bird flight, and rain and cloud distribution. You’re going to take all of the energy the planet uses to sustain itself and throw it off as heat and light in clustered areas. And you consider THAT sustainable? In what universe? Not in ours.
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Please submit this article to the Australian.
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Business decision paralysis is happening across the country as the power price keeps rising making project spreadsheets dependent on woolly government policy. The Liberals seem powerless as they refuse to remove us from the Paris Agreement. They are getting booted out by their own base while the media blames everything else.
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My thinking is that the Coalition will win the next election because they are going to underwrite the building of Hele coal fired power stations.
The media will initially go berserk, except for Sky News which will inform the general public that CO2 doesn’t cause global warming. When the dust finally settles, virtue signalling will become a thing of the past.
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el gordo if only. The problem is that too many of the electorate are brain washed into the surf mentality.
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Its not going to be easy turning the world upside down, but Sky News can do it because they aren’t city centric.
The masses have been severely brainwashed into thinking CO2 causes global warming and we have to convince them that its the sun. How hard could it be.
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and sky news viewership is what? and they are preaching to the converted
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Lachlan Murdoch has attached Sky to WIN, goes free to all the regions alongside the ABC.
It is firming up the converted and winning new converts.
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ivan, “brain washed into the surf mentality”? I’ve had my brain fully washed the past 2 days as our east coast has been pumping with swell generated off a little low out to our east. Beaches, rivermouths, points, reefs, bombies, slabs, EVERYWHERE’s been going off with perfect surf and warm, calm sunshine to boot, thanks to Cuckoo Change!
http://gisborneherald.co.nz/localnews/3955373-135/surfers-in-heaven-as-weather-gods
Some of us old-time log-riders are still lost in the ‘surf mentality’ – you may be after the serf variety: Latin, servus, slave. And to think it was freezing and snowing (-14˚C wind chill) in Tasmania today… can we send you fellas some warm clothing?
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el gordo I’m thinking there will be such an overabundance of zero cost electricity we’ll be being paid to use it. What medication are you on?
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‘What medication are you on?’
Intuitive Intellect.
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el gordo:
I think the best description of the Liberals is like an amoeba; a spineless, brainless lump of jelly that moves aimlesssly absorbing nutrients and occasionally spliting into two.
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🙂 🙂
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Geoff the “Business Decision Paralysis” you refer to will mainly be confined to the eastern states of Oz where fast tracking to RE’s is rampant. WA with its mainly gas fired power stations seems to be the “go to venue” to set up electricity intensive manufacturing industries, especially in the Kwinana Industrial Area south of Perth. In the future where else in Oz will cheap & reliable base load energy generation be available? Possibly Darwin?
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True. WA should just secede. I would. I am not from WA. The rest of the country seems to have an economic death wish.
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I think anyone in the next 10 years who can get out of australia, should.
Those who remain need to go bush and hunker ddown.
Things will go bang, and when it does, you dont want to be in a capital city.
Oh, and buy a gun….learn how to use it. Properly.
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My exact sentiments O.S.We are in for a serious fracture.
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Sadly WA is not the Goto it could be. Despite having low wholesale rates our retail rates (28cKWh) are nearly as dumb as everywhere else. Why? _ It’s a government run monopoly. No competition and the local State Gov has decided to use electricity prices as a general consumption tax to pay back state debt. (That and speeding fines).
If WA Senators stood up for WA on the GST we could pay off the debt with money we earned instead of giving that money to SA and Tas so they could “afford” to run unproductive economies and not develop their own resources.
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This is an extract from my latest bill for my house in Subiaco (WA):
Supply period: 30 Oct 2018 – 24 Dec 2018
Residential Anytime charge = 25.7520 cents/kWh
Supply charge = 92.3175 cents per day
Plus GST @ 10.00%
My GST supports the mendicant states of Tasmania, South Australian, Northern Territory and the bludgers in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).
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Sam, using your stated costs and my power consumption I have arrived at a total GST inclusive price of AUD 0.3388 per kWh for your electricity. Mine works out at NZD 0.2976 per kWh, here near Nelson, NZ.
Our duplicitous power company uses as an inducement to source our energy needs from them in the form of a prompt payment discount of 20%. What they actually mean is that if you’re a bit late with payment, they’ll whack you a penalty of 20%.
Sods.
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Not quite true Jo. Most of WA electricity runs at a loss and the government has to subsidize it to the time of around 100 million PA (if I recall) this is because WA doesn’t have enough coal generation and most towns are run from diesel powered microgrids. Diesel cost is around 30 odd cents per kWh and then there is transmission and distribution assets to maintain. The WA government is trying to wean western power and horizon power off their government subsidy which is why WA power prices are so high.
It amounts to the same thing though, by reducing the subsidy the government frees up tax revenue to spend on useless things instead of useful things like electricity. However it’s not exactly fair to say the WA government is profiting, we’ll not yet anyway.
In QLD though it IS fair to say this because the QLD government takes a royalty, and a dividend from energy companies and indeed has transferred government debt onto the power companies books. They make an absolute killing selling power into NSW, in their defense though they give some of it back in the form of a very generous feed in tariff which I don’t feel any guilt about because they rip so many other taxes and charges, the FIT just balances out the other excesses. QLD once was the lowest tax state but now it’s one of the highest, a legacy from pretty much end to end labour government since Joe Bjelke Peterson.
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Keen to learn more Bob, but for 90% of West Australians who live in the suburbs we could have cheap power if the govt got out of the way. Effectively we are subsidizing small uneconomic remote communities? As I said, wholesale rates here are lower (and would be lower still if we ditched the horrible Solar PV subsidies and Wind power we don’t need. )
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Hi Jo, O/t Peter C and I visited ROM at Heidelberg Repat.Doing ok, sharp as a tack, what did yr expect? We are visiting again tomorrow. Any messages from denizens, now’s yr chance to post, which I will be happy to pass on, verbatum.A few jokes won’t go astray.
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That’s wonderful that you and Peter C visited ROM Beth. Please give him my very best wishes. Annie.
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Annie I will. Thx.
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Happy to, send me an email
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Send my best to ROM.
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And yes, you do subsidise the regions.
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Hi Jo,
I’m originally from SA and would dearly love to return home, but I totally agree with you.
Maybe if Adelaide’s electorate (country bumpkins aren’t generally as politically brain damaged as their city slicker nemeses, but are impossibly out-numbered) and the useless career politicians who pander to them with Robin Hood-con-omics, arguments about how best to ruin old cricket ovals or overseeing expensive, flash looking but unfit for purpose hospitals and unicorn fart energy schemes were cut-off from the reliable supply of subsidising OPM from Western Australia and Queensland, it might be just the cold shower we need.
…wishful thinking I fear.
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“Those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent it happening”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3hY1eagq88
Ronald Reagan. A “B Movie” actor was smarter than our current political class.
If my Dog could talk it would also be smarter than anyone in our current “leadership”.
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Your dog can wag it’s tail, close enough!
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It needs to be trained to bite.
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Please submit this article to the Australian Audit Office. They are currently looking into whether the entire EMedicine imbroglio is a giant white elephant, but this is a hell of a lot more important. The German Audit Office has looked into THEIR renewables, and found they are mostly a waste of space, let alone a waste of money.
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Ian, good point.
Unfortunately, the Australian Auditor-General is as weak as water – as is the Audit Office.
If he/it had any concern for the Australian tax-payer he’d have investigated the BoM many years ago, along with the Environment Department and the CSIRO. These are corrupt, inefficient and politically influenced organisations that are party to bringing major economic disruption to the Australian economy and people. Not to mention the massive waste of taxpayer’s money on inefficient and ineffective green schemes.
The Auditor-General is supposedly independent of Government, yet when the push was on for an audit of the BoM – which Tony Abbott lost in Cabinet due to the lefty Turnbull cabal – it tugged its forelock and obeyed the wish of Turnbull’s suckoles.
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“Dummies” indeed.
No doubt there will be outrage in the ‘burbs once the renewable pipe dream collapses, but there is no one to blame but ourselves – there is a due diligence of common sense inherent in the survival of a democracy, otherwise someone comes and ruins it all.
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You can only do “due diligence” when you know and understand the reality of what renewables are doing and that is not being told to the common people.
The younger generations have been brainwashed at school with emphasis on greenie/environmental/save the earth/lefty propaganda replacing moral/ethical/society values and the MSM continues to reinforce that indoctrination. It seems that only half the older generation question and challenge while the young will blindly follow globalist/socialist/leftard agenda of those who think they know everything but actually understand nothing and care even less!!
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Here’s the template to use when doing your own, personal, due diligence:
http://joannenova.com.au/2018/12/weekend-unthreaded-241/#comment-2088629
Adjust the input to suite your own circumstances.
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This was written by
Andrew Blakers, Matthew Stocks, Bin Lu;
AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, Research School of Electrical, Energy and Materials Engineering;
You can see how much things have failed when even Engineers can’t be honest and do accurate cost/benifit analysis.
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That comment is a dramatic marker in our plunge down the gurgler.
From,
ANU Research School. ?????????????????
Appalling.
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ColA, you appear to forget that they were paid to write that comment.
It’s called grant funding.
The stench of intellectual putrefaction is unbearable.
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If the authors actually believe their policy is working, they are delusional.
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What makes this really scarey is that this has occurred with a conservative government in power. God help us when that changes. The other thing to point out is the sheer lunacy of the claim of cheaper cost. I look at it very simply . If you have a grid supplied totallly by base load power and then you add renewables to the grid but have to maintain base load power the total cost can never be cheaper than it was. A + B cannot be cheaper than A alone. And people wonder why electricity prices are rising.
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No, I don’t think that’s the scary part. Our federal bureaucracy is incompetent at everything it does, but it keeps on making grabs for things that the states have previously done with some level of competence. What has been the benefit of having a federal health department when the state health authorities run public health and the hospitals? Or a federal education department — why do we need it? The states traded electricity on a peer-to-peer basis years ago. What good has the AEMO done for Joe Public?
Federal should restrict itself to defence, immigration, customs, quarantine. I don’t think things are going to get better here without at least a partial Quexit, NSWexit, Vexit, etc. Unfortunately, the tide has been running the other way and that’s how Labor and Liberal like it.
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Good one. 🙂
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If the base load power is being generated from plant that has high marginal cost due to high fuel cost and wide turn down capability then it would be possible to add low cost intermittents and get a net benefit.
This does not apply in Australia or anywhere in the developed world using coal or nuclear base generation. Brown coal has near zero fuel cost (unless the state government adds extraordinary royalties) and these furnaces are costly to regulate. Higher rank coal has a higher cost, typically based on world price, and have more compact furnaces with better ramp rates but still a problem when forced to follow increasing connected capacity of intermittents.
I expect some of the recent boiler tube failures are attributable to operating furnaces in an output regulated situation rather than in steady state. This gives some insight:
https://www.aurecongroup.com/thinking/thinking-papers/understanding-steam-and-thermal-fatigue
Imagine the engineering guys convincing the accountants it is not economic in the long run to reduce output when the prices go negative. Of course, if every coal fuelled generator was to stay on line at steady state when the prices went negative then they would stay negative until the sun dropped or wind dropped.
I figure one of the reasons the prices in SA hold negative for more than one pricing interval is that even the gas plants have difficulty load following at the very high ramp rates possible when there is 2000MW of wind capacity in a system with base demand as low as 400MW.
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Regularly, and on a daily basis, coal fired power as a whole, across the AEMO coverage area, is ramping up and down each day. The gap between the low point around 4AM, and the high at the evening peak (between 5PM and 6PM) is between 3500MW and 4500MW, sometimes to 5000MW. This is nothing new. They have been doing this on a daily basis for years, well decades now.
The advent of renewables, and rooftop solar has seen ….. NO CHANGE at all in that. Coal fired power does what it always has done, independent of those other sources.
The only change has been that with more renewables, natural gas fired power and hydro power now vary their output. If wind power is high, then those other two are low, and if wind is low, then those other two are higher.
Any changes in coal fired power have nothing at all to do with what renewables are doing.
The data I collect each day DOES NOT LIE.
Tony.
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Of course, here I’m talking about the 90% of the MAIN consumption areas of Australia, not the 6% of South Australia.
Tony.
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Tony I have picked up the pattern you describe, brown coal stead and black moving slightly on a more or less steady dialy basis with gas and hydro going up and down constantly to balance the wind.
Has thee been no change in the ramping up and down of black coal?
I saw a piece by an electrical engineer, female, big in hydro and she described the damage to turbines when they don’t run steady most of the time. I was thinking of the coal plants as I read it but maybe she was talking about the hydro turbines that are now ramping up and down constantly.
I am only a relative beginner in this but I have done a video on why wind power wont work (without mass storage).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GZWz998bBM&feature=youtu.be
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Rafe,
the brown coal generators in Victoria, now only 10 Units in all, roll along at (or close to) their maximum power generation all the time they are on.
There are 38 coal fired Units in NSW and Qld, (with a total Nameplate of 18,300MW) and they are the ones which ramp up and down on that daily basis. The ramping I mentioned in the earlier comment has been consistent across the years.
I might suggest that the turbines rotate at their set speed all the time, for the purposes of the critically set frequency, (50Hz) and they just adjust the excitation to deliver lesser or greater output.
Tony.
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Thanks Tony!
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Tony,
Sounds thrilling. Could you elaborate a little on this please?
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Actually they have a regulator that automatically adjusts the power input so as to keep the output at 50hz when there is light load, less steam, heavy load more steam.
You can regulate output by adjusting excitation (the electro magnet that creates the magnetic field the generator windings rotate in) which impacts voltage output.
In reality both mechanisms are used to keep voltage and frequency on target.
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What you do not consider is that coal fired stations have already closed down. It does what it always does after a coal plant is shut down, Then the ramping gradually increases until the next coal station is closed down. So far two significant coal fired generators have closed down. More will come.
Watch Queensland during lunch time in the middle of 2019 and you will begin to see the emergence of the problem in Queensland. That is how it has been in SA for ten years and Victoria for 4 years now as SA infected Victoria with its intermittency.
As Jo’s chart shows, Australia is now the most aggressive dream chaser. The rate of growth of installed intermittent capacity is NOT going to be easily accommodated. The group with the most political clout are the masses of small generators using rooftops and state governments will be unwilling to upset them by regulating their output. If they do it will just encourage uptake of local batteries.
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Ho hum!
No change!
Err! Wind and solar had all but nothing to do with the closure of those coal fired power plants. As I have said before, they were all time expired, and bean counters decided that the outlay of mega dollars on maintenance and upgrades could not be recovered from the sale of electricity into the future.
We are getting more generated power from coal fired power now, than we did before with those ancient plants closed.
The daily data bears this out.
Believe whatever you want to believe, What happens in a State which consumes 6.2% of power cannot be extrapolated out to a State (Queensland) which consumes five times as much power as that SouthAus minnow.
Tony.
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South Australia is a decade ahead of the other states. All the other states have the same agenda and are moving at great haste in the same direction. That is why Australia now leads the world on a per capita basis – the current topic of Jo’s blog.
You will go on saying nothing has changed but it has. Two coal fired power stations have closed in the last 10 years. That means the base load is carried by fewer power stations so they get a bigger slice of the pie.
The size of the pie has not increased despite a 15% increase in population over the last 10 years. There is an increasing use of behind the meter power that you do not see with your data.
In 2019 federal Labour will give “policy certainty” (meaning subsidies forever) in power generation by raising the RET and extending its existence beyond 2030. That will light a fire for investment in intermittents and their growth will continue to accelerate.
I cannot imagine anyone committing to investment in a new coal power station in the current LNP term. Labor will not even consider it. Coal stations will continue to close and grid power prices will continue to climb.
AEMO are already conditioning us for outages being the norm. They promote the idea of unprecedented climate change and the outages are due to ageing coal plants. In their spiel, none of this could be anticipated and more investment in intermittents and interconnections will gradually improve the situation. This is the story from AEMO:
https://reneweconomy.com.au/grid-held-together-by-solar-load-management-as-coal-fails-in-heat-18324/
“load management” means power outages.
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You just don’t get it do you?
1. It’s not ME just saying that nothing has changed. It’s the actual collected data I record EVERY day that shows me beyond doubt that nothing has changed with respect to coal fired power and RTS.
2. It’s not two coal fired plants which have closed. You have this blindness which prevents you from seeing anything other than South Australia. There’s FIVE coal fired plants which have closed in the last ten years, and despite that, the remaining coal fired plants are delivering more now, than they did before when all those extra plants were on line.
3. They don’t …. ‘get a bigger slice of the pie’, as you so cynically put it. They actually are working harder to supply that extra power, not just as you imply, cashing in on it. The power is needed, and they SUPPLY it, the ONLY source which can do that.
Power consumption in those three larger States (NSW, Vic and Qld) which consume 14.4 times the power of South Australia, cannot, and will not ever have enough roofs to cover with panels which will bring them up to close to the same percentage as South Australia. The Mix of power consumption in those States has VASTLY more Industry and Commerce, and tall buildings than South Australia.
RTS has a small niche market in the Residential Sector only, and RTS only delivers power to that Residential sector, and not out into the wider grid, supplying those areas of huge power consumption in those three large States.
You keep thinking that tiny South Australia is the same as those three large States, and it’s nothing at all even remotely similar if you squint in a certain manner. They’ve driven all the large Industrial consumers out of South Australia, and THAT’S the ONLY reason that those load curves for South Australia show lower consumption on weekends, and some week days.
And, every day, I detail ALL the RTS generated power in EVERY State, so yes, I do see it, and at the end of each week I detail all the data including adding RTS to the overall, as a percentage of that overall.
The total power delivered by coal fired power plants has not changed because of RTS, or even wind or solar plant power.
It’s not ME saying that. The data says it. I don’t just make this up you know.
Tony.
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That’s why I love King Coal. You cut off his head, plus and arm and a leg, and he still rules.
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What’s eating RickWill?
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Then it would be incredibly poorly chosen, inappropriate sources providing the base load power.
The ONLY exception is where the site is in a remote location without easy access to a cheap fuel souce (some islands, communities in the Arctic circle, Antarctic research stations). This is the only scenario where the fuel reduction from a reasonable level of renewable generation makes any sense. But even here, renewables are uneconomic when implemented to be the main source of electricity (see King Island and El Hierro) and, if it were politically acceptable, SMRs would make far more sense.
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That exception applies to many mine sites in Australia’s north and probably around the globe. This is an example:
https://arena.gov.au/projects/weipa-solar-farm/
Obviously ARENA supplied a good portion of the funds so the economic case would need closer look but I suspect the panels will have a payback of about 7 years without subsidy given Weipa imports fuel directly from world markets. I expect fuel cost to be around AUD0.4/kWh. Diesels can handle daily load changes without much change in maintenance and increased calendar interval between major services would reduce maintenance costs.
I have seen output from tracking arrays in central Queensland almost constant from 9am to 3pm and useful output soon after sunrise till almost sunset. An advantage of solar is its predictability and relative ease of accurate forecast.
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Solar plant power – 1.7% of all generated power.
Rooftop solar – 5.1% of all generated power.
Keep in mind here that this is data collected just across the Sunny Months of the year when solar generates its best. (19 weeks of daily data collected so far)
Solar plant power – Capacity Factor across the whole day – 18.2%
Rooftop solar – Capacity Factor across the whole day – 14.7%
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We Germans can’t let that sit on our heads. We are by far the biggest dummies on this endangered planet. In a country without really much wind, we have the highest density of wind turbines in the world. And although we already produce too much on windy days, our dummies-government has decided to force this on a massive scale. And by the way, we want to get out of coal and nuclear power, if possible yesterday. Even the likeable Australians can’t beat us.
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Stephan, Sorry. You put in a starring effort, but in the last two years Australia has overtaken you in the Crash Test Dummy stakes. We also have a long thin fragile grid with no interconnectors to any other national grids. It’s one big stupid experiment…
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Stephen is right in outright cost, though, due to the sheer scale of their grid capacity vs ours.
Just look at their costs for re-dispatch (balancing) alone for 2017 in the link I’ve provided in 35.2.2.1.1.
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Let’s split the diff here, Stephan. Brandenburg solar at 52+degrees north was an incredible achievement by a crash dummy. However, we have South Australian wind connected by a thread to other states connected by a thread, which makes us very proud. It’s like Germany had Michael Gross and we had Dawn Fraser. Great but different. What’s fantastic about these huge regional undertakings is that absolutely everybody involved in the practical implementation knew each project was a disaster even before the drawing board stage. That takes real…er, something.
But I wonder if any crash dummy nation apart from Australia can surf around its most decorative white elephant…
https://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/2874663/port-wave-generator-removal-set-for-mid-2015/
A small thing (just $10 million in the red at receivership), but to me there’s a kind of greatness in that. It’s like nature, sport and Green Blob all coming together in one symbolic masterpiece of installation art.
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Since we are record achievers at the rate of renewable installations it means we will hit crisis point quicker than any other nation. And the sooner will the folly end. That is the only positive I can get from this article.
We can celebrate the fastest harakiri on this planet.
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Ready a few bicycles on stands with dynamos in the lounge. It’ll be the only reliable power available soon. Fun for all the family.
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Being somewhat lazy, I bought a generator instead.
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Good point, it’s probably quieter too because it’ll complain less than the missus an’ kids. You should be able to drive it on the road as well because you pay fuel excise, although less than 25% of that is used for roads and the rest is wasted on pork-barreling, global warming and other sinister projects. Did it come with wheels and indicators..?
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The pain is going to be immense.
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When the deplorables ( many of whom live in the Labor voting la la land ) work out that they have been shafted by the people they voted for, its going to get ugly.
IMHO the chances of some form of civil unrest as the “1984” scenario of a jackboot stamping on the face of our population, starts to unfold, will be awful…..
Dont say I didnt warn you…..
Buy a gun. Learn how to use it.
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And stock plenty of ammo.
(And baked beans)
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No surprise, Bemused.
“Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy. Its sole virtue is equality of misery.” Winston Churchill
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One could argue it’s deliberately engineered by the globalists who have a grand plan to use Australia for some evil scheme of theirs. Or it could just be human stupidity at a grand level on the part of not just our politicians but also a significant proportion of the population. Either way we will all know soon enough that reality bites.
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I’m thinking it’s more a combination of both, but it’s hard to beat the Aussie lackadaisical attitude toward things making it easier for us to be used and abused, probably up to a certain point but the French people seem to notice much earlier when there’s an unwanted digit in their butts.
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I was thinking of that it could be both too. After all one can’t have one without the other. If people were really alert they wouldn’t dream of letting some evil monster do so much damage to our nation as is already happening now. We as a nation are asleep at least for now. We will wake up eventually but probably not until it’s too late and after much more damage is done.
60
Lovely turn of phrase ЯΞ√ΩLUT↑☼N.
‘Digit in the butt’ or dank green fingers reaching into pockets, it’s nearly all the same. Piles of money or just piles, who’s protesting?
There are far too many comfortable people in Australia and New Zealand. They often belong to the aptly termed Con.
In large part they are members of the suckling elite, courtesy of the tax payers teats, governmental legislators, the bureaucratic administrators, the media propagators and agitators, and the institutionalised educators and administrators. They are the putrified stench that the UN likes to call, “civil society.”
Rest assured, even when one discounts this bloated strata of society there appear sufficient hoi polloi to manufacture any potential requirement arising for lamp posts and piano wire.
It seems amazing that the fat ones can’t see this potential development.
But then, when one is gazing through a ideological prism and seeing a rainbow, how remote is the feel of reality and how much less the insight?
40
Sadly, I can’t see any signs of common sense or realism in the mainstream or political discourse. More renewables is seen as a given, with lipservice being paid to coal – the exact opposite of where we were 10 years ago.
The only way this ends is with massively higher prices and 3rd world reliability. We are well through the looking glass by now.
250
Now show a similar chart depicting the rate at which countries are building new coal and/or nuclear power stations. You will get an even bigger surprise. Australia is heading for a crash and burn scenario unless we change course soon.
270
New coal fired plants per head of population.
30
Could I have two, please?
10
The words “per capita” negate the whole argument. Australia had the highest per capita emissions. Now it has the highest per capita renewable energy installation. Net cost is zero? I smell a rat!
170
Sewers full of them.
80
[…] killer piece by Jo Nova on the ludicrous claims for the benefit of leading the world in unreliable energy. OK the grid will […]
70
Well thanks Australia for the lesson.
Unfortunately the message has not penetrated through the thick bureaucratic skulls of the European leadership as they seem to think they too can make reliable electricity from wind, solar, tomorrow’s technology batteries, and Unicorn farts. Soon all of the EU (including the UK!) to be at the mercy of Vladimir Putin and Gazprom as the impracticability of their plans become more apparent.
But again thank-you Australia for trying to show by example how stupid it is to try this method, and how it so easily can destroy industries and an affordable westernized lifestyle.
280
Oh I dont know….the European Soviet seems to be careening toward olblivion at abbout the same speed we are. You are soon to embrace Comrade Putin and be at his energy mercy. Which seems ot be the plan.
Only the Brits were smart enough to get out of the self destructive collectivism posing as “europe”…..
60
OriginalSteve,
“Only the Brits were smart enough to get out of the self destructive collectivism posing as “europe”…..”
Don’t worry the UK’s got it own way of destroying the grid, it’s called negligence.
The UK government has negligently allowed most of the coal generation plants to fall into disrepair, the UK government has allowed the upgrades to the nuclear power generation to lapse without a plan on how to renew them. All the while the UK burns 7 times the tonnage of wood for three times the CO2 output (compared to coal) at the Drax power station.
And after a decade of calling for an investigation into Lord Deben the Chairman of the UK’s independent Committee on Climate Change, and his part in pushing his cronies and crony companies into getting contracts to supply wind and solar intermittent power. Finally the House of Lords watchdog on these matters has woke up — see House Of Lords Sleaze Watchdog Launches Probe Into UK Climate Change Chief John Gummer at https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2019/02/10/house-of-lords-sleaze-watchdog-launches-probe-into-uk-climate-change-chief-john-gummer/ for more on that.
20
Why pick 2017 as the reference year?
Germany for example did it’s renewable build out 10 years ago
All this paper shows is the Australians are installing lots of Chinese made cheap solar panels, and reaping the benefits of doing so.
230
“…and reaping the benefits of doing so.”
And what are those benefits?
240
closer economic ties with China 😉
526
“closer economic ties with China ;)”
Is this a benefit because the closer economic ties with China will ensure that China is available to help pick up the pieces after the crash test dummy hits the wall?
211
It was sarcasm
20
And soon, more reliance on Russian gas.
I wish them well 😉
90
benefits?
1. More jobs in China.
2. More factories in China.
3. More profits in …
170
Not to worry Jo. When we beg China to save us we will have plenty of jobs, factories and profits. Too bad we will have to relinquish what freedoms we still have.
70
‘Too bad we will have to relinquish what freedoms we still have.’
A strong centre right government will make sure that won’t happen. Its time for Cory to come home.
41
There you have it.
Australia, the resource basket for the NWO.
Nothing more.
60
I for one welcome our new Chinese overlords.
22
“Chinese made cheap solar panels”
I wish them good luck with those.
71
Ironic.
Cheap intermittent solar panels and expensive power.
Doomed industry. Power impoverishment.
Wider impoverishment.
Solar panels wear out to inefficiency.
No industry or enterprise.
No prosperity.
No money to purchase more cheap solar panels.
No economy.
No government.
No country.
60
Peter Fitzroy
“Germany for example did it’s renewable build out 10 years ago”
Yes and for all that effort it still costs a fortune! 🙂
https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1485530/german-redispatch-costs-hit-record-high
30
Slightly OT, bit in reference to the 1932 Uralla Times piece yesterday, on this day in 1928 the Sydney Morning Herald reported:
Practically the whole of Europe, from Moscow to Constantinople, is still suffering from the most intense cold experienced for half a century. England has so far escaped the severity of the terrible conditions which continue throughout Europe. The snow is nine feet deep in Constantinople and suburbs. Troops are dispersing packs of wolves from the environs and many homeless people have been frozen to death in the street
99
So, how is that any different from today? I’m living in the south of France near the Spanish border and it is now down to 4 degree C at the moment.
211
You can find examples of extreme weather for any year. I’m just saying that. What is more important if the frequency of such events, which does appear to be increasing. At least according to these guys: European Academies’ Science Advisory Council, Leopoldina – Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften “New data show that extreme weather events have become more frequent over the past 36 years, with a significant uptick in floods and other hydrological events compared even with five years ago”. you could pop over and have a chat, since you’re in the neighbourhood, at least according to an Australian’s idea of travel
223
Any person inclined to get their information from popular press could be forgiven for getting the wrong impression about natural disasters increasing. On the other hand actual data shows it has a long term downward trend. This link gives 2018 update:
https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/au/news/breaking-news/swiss-re-looks-at-where-2018-ranks-on-the-list-for-insured-losses-119564.aspx
This link gives weather related trend relative to GDP:
https://theclimatefix.wordpress.com/2018/01/04/weather-disasters-as-proportion-of-global-gdp-1990-2017/
The weather events are not more frequent but this fairy tale is promoted as such by popular press. Cyclone alley on Australia’s northwest coast has not had significant losses from cyclones in recent years.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-30/how-australias-most-cyclone-prone-area-escaped-a-2018-battering/9704288
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from your link:
These disasters have made 2018 the fourth-costliest year on sigma records for losses covered by the insurance industry. Across the world, more than 11,000 people were killed or reported missing in disaster events this year, similar to the number of victims in 2017. A September earthquake in Sulawesi, Indonesia, had the year’s highest human toll, with more than 3,500 dead or missing.
was also seen as a key cause for the issues. While there has not been a specific major natural disaster this year like the hurricanes of 2017, the aggregated losses from smaller events, alongside major man-made disasters, have caused sizeable insured losses.
So that in no way disproves those Europeans and their so called Academies of Science
You second point takes the same data, applies American GDP and comes out with a surprise that 2017 was not that bad – a direct contradiction to your previous link
and for your last article, could it also be that we are better prepared?
221
On any global indicator, there is no evidence that extreme weather has increased. It is a fairy tale promoted by any popular press. Even the IPCC fairy tale reports this one aspect correctly:
http://www.climatedepot.com/2018/10/08/un-ipcc-report-admits-extreme-weather-events-have-not-increased/
With regard to:
That is not an easy question to answer as it requires a lot of data analysis. All insurance companies strongly promote climate change as a means to encourage insured to reduce risk. Sometimes national codes have been updated to give greater immunity but mostly with regard to earthquake.
Engineering standards for infrastructure have not changed much in the last 30 years in the developed world. The increase in GDP and insured value has mostly occurred in the developing world in the last 30 years and the engineering standards in those locations are often lower than in the developed world but then replacement cost is also lower.
Areas that are devastated by disaster such as Darwin with Tracy, Brisbane with 2011 floods and New Orleans after Katrina are typically rebuilt to higher standards. But that does not make them immune. After the 1974 floods in Brisbane mitigation measures with the Wivenhoe dam were intended to prevent Brisbane flooding but permanent drought forecast by Tim Flannery resulted in inappropriate dam management that resulted in massive losses in 2011.
The BoM forecast abnormally dry conditions in northern Queensland this year. I will not be surprised if the dam was being operated with excessive levels prior to the flood event on the basis of the forecast dry. I can already see the local water authority and BoM preparing their excuses. Weather is difficult to forecast 3 months ahead so forecasting 80 years ahead is the stuff of fairy tales.
All the AEMO reports promote climate change as the direct cause of all the grid failures. Their quarterly reports are scattered with “unprecedented”. If they were honest they would clearly point the finger directly at intermittents but that is not a politically correct response for a politically correct organisation.
Root cause analysis requires data and investigation, which costs money. Why bother when Climate Change is synonymous with all things bad.
180
‘…events have become more frequent over the past 36 years …’
This is dodgy and can be disproved.
101
the fact that you didn’t means what then?
116
I was collecting my thoughts.
110
https://rogerpielkejr.com/2019/01/17/global-tropical-cyclone-landfalls-updated-1970-2018/
There ya go!
70
What we can say for sure is that extreme weather will become the norm because of the meandering jet stream. Is it a warming or cooling signal?
30
Historically, meandering Arctic jet streams seem to have occurred at the change of warming to cooling and from cooling to warming.
Although they couldn’t observe much around 1900-1910, there seems to have been one around that time
Definitely one noted around 1940
..and a well publicised one I around 1977
” Is it a warming or cooling signal?”
Interesting question el, G
The answer may be “Yes”. Maybe a sign of change in direction. ?
41
In a gradually warming world it shouldn’t be happening.
There should also be a buildup in precipitation worldwide because of a quiet sun, but i can’t find anything definitive. A graph would be nice.
30
Bob Tisdale looked at the problem in 2013 and found there was no consensus on worldwide precipitation.
https://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/no-consensus-among-three-global-precipitation-datasets/
20
Thank You Jo.
For your cunning in allowing this to remain as an antagonist on the blog.
In one fell swoop you have encouraged the demonstration of all that you detail in this current post.
Rampant unthinking activism based, as we are told, on the infallibility of “others”, but only others who drink at the same well where the coolaid is fresh and familiar.
Other others, are by definition, unable or more accurately, ineligible to contribute to the New Reality™.
The issue of the new education is difficult for those so educated to grasp because they have not been educated. Does that laba the point?
Above all, as that famous general said in the Philippines after the end of the war before this one:
to the Money, The Money and The Money.
And while the troops slave, the Elites sent to guide us from their New York Central park residences think of how much they have achieved, we must get back to work to make that $3 Billion added to our electricity bills as “elite cream”.
And when MalEx444 arrives home one of the first he will thank is Roy FitzPeter for his unthinking dedication to Mals wealth.
Advance Australia Where.
KK
151
Poor old Kinky,
Appealing to the umpire, in attempt to ban someone. So like Stalin, you want me gulaged.
Tell me why did Mr and Mrs Keith give you such an appaling first name?
226
Peter Fitzroy:
Thank you for your politeness in assuming that his parents were married, as I am sure they were.
A question for you:
Renewables are variable in supply terms. Sometimes lots, sometime very little electricity. To make them work with a grid means lots of storage has to be installed, to cover periods when renewables aren’t supplying.
So why is it a good thing if we are installing renewables years before the largest (and cheapest) storage Snowy2 is ready?
And please don’t babble about batteries which would reveal no knowledge of them, and an inability to do arithmetic.
181
I’m on the record, and repeatedly for this site, in support of a mix of technologies for supply our energy needs.
As to the battery idea, I would note that the Australian Regulator thinks it is the go to option where a quick reaction time is needed
AEMO’s executive general manager of operations Damien Sanford told the ABC the battery’s ability to respond “very, very quickly” to different types of conditions “has been very encouraging for us”.
It set that standard within weeks of being switched on. When the coal-fired Loy Yang power plant in Victoria tripped and went offline, the Tesla battery delivered 100 megawatts into the national electricity grid in 140 milliseconds.
Read more at https://www.businessinsider.com.au/tesla-battery-south-australia-cost-state-savings-2018-10#YImg7KLT25ToWE4j.99
Do I think that batteries should be 100%? N0, nor hydro, nor solar, nor coal, nor wind.
Each technology has a role
319
Sorry pfutz, but the mix should contain as little wind and solar as possible
They are DISRUPTORS to the supply system,
They require huge subsidies and other funding and mandates to even exist.
They are erratic and unreliable.
Batteries are only needed to cover for the highly erratic behaviour of wind and solar.
Get rid of the DISRUPTORS, wind and solar, and there is no need for hugely expensive 20 minute batteries.
171
Patricia, at best , renewables can be 10% of the grid mix, before they create instability.
That leaves 90% for coal or nuclear.
Unless of course you like the idea of a collapsed grid and/or unreliable power like Zimbabwe?
71
All you do is disrupt / distract Fitz , your links your facts all dodgy .
Best way to get rid of a troll is don’t feed it so from now on no matter what the putz throws out he won’t be getting a comment from me .
121
And
Peter Fitzroy.
51
“Appealing to the umpire, in attempt to ban someone”
There’s that manic inability to comprehend what was written
Nobody wants you banned, pfutz.
You show EVERYONE just how INCOMPETENT and GULLIBLE the below average AGW apologist really is.
91
Based on the science, cyclone activity appears normal or perhaps a little on the downside.
https://fabiusmaximus.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Global-Tropical-Cyclone-Landfalls-Weinkle.jpg
60
The frequency of “extreme” weather is decreasing – you dimwit.
Hurricanes, tornados, floods, fires, You name it.
They are decreasing DESPITE insurance companies spitting out false alarms to lever up premiums.
50
Peter Fitzroy,
“You can find examples of extreme weather for any year.”
Yes, and I’ll cherry pick this …
From http://strangesounds.org/2019/02/not-your-typical-maui-weather-first-time-snow-falls-in-a-hawaii-state-park-on-feb-9-2019.html
Titled Not your typical Maui weather: First time snow falls in a Hawaii State Park on Feb. 9, 2019
Strange stuff this CO2, causing all this snow … 🙂
70
Extreme Weather
http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/extremewx/historictrends.php
30
Snowing in Hawaii.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/11/snow-hawaii-maui-seattle-winter-storm
30
So you don’t believe your IPCC either?
http://www.climatedepot.com/2018/10/08/un-ipcc-report-admits-extreme-weather-events-have-not-increased/
70
Of course the Climate Depot, why did I miss that one – I know, it publishes complete garbage.
https://www.ipcc.ch/working-group/wg2/?idp=354
of to the source for you.
413
I support adaptation to imminent global cooling.
81
Were retro-fitting double glazing to our house to deal with the coming LIA…..
80
roflmao. ipcc is nothing but a subsidiary of Greenpeace and the WWF.
Follow the science, pfutz, not the Greenpeace propaganda machine.
And you could NEVER argue actual maths with Climate Depot, they are several magnitudes ahead of anything you are capable of.
Climate Deport was TOTALLY CORRECT that the IPCC could not prove a link between CO2 and extreme weather.
There can be no link anyway, because, as you have PROVEN many times…
… there is absolutely NO EMPIRICAL SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that increased atmospheric CO2 affects either temperature or climate.
171
“… there is absolutely NO EMPIRICAL SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that increased atmospheric CO2 affects either temperature or climate.”
Again we see that pfluff is TOTALLY UNABLE to even respond, even with idiotic links to models, let alone actually provide any solid evidence.
Poor little tyke is EMPTY, BEREFT of content.
61
‘Nearly a year after it’s release, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change, By Marc Morano (Regnery Books) continues to surge to number one in its categories. The book is a “#1 Best Seller in Climatology” on Amazon as of February 8.
‘The book, which is in its 4th printing has surpassed Carl Sagan’s book Cosmos to once again take the number one spot in Climatology.’
wuwt
80
Extreme Weather
Cold Air Outbreak is a regional cooling signal.
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/clash-of-seasons-brings-snow-and-fire/529246
40
There you go again Fitz, showing your inability to look objectively.
Criticize CD if you wish. However, be so good as to mount the argument as to why its position is wrong. Otherwise you just confirm your intellectual poverty.
But then, we’re getting used to that.
40
Or even the IPCC own mangled words
From SYR AR5
There is low confidence that anthropogenic climate change has affected the frequency and magnitude of fluvial floods on a global scale. The strength of the evidence is limited mainly by a lack of long-term records from unmanaged catchments. Moreover, floods are strongly influenced by many human activities impacting catchments, making the attribution of detected changes to climate change difficult.
However, recent detection of increasing trends in extreme precipitation and discharges in some catchments implies greater risks of flooding on a regional scale (medium confidence). Costs related to flood damage, worldwide, have been increasing since the 1970s, although this is partly due to the increasing exposure of people and assets. {WGI 2.6.2, WGII 3.2.7, SREX SPM B}
There is low confidence in observed global-scale trends in droughts, due to lack of direct observations, dependencies of inferred trends on the choice of the definition for drought, and due to geographical inconsistencies in drought trends. There is also low confidence in the attribution of changes in drought over global land areas since the mid-20th century, due to the same observational uncertainties and difficulties in distinguishing decadal scale variability in drought from long-term trends. {WGI Table SPM.1, 2.6.2.3, 10.6, Figure 2.33, WGII 3.ES, 3.2.7}
There is low confidence that long-term changes in tropical cyclone activity are robust, and there is low confidence in the attribution of global changes to any particular cause. However, it is virtually certain that intense tropical cyclone activity has increased in the North Atlantic since 1970. {WGI Table SPM.1, 2.6.3, 10.6}
It is likely that extreme sea levels (for example, as experienced in storm surges) have increased since 1970, being mainly the result of mean sea level rise. Due to a shortage of studies and the difficulty of distinguishing any such impacts from other modifications to coastal systems, limited evidence is available on the impacts of sea level rise. {WGI 3.7.4–3.7.6, Figure 3.15, WGII 5.3.3.2, 18.3}
Impacts from recent climate-related extremes, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, cyclones and wildfires, reveal significant vulnerability and exposure of some ecosystems and many human systems to current climate variability (very high confidence). Impacts of such climate-related extremes include alteration of ecosystems, disruption of food production and water supply, damage to infrastructure and settlements, human morbidity and mortality and consequences for mental health and human well-being. For countries at all levels of development, these impacts are consistent with a significant lack of preparedness for current climate variability in some sectors. {WGII SPM A-1, 3.2, 4.2-3, 8.1, 9.3, 10.7, 11.3, 11.7, 13.2, 14.1, 18.6, 22.2.3, 22.3, 23.3.1.2, 24.4.1, 25.6-8, 26.6-7, 30.5,Table 18-3, Table 23-1, Figure 26-2, Box 4-3, Box 4-4, Box 25-5, Box 25-6, Box 25-8, Box CC-CR}
Direct and insured losses from weather-related disasters have increased substantially in recent decades, both globally and regionally. Increasing exposure of people and economic assets has been the major cause of long-term increases in economic losses from weather- and climate-related disasters ( high confidence). {WGII 10.7.3, SREX SPM B, 4.5.3.3}
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Note this did not stop the UN-IPCC from saying in the Synthesis Report for Policy Makers (SPM)
“There are likely more land regions where the number of heavy precipitation events has increased than where it has decreased. Recent detection of increasing trends in extreme precipitation and discharge in some catchments implies greater risks of flooding at regional scale (medium confidence). It is likely that extreme sea levels (for example, as experienced in storm surges) have increased since 1970, being mainly a result of rising mean sea level. {1.4}
Impacts from recent climate-related extremes, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, cyclones and wildfires, reveal significant vulnerability and exposure of some ecosystems and many human systems to current climate variability (very high confidence). {1.4}”
~~~~~~~~~
Not bad considering how poorly the climate models perform, and that all these reports reference. Of special note is the climate models very poor (IMO appalling) performance in being able to assess with any accuracy how clouds, precipitation type and quantity, or even humidity changes throughout the atmosphere.
Water is the main climate driver after all so should not these models be able to asses that as a primary function?
20
Oops, threadless again ….
This is a reply to Sceptical Sam at comment 15.2
20
From AR5 SYR Final Annexes
Extreme weather event:
An extreme weather event is an event that is rare at a particular place and time of year. Definitions of rare vary, but an extreme weather event would normally be as rare as or rarer than the 10th or 90th percentile of a probability density function estimated from observations. By definition, the characteristics of what is called extreme weather may vary from place to place in an absolute sense. When a pattern of extreme weather persists for some time, such as a season, it may be classed as an extreme climate event, especially if it yields an average or total that is itself extreme (e.g., drought or heavy rainfall over a season). {WGI, II}
~~~~~~~~~~~
Is a long period of normal variations in weather ‘extreme normal weather’?
What is the definition of normal weather? E.g. A hundred year event which happens twice in 60 years is it assessed as normal or extreme?
10
This latest post by Jo is an urgent reminder: all is not well in Australian Politics.
Australian politicians know that they have it all sewn up.
Get rich quick schemes abound: look at the construction in Vic roads, the school shelter redistribution in NAW, the Desalination plants fiasco etc.
These things are Symbolic of our transition to Slavery.
The only good news is that Jo has outlined the problem.
We here are facing the Debil.
The rest of Australia has little or no idea that both partis are now “in synch” in their determination to quickly milk this cow and then send it to the abbatoirs.
Poor fella, my country.
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/02/weekend-unthreaded-246/#comment-2104040
As D69 says, we need the right of recall, when politicians go off the rails.
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/02/weekend-unthreaded-246/#comment-2104519
Our schooling was once world class, now just an annexe where the jobless are held to keep official unemployment figures down to avoid alarming the public.
Pray for us.
KK
192
So true,
The Australain Conservatives hope to limit the damage that our next government will try to cause.
Vote: Australian Conservatives in the Senate. That is Kevin Bailey in Victoria. There are excellent candidates in the other states.
The election is less than 3 months away!
60
Peter, been trying to contact you via emails to Jo re Rom but no success. I will be up at Ivanhoe Library today at 5pm if you’re able to come by and give me details and I’ll be able to visit ROM. Hope yu can make it. bts. lol Trench coat, rolled news[paper…
30
Hi Beth,
I am out of town.
Back tomorrow (Wed). I plan to visit ROM in the Afternoon. I will call at the Ivanhoe Library first at 2 pm. If that suits , we could visit together.
10
Just saw this. Yes I will be at library at 2pm.
Thx.
10
ANU means “Australian National University”. With such schools, who needs lunatic asylums?
120
And yet, according to the OECD’s recently published environmental performance review, Australia needs to intensify efforts to achieve its Paris agreement goals.
30
The small print insists upon a failed State ripe for the NWO plucking.
10
Australia’s total electricity usage is about 1040 watts per person. The chart above shows that over the last 4 years Australia will have installed 570 watts/person of “renewables”.
That’s nameplate capacity, so given it is a mix of solar and wind, apply a 25% capacity factor to give an average production of 140 watts, or about 13% of total demand. However, when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining, those renewables may be delivering only 20 watts, just 2% of average demand and 1.5% of peak demand. And then in the middle of the day with good sun and strong winds, those renewables may deliver 340 watts, 33% of average demand, and about 50% of midday demand.
The supply impact: Reliable coal/gas/hydro must always be available to meet 100% of peak demand with virtually no contribution from intermittent “renewables”. What a waste.
The cost impact: From Dec 2015 to Dec 2018 according to ABS data, the consumer price index has increased from 108.4 to 114.1, an increase of 5%. In the same time, the consumer electricity cost index has increased from 118.1 to 141.6, an increase of 20%. And according to AEMO, average wholesale electricity prices in Vic have increased from $46/MWhr in 2015/16 to $112/Mwhr in 2018/19.
Australia: the renewable energy superstar or the renewable energy dummy?
What evidence do these ANU “experts” present to show that the net cost is zero?
The study does say: The Renewable Energy Target has now effectively been met, and new PV and wind farms can no longer expect significant subsidy support. Backup techniques comprise storage, demand management, and strong interstate interconnection using high voltage transmission lines. By far the leading storage technologies are pumped hydro and batteries(including EV batteries). So even more investment. And the source of some of their referenced papers? The Conversation. And there the authors claim: “What’s the net cost of using renewables to hit Australia’s climate target? Nothing.”
So stop all renewable subsidies and market distortions immediately, and give me cheaper reliable electricity now! Now there’s a vote winner.
221
Robber, you forgot that when the wind isn’t blowing all those wind turbines are drawing power from the grid to turn the blades and so stop bending of the main shaft and damage to the bearings – something that is never mentioned in renewable circles.
100
probably because its just a marginal factoid that doesnt really mean much in the big picture. I doubt there is a power plant on on the planet that doesnt draw power while shutdown for whatever reason.
31
You’re missing the point on a couple of fronts there Yarpos.
Other generation forms might use a bit of power to maintain themselves, but they don’t actively parasitise it out of the grid on a regular basis like wind turbines do.
Timing is also everything. The time when windfarms are becalmed is by definition the time when the grid is under most strain if you are relying on the input of wind to power your grid. So not only are wind turbines contributing nothing to the grid, they are sucking power from the grid at the time of greatest need.
Around Dec 6 2016 production for the Macarthur Wind Plant in Victoria, with a nameplate of 420MW and 140 x 3MW turbines dipped into negative values for 25 hours prior to and including the day above. For those 25 hours this wind plant was drawing power from the Victorian grid at a continuous rate of 5MW (about 35kW per turbine). To use the wind scammers’ own stunt against them: that 125MWh is enough to power 7,142 average Victorian homes for a day. (Allowing for an average home consumption of 17.5KWh/day).
5MW from one wind farm doesn’t sound much, but there are about 2,500 wind turbines in Oz. Granted they are not all 3MW but it gives you the idea. That’s a lot of power being constantly burnt up by windfarms — power that has to come from fossil fuel sources when the wind stops and the sun is low.
That 5MW might be the difference between keeping the lights on or having blackouts. Multiply it by however many wind farms are becalmed throughout SA/VIC/NSW under a big blocking high pressure system, and it soon becomes a lot more than a “marginal factoid” when power is tight. You could quite conceivably lose 50MW out of the grid when it is already on the brink.
As an aside, anyone here who keeps an eye on the ANERO site will have seen days where the wind power graphs dip below 0. I believe they deliberately try to obscure the negative output with the X axis, the chart margin and other clutter so that it looks no lower than zero, instead of extending the Y axis further south as you normally would with a graph that extends into negative values. Sneaky.
80
hmmm. You’ve obviously never been near a wind farm, but here is some info for you:
https://www.quora.com/Do-wind-turbines-spin-all-the-time
18
True, You don’t often see any of the Lake George wind turbines actually turning.
40
Did you actually read that article?
if so, you need to do a bit more work on your comprehension quotient.
40
For some years now we have heard that the power supply industry needs policy “certainty” from governments to support strong investment in the industry. This is a recent example:
https://www.afr.com/news/australian-energy-market-commission-says-blackouts-are-inevitable-20190207-h1aykx
Policy certainty is synonymous with guaranteeing generous subsidies forever. The last sentence in the quote above should be read as:
“He also called for guaranteeing generous subsidies forever.”
When the States owned and operated the loosely linked state networks last century they were generally effective but relatively inefficient organisations. Corporatising the operations and allowing access to low cost privately owned generators improved efficiency and lowered cost. The federal government then took effective control by offering large subsidies to intermittent suppliers of electricity. The consequence of this decision has never been considered from a technical perspective.
It will be interesting to watch the lunch time power price in Queensland regularly going negative in the cooler months through 2019. However I doubt this will be a trigger to realise the looming issues any more than the frequent negative prices in SA or less frequent controlled and uncontrolled outages in SA and Victoria.
150
Here is Lomborg’s latest article on the CAGW scam, DEC 2018. Plenty data/evidence to prove that renewables are hopeless and of course won’t make any measurable difference to the climate by 2040 or 2100. But at a cost of endless trillions $ over that long period.
IOW all pain for ZERO gain and if you really want this idiocy just keep voting for Labor and the Greens.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/climate-change-self-defeating-alarmism-by-bjorn-lomborg-2018-12
“Truth is the First Casualty of Global Warming”
Dec 18, 2018 Bjørn Lomborg
“The truth about climate change is nuanced: it is real, and in the long term it will be a problem, but its impact is less than we might believe. And yet we are too eager to believe the problem is far worse than science shows, and – conversely – that our solutions are far easier than reality dictates.
BRUSSELS – The latest global climate summit in Poland has generated familiar predictions of doom and disaster from environmental activists. Climate change seems to freeze our capacity for critical thinking: we are too eager to believe the problem is far worse than science shows, and – conversely – that our solutions are far easier than reality dictates.
Consider weather events: it is second nature now to link these to climate change. Whenever a flood hits, the media blames global warming and warns that floods are increasing. But the most authoritative conclusion by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is that it is not even clear whether floods have increased or decreased globally over the past century.
Both European forest fires and US hurricanes are blamed on global warming. But, despite getting more news attention than normal, forest fires in Europe 2018 have affected less than half the average area burned; in Europe’s southern countries, which contain 90% of the affected forest, the burned area has halved over 35 years. On hurricanes, IPCC scientists say there have been “no significant observed trends” globally over the past century. The frequency of all US land-falling hurricanes has actually been declining since 1900, as has that of major US hurricanes.
The truth about climate change is nuanced: it is real, and in the long term it will be a problem, but its impact is less than we might believe. According to the IPCC’s last major report, unrestrained climate change would result in an average reduction in income of about 0.2-2% by the 2070s. That is equivalent to the impact of a single economic recession over the next half-century.
Yet, in a race to the bottom with climate-change deniers, green activists have become hyperbolic. Influential campaigner George Monbiot says “climate change” isn’t alarming enough, so should be replaced with “climate breakdown.”1
Climate is not breaking down. In fact, it used to break us down. A century ago, climate disasters killed an average of 500,000 people worldwide every year. Today, despite many more people living in harm’s way, the toll has dropped by more than 95%.
Just as activists and the media engender fear by associating every fire, flood, and hurricane with climate change, they generate a false belief that there are simple solutions to the problem, if only politicians and the public would embrace them.
Take the new argument that becoming vegetarian could fix climate change. The reality is that a Westerner abandoning all meat will cut her greenhouse-gas emissions by only a few percentage points.
Or consider the strange suggestion by UN chief António Guterres that climate policies will bring “at least $26 trillion in economic benefits.” Tellingly, his claims are based on nothing more than a glossy report, while the actual (presumably heroic) calculations have never been released. The claim totally contradicts established climate economics. Replacing fossil fuels with inefficient alternatives slows growth. That’s why the 2015 Paris climate agreement, if fully implemented, will actually cost the planet around $1-2 trillion annually.
Another common refrain is that solar and wind are ready to outcompete fossil fuels. But alternative energy remains reliant on subsidies to the tune of $160 billion annually. When these are withdrawn, investments in solar and wind typically plummet. While there are cases where alternative energies are cheaper than fossil fuels, the reverse is more often true – and solar and wind are infinitely more expensive when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing.3
Globally, solar and wind satisfy less than 1% of our energy needs. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that by 2040, even if the Paris agreement holds together, this will increase to just above 4%.
If we are to address climate change successfully, we need to listen to William Nordhaus, the first climate economist to win the Nobel prize, who shows that tackling global warming – like everything else – is a question of finding the right balance. With a climate-economic model refined over decades, Nordhaus demonstrates that a globally coordinated, moderate, and rising carbon tax could reduce temperatures modestly. It would cost about $20 trillion to avoid some climate damages, ensuring a net benefit of $30 trillion over coming centuries.
But without global coordination, the policy costs would escalate. And aiming to reduce temperatures more drastically, to within 2.5°C of preindustrial levels, would drive the cost beyond $130 trillion, leaving us $50 trillion worse off.
Contrast Nordhaus’s careful work showing that a 2.5°C cap is near impossible, with the excitement being whipped up about keeping the rise in global temperature below the much harder 1.5°C threshold. At current emissions levels, this would require us to end fossil-fuel use in ten years – an idea that flies in the face of historical evidence. The world has increased emissions constantly over a century, lifting billions out of poverty in the process. We are even told that within a few decades, we need to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere on an unprecedented scale, with totally untested technology. That’s just wishful thinking. The IEA expects that fossil fuels will still meet three-quarters of global energy demand by 2040.
The technology deficit can be solved only by drastically increasing our spending on research and development of alternative energy. Careful analysis shows that climate change is a problem. But it is not the end of the world. To solve it, we need a smart focus on green-tech innovation, not scare stories and hyperbole”.
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All eyes are on America with Climate Change, renewables, President Trump, Paris. His approval rating has jumped 9% in just 10 days. Pundits credit his State of the Union address where he took ‘socialism’ head on and abortion. The incredible demand by Ocasio Cortez and Democrat friends that people give up flying, driving, meat, coal, oil, gasoline and everyone gets government money without work has likely blown a hole in the Socialist arm of the Democrats. Voters are fleeing in droves. It can climb even more as candidates like Fauxcohontas support the New Green Deal, which would be the end of America. All to prevent Global Warming in the middle of the coldest winter ever.
So Australians are fleeing the world’s highest electricity prices to solar panels which will force electricity prices even higher. Partly because the poor are paying half the cost. Partly to save money, which is self defeating as prices soar. Partly to avoid blackouts, which is not true as they turn off when the grid turns off. All this off budget like the NBN, so the government can appear to be spending wisely when the RET ripoff without exemption is crippling incomes. All this money is flowing overseas and domestic electricity companies are celebrating.
WIndmill owners are getting fortunes in cash payments for nothing and plus huge tax deductions on equipment bought with public money. Electricity millionaires made every day while the people suffer and businesses fail. Socialised electricity. Climate Scientology.
Even Canberra itself has an amazing $37Million in uncashed RET certificates, cash made from poor Austrlians because the caring environmentally conscioius people of Canberra are ripping off other Australians with windmills bought like everything else with other people’s money. The ripoff continues while the public are told nothing by their concerned government who pretend to be fiscally responsible.
Sell the ABC/SBS/BOM/NBN and give the power stations back to the people. Privatization has become a joke and the world’s greatest ripoff of a democratic people by a democratically elected government. Repeal the RET. It is a wrong law forcing ordinary people to pay friends of the Greens.
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Yes, Yes and Yes.
Sell our public radio and T.V. Broadcasters.
Bring Reality back into our education system.
Value:
Thrift, Independence, Integrity (what’s that), hard work and real concern for your neighbors.
Restore our Democracy.
KK
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Well things aint looking too rosey now about a year or so ago at Jo’s website I was babbling on about three main economic factors A.The housing market bubble(and highly leveraged mortgages)B.Energy costs(for both industry and households) and C.Unemployment (my emphasis was on full time employment)
I never was a Taro card reader but my thoughts back then were if these three factors aligned in a negative way then there would be a greater chance of a self induced recession – by the way Australia is statistically and in all probability really due for one anyway.
Ok how is the Housing market doing now?How are energy costs going -north or south?And finally what would be the true (not a massaged and adjusted one like temperature records) direction of the full time employment rate.
At this point in time these indicators don’t look good at all and the good ship Australia continues to sail only further into the rough seas of this perfect storm.Remember added to this
brew is total Australian government debt currently running at 850 billion dollars (we will soon be cracking that lucky trillion dollar mark)
The saddest canary in the coal for me is the number of Australian households that have been chopped from the grid in south Australia alone the figure is 34,000.
So given all this hardship what has any Australian politician state or federal ,Labor or Liberal doing to address this national disaster?? The answer seems to be nothing or very little.All that we hear is more of the same ie “emission reductions,Paris agreement and Climate Change” .Nothing apparently is going to change the song will remain the same.
Cheers Mike Reed
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I was speaking to a financial counsellor yesterday. She told me that about 65% of her ‘clients’ ( she is funded by the Victorian Government ) are people with full time work. This is where we are now, people with full time work seeking hardship agreements and mortgage relief. The main cause? All report that energy costs are breaking their budgets. She also told me that she and her colleagues have never been so busy, with waiting times for appointments nearing three months.
Makes me nostalgic for Keating’s 17% interest rates.
50
When looking at costs of renewables, lets not forget the transport costs, in terms of money and CO2. I saw an episode of Outback Truckers last week, one segment was about a truck transporting wind turbine components from a port like Bega NSW to a site in the Snowy Mountains (hardly outback). It was said that a total of 74 trucks would be required to transport all the components. Each truck had two escort vehicles and a police car. The wind farm components came from overseas, probably China. My guess is that about 10 ships carrying coal and iron ore to China would be required for one ship load of wind turbine parts. The ore carriers probably return empty so it’s a double cost. That’s a lot of CO2 before any power is produced
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Add the access roads that need to be cut to the turbine bases and the transmission tower to connect them all and then factor in the MAINTENANCE needed for the turbines, transmission towers and the roads, all in previously remote locations and the irony becomes even more depressing.
The public need a good dosing of before and after pictures of the windfarm sites to truly appreciate the enormous resources used and the direct damage caused (let alone the deleterious effects on the grid).
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James Finlayson – master of the comedy double-take (youtube)
Feb 8. 2019: Mann criticises climate “catastrophists”;
– there’s a movement with “almost cult-like figures” who “declared we have only 10 years until humans are extinct”
– says the “methane bomb” scare is “bad science, pseudo-science”.
“0.00 secs: You know, there are certain aspects of the [global warming] problem that , for some reason have been seized upon by sort of … the ‘catastrophists.’
People who sometimes seem like they actually want to believe that we are committed to the extinction of the human race.
And there is this movement , as you know, and there is some all-most cult-like figures in the movement to have, uhm, declared that we have only 10 years until humans are extinct, and there is nothing we can possibly do about it.”
https://climatecrocks.com/2019/02/09/mike-mann-on-the-arctic-methane-bomb/
Whoa! Wait. What?
28 June, 2017: World has three (3) years to prevent dangerous [global warming], warn experts
“The article was signed by more than 60 scientists, such as Professor Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, politicians, including …”
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/world-climate-change-save-humanity-experts-global-warming-rising-sea-levels-food-a7813251.html
> The wheels on the bus go thump-thump-thump … ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
March 2012: ‘Compost bomb’ is latest climate change ‘tipping point’
“Prof Will Steffen, a global change expert from the Australian National University, said that this period of climate change caused by humans, known as the ‘anthropocene era’, could ultimately cause the whole system of ice ages followed by warm periods, that has allowed life on Earth to flourish, to be over.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/9168055/Compost-bomb-is-latest-climate-change-tipping-point.html
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What is religion about all these ‘scientists’ is that they obviously believe that CO2 levels are not in equilibrium, that any source at all of CO2 will dangerously warm the planet and that the ecosystem is extremely fragile and a small change will produce catastrophe.
None of these things are proven and yet they foretell doom? What is the difference between their ‘science’ and religion which almost always demands you repent and hand over your cash and prevent argmageddon? None.
When is a scientist not a scientist? When he has no evidence. These Armageddon scenarios are wearing very thin. Remember a decade ago when the huge rotting mass of plant debris at the mouth of the Amazon was going to warm and release world killing clouds of methane, when New York was going to be many meters under water and it would never rain again and what rain fell would not even fill the dams? Now the massive floods in Queensland are ‘climate change’.
Professor Will Steffen knows beyond a doubt that there is under 4% of man made CO2 in the air. He knows the CO2 is in equilibrium with the 98% of CO2 dissolved in the oceans. He knows there is not enough CO2 to have an effect without help from water. Still he persists. Its a living I guess.
131
Religion does not need evidence. Central to the green movement,
it relies on how something feels.
https://youtu.be/s85fHq1bCnc
This religion is now clearly a farce. Professors Salby and Harde have shown that eliminating CO2 emissions in favor of windmills, which increasingly have polluted our landscape, can have no effect on climate – because it can’t even affect how much CO2 is in the air.
https://youtu.be/rohF6K2avtY
Costly nonsense, paid for by the rest of us.
110
Yes it is. However, it’s not an honest one.
His integrity may not matter to him. So he sees no problem. Ponzi had the same view.
20
Some little strategies of the highly organised malevolence we call globalism:
1. Be everywhere, from far left to far right, religious to atheist, but crowd the centre.
2. Use a total takeover of the media to tell people that they are not seeing what is in plain sight (power bills, sea levels, rainfall records, natural/geological history).
3. Use soft fear on the educated and influential classes through job security, social conformity, outright snobbery. (After all, they flop in front of the box every night just like the wallies.)
4. Work in stages, boil the frogs gently. Continue to use, even waste, coal, gas and oil while increasing the cost artificially. Coal is a primary target, but massive exports of coal are to continue and even increase since the goal is to damage the domestic infrastructure and create energy poverty out of fabulous energy wealth. Remember: it’s not about carbon.
5. Confuse those who resist with studies and statistics which are infinitely malleable, agree and sympathise to gain attention then use that agreement and sympathy to confuse and exhaust. (Good morning, GeeUp!).
6. Politicians should be appointees in all but appearance. Best to make a conservative leader out of a posh leftist (Turnbull) and a Labor leader out of a CIA dream-boy. Non-appointees need to go quickly (on grounds of raw onions or Grange Hermitage), appointees must be boosted quickly because even a one-eyed, drunken pigeon won’t be fooled by a Turnbull for very long.
7. Remember ABE (Always Be Eroding). Tradition, family, property, nation, sense of ethnicity need to be weakened progressively but every day. Don’t waste a TV or media moment without doing some erosion. This is best done by appealing to notions of charity and tolerance, but the odd bit of cannibalism or marriage to a Staffordshire Terrier is worth a punt.
8. Jolt the demographic, till there is no “we” to resist in numbers.
9. Use the media to make resistance absurd and “conspiracist”. Make absurdity respectable. As the Mars thing gets tired, what about an alien arrival in 2019? A UN spot for the Space Kingdom of Asgardia? There are no national anthems in space.
I could go on.
141
I want you all to look very closely at this graph.
Wind and Solar Versus Total Power
The green colour rolling along the bottom of the graph is all the generated wind power. The red colour on top of that is all the solar plant power.
The black line at the top of the graph is total generated power from every source.
Now, on that black line, look at the lowest point of that Load Curve, and its around 3AM to 5AM.
That low point is a little above 18000MW.
Until wind and solar power can DELIVER that absolute minimum ….. on a daily basis, EVERY DAY of the year, then I’m afraid they’ve got nothing.
This isn’t cherry picking one day for this graph. This is the same every day.
Keep in mind also that (look at the date) this is the graph for the Sunday just passed, and the Sunday of every week is the LOWEST power consumption day of EVERY week, and three days prior to this, the working day Thursday, that black line was 4500MW (on average) higher across the whole of the graph.
Tony.
170
Thanks Tony, but don’t forget that in OZ S&W generate less than 1% of our TOTAL energy and the same for the entire world.
TOTAL energy is all the energy that we use to run everything in OZ, not just our electricity grid.
See the IEA data I’ve linked to many times over the last few years.
100
I doubt he has forgotten it, it just isnt the topic at hand. Why even worry about the total energy number when we have a fundamental issue just with the electrcity grid? Its just clouding the issue.
40
Total energy IS highly relevant because many of the public at large think going to a “green” grid will result in zero carbon emissions, farming aside. Their understanding is that shallow.
Total energy shows just how ridiculous the Paris and other agreements are if CAGW was a genuine issue while looking solely at the grid makes it plausible (for the non-technical) to claim that the “progress” made is significant and the issues only require more political “will” (ie money) to be put in to solve them.
40
“Until wind and solar power can DELIVER that absolute minimum ….. on a daily basis, EVERY DAY of the year, then I’m afraid they’ve got nothing.”
The ALP and Greens: “Hold my beer! We’ve got this.”
50
Wind turbines being constrained again , proving yet again how useless this ancient technology really is .
Market Notice 67213
AEMO ELECTRICITY MARKET NOTICE
The synchronous generating units expected to be synchronised in SA from 0030 hrs 12/02/19 to 0630 hrs 12/02/19 in Pre-dispatch published at 1530 hrs 11/02/19 are inadequate to maintain sufficient system strength in SA and hence a secure operating state.
AEMO currently estimates that, in the absence of sufficient market response by 2230 hrs 11/02/19, AEMO may need to intervene by issuing a direction requiring one or more SA synchronous generating unit(s) to operate or remain synchronised to maintain power system security in SA.
Manager NEM Real Time Operations
100
That note is an indication that the AEMO will spend extra money on Frequency Control Ancillory Services (FCAS). A cost of renewables over the cost of RE generation.
80
That goes into the extra cost = zero column
50
In accordance with the AEMC rule – National Electricity Amendment (Emergency frequency control schemes) Rule 2017
mainly due to
because
https://www.aemc.gov.au/sites/default/files/content/5dad7625-02cd-4b3b-b52d-b70d1b2609ea/Emergency-frequency-control-schemes-Final-rule-determination-%28FINAL-PU.pdf
Note the date of the rule change request – this was BEFORE the September 2017 blackout when the windfarms tripped and the SA grid was isolated because the Heywood interconnector became overloaded.
30
some criticism in the middle, but otherwise just more RE advocacy from theirABC:
8 Feb: ABC: Australia on track to meet Paris Agreement targets five years earlier than expected, research finds
ABC North and West By Gary-Jon Lysaght
Australia is on track to meet its Paris climate commitments five years earlier than expected — in 2025 — according to new research from the Australian National University…
Co-researcher Matthew Stocks said cheaper renewable energy was replacing expensive coal-fired power, meaning the cost of achieving the 2030 carbon emission targets in the Paris Agreement would be zero…
Professor Blakers said high energy prices across Australia made renewable energy more preferable and available.
“It means solar and wind could build scale while the prices are fairly high in the short to medium term,” he said.
“Solar and wind are going to dominate the electricity grid in Australia and prices will come down.
“But the prices of wind and solar are also coming down and so it’s likely that wind and solar can keep ahead of the game and maintain their advantage over coal or gas.”…
Dr Sven Teske is a Research Director at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, at the University of Technology Sydney and said the research from ANU is a “positive take” on renewable energy in Australia at the moment.
“I would love to believe it,” he said.
“The problem is that we still have a few policy measures to implement to really keep up that pace and one of them is that we need a better regulation of how to connect new utility-scale solar and wind farm to the grid.
“Right now there is not really a standardised process in place to process all of those applications – we have applications for 40’000MW, but this does not mean that those power plants will actually be connected.”
Dr Teske said ANU’s research focussed on the energy market and not the entire sector…
“We also need to take into account our emissions and transport [and] if we want to electrify our transport system, we need to take into account that the electricity demand in Australia will roughly double,” he said.
“Even if we meet our, let’s say, 2025 or 2030 targets, we need a long term target and we don’t have long term energy policies in place right now.”…
Professor Blakers said South Australia had been an important state in “moving Australia forward”.
“In fact, the economic pressure from wind and solar caused the final demise of coal burning in South Australia,” he said.
“South Australia is now over 50 per cent wind and solar and headed to 100 per cent or even 125 per cent wind over the next five or six years.”
He said reaching 125 per cent renewables meant, over the course of one year, South Australia could export more energy than it imported…READ ON
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-08/australia-ahead-of-paris-agreement-target-by-five-years/10789810
60
The latest episode of ABC TV The drum had a segment discussing renewables in Australia.
Apparently the faster we transition the faster we can get cheaper electricity.
WARNING the following video could be hazardous to your monitor as you will feel like throwing it against the wall.
Starts at 21:40
https://iview.abc.net.au/show/drum/series/0/video/NC1907H006S00
81
I’m voting for Cori. His mob is the only mob with the balls to call a spade a bloody shovel. Evolution of technology is always toward the more efficient and most reliable. Wind and solar do not meet those two most important objectives.
The only way to better spin a turbine is by more efficient means. If the argument was to superheat carbon dioxide or some other dense inert gas using a molten salt circuit, heated by a nuclear reaction then let us all talk about it. Right now, the gold standard is a HELE. HELE has been with us since the Benson boiler, invented in 1922. It wasn’t until 1957 that a commercial power station was built using supercritical steam as its energy source. The limitation has always been the metallurgy.
Power by intermittent source is, ALWAYS, a backward step!
191
mark jones:
I agree with you, but cannot give you a green thumb. My laptop is working but the third (brief) blackout this morning seems to have upset my modem. I hope that it has settled down by now.
80
26 Jul 2018: Woroni: ANU Researchers Recognised for Their Outstanding Contributions to Australian Science
by Jeffrey Weng
(ANU Student Media is the Association that encompasses Woroni, Woroni Radio and Woroni TV.
(Woroni has been the ANU student newspaper since 1950, Woroni Radio was established in 2012 and Woroni TV was launched in 2017)
Ten researchers from ANU have been nominated as the finalists of five Eureka Prizes – the most nominations the University has ever received.
Established in 1990, the Eureka Prizes are widely regarded as the “Oscars of Australian Science”…
Two groups of ANU researchers, RE100 and the Difficult Bird Research Group have been nominated for the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage Eureka Prize for Environmental Research.
RE100 is comprised of Professor Andrew Blakers, Dr Matthew Stocks, and Bin Liu from the ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science. The team discovered 22,000 sites that are potentially suitable for cost-effective pumped hydro energy storage. These sites have large heads, small dam-lengths, and are close to power lines and roads.
Only about 20 of these sites is needed to generate power through wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) technology and secure 100% renewable electricity. If Australia keeps up with its current build-rate of power plants of wind and solar PV technology with a small increase, 100% of renewable electricity is possible by the late 2020s.
Professor Andrew Blakers sees the complete elimination of gas and coal power as a realistic goal. As the price of building power plants of wind and solar PV technology continues to fall, interests in pumped hydro storage is rapidly rising…
The winners of the Eureka Prizes will be announced on the evening of Wednesday, 29 August.
https://www.woroni.com.au/news/anu-researchers-recognised-for-their-outstanding-contributions-to-australian-science/
29 Aug 2018: The Conversation: Gaming for the environment, nanotech and a super-accurate clock: Australian science at the 2018 Eureka Prizes
by Ellen Rochelmeyer
Australian National University researchers Andrew Blakers, Matthew Stocks and Bin Lu won the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage Eureka Prize for Environmental Research.
Specialising in renewable energy, their work has shown that Australia has the potential for a totally renewable electricity system, using cost-effective pumped hydro energy storage (LINK). Together, these researchers have also shared their expertise via The Conversation, explaining the pros and cons of locations for pumped hydro sites in Australia (LINK) and Indonesia (LINK), and the future of renewable energy in Australia (LINK)…
***Adam Geiger won the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science Eureka Prize for Science Journalism for his documentary Can we Save the Reef…
http://theconversation.com/gaming-for-the-environment-nanotech-and-a-super-accurate-clock-australian-science-at-the-2018-eureka-prizes-102255
***TWEET: Catalyst ABC: We are thrilled our film “Can We Save the Reef?” has been awarded this year’s @IndustryGovAu Eureka Prize for Science Journalism. Congratulations to filmmaker Adam Geiger, @DrEmmaLJohnston and the Catalyst team. You can catch it on @ABCiview: https://
29 Aug 2018
https://twitter.com/ABCcatalyst/status/1034743871526203394
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pat:
A slight spelling mistake; I think that should be Moroni.
50
Asia & The Pacific Policy Society Forum: Andrew Blakers
He has published approximately 300 papers and patents. His research interests are in the areas of silicon photovoltaic solar cells and solar energy systems. He has extensive experience with basic and applied research and was a leader of the team that developed PERC silicon solar cell technology, which currently has approximately 30 per cent of the worldwide solar market and cumulative module sales of around $30 billion (mid-2018).
He also has interest in sustainable energy policy and is engaged in detailed analysis of energy systems with high (50–100 per cent) penetration by wind and photovoltaics with support from pumped hydro energy storage (for which he won the 2018 Eureka Prize for Environmental Research)…
https://www.policyforum.net/authors/andrew-blakers/
Eureka Prizes Partners/Sponsors
https://australianmuseum.net.au/get-involved/eureka-prizes/eureka-sponsors/
23 Feb 2018: ANU: Strengthening China Studies at ANU
PIC: Chinese Flag
The Australian National University (ANU) has reaffirmed its global leadership and expertise on China through a series of changes and new investment in China studies and the Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW).
“With these changes ANU reaffirms its national responsibility to be the preeminent independent centre for the study of China and its continued rise as a global player on the world stage,” (Dean of the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific Professor Michael Wesley) said.
He said the University will make four new strategic senior academic appointments at CIW to lead the study of Chinese elite politics, Modern Chinese history, culture/film/media studies, and contemporary Chinese society…
“These new appointments will ensure the University has a sustainable research program tied to the interests of China scholars across the University,” he said…
http://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/strengthening-china-studies-at-anu-0
20
novel length – above politics? lol:
Aug 2016: The Monthly: The Eureka Factory
Australia’s solar champions face an uncertain future
by Ceridwen Dovey
The scientists who are globally acknowledged to be the best at developing solar cells – tweaking them, goading them to perform better at converting sunlight to electricity – have been quietly doing their work for four decades in a laboratory at the University of New South Wales, just up the road from Sydney’s Royal Randwick Racecourse.
It’s here that the man dubbed the “Solar Godfather”, Professor Martin Green, has maintained his research team’s world record in solar cell efficiency (the percentage of sunlight successfully converted into electricity) for 30 of the past 32 years. It’s in large part thanks to these leaps in effectiveness that solar power is predicted to be the cheapest energy on earth within ten years…
Before meeting Green, who at 68 is still movie-star handsome, with a full head of hair and a toothy smile, I can’t say I had spared much thought for solar cells of any kind. In theory I was already a fan: what’s not to like about abundant, cheap, clean energy? …
At the table with us is Chinese-Australian researcher Xiaojing Hao, 38, who is petite, wears her black hair in a bob, and laughs easily and loudly. Hao is a tenured faculty member at the UNSW School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering, and a rapidly rising research star thanks to her work on a different kind of solar cell, CZTS (copper-zinc-tin-sulphide), which has promising applications for building-integrated photovoltaics…
Hao moved from China to Australia in 2004 to join her husband, a chemical engineer at UNSW whom she had met when they were both undergraduates studying materials engineering at Northeastern University in Shenyang…
***In a recent academic paper, Green cites research by one of his former PhD students, Andrew Blakers (now director of the Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems at the Australian National University), which shows that a “5% relative efficiency improvement on 50% of Australian photovoltaic systems over the ten-year period 2018–2028 … translates to savings of $750 million”.
Blakers points out that “solar PV electricity is now less expensive than both domestic and commercial retail electricity from the grid” and is “approaching cost-competitiveness with wholesale conventional electricity in many places”. In the 1970s, the cost of solar was around $100 a watt, whereas now it is 60 cents a watt.
This radical drop in cost was “the first wave of the solar revolution”, says Sven Teske, a solar industry expert at the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney. The second wave in this revolution – which Teske says will ensure that solar PV “dominates global energy markets” – is now gathering momentum, thanks to the development of battery storage. (Australia is one of the first markets where the Powerwall, the solar battery technology made by American automotive and energy storage company Tesla, is available.) Now that solar energy can be stored and used when needed, “nothing will be the same anymore”, Teske says. “The whole sector will be put on its head.”…
Green also subtly resists my attempts to frame his work in grandiose, world-saving terms, though he does concede that he was aware from the beginning of a sense of urgency, especially during Ronald Reagan’s presidency when funding for American PV researchers – previously supported by Jimmy Carter – dried up…
The Gillard government set it up (ARENA) in 2012, along with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC). As ARENA’s website states, it provides “funding grants along the innovation chain from research in the laboratory to large-scale pre-commercial deployment activities” for projects designed to reduce the cost and increase the use of renewable energy…
Tony Abbott as prime minister tried twice to abolish these entities, and both times he was blocked in the Senate. When Malcolm Turnbull took power, the fate of these institutions remained uncertain. So after he announced in March that both ARENA and the CEFC would be spared – and that they would together manage a new “Clean Energy Innovation Fund” – the renewable energy community breathed a sigh of relief…
Green seems like a person who prefers to keep his distance from the political fray. (He has a droll habit of using politicians’ first names in conversation, which makes them sound like little boys up to no good: “Tony was philosophically opposed to renewables, so he just had a weird outlook on a lot of things,” or “Malcolm said ARENA was going to be saved, but the role of ARENA in giving grants to universities has disappeared.”)…READ ALL
https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2016/august/1469973600/ceridwen-dovey/eureka-factory
20
Jo, thanks for the great article. Do you have any thoughts about this incredible (as in ‘not believable’) claim in the report:
‘Stabilising the electricity grid when it has 50-100% renewable energy is straightforward using off-the-shelf techniques that are already widely used in Australia.’
Does the report offer any evidence to back up this claim?
100
BFT – the claim that someone in Australia has already stabilised a grid taking 50-100% renewable energy simply cannot be believed, because no large scale grid has ever run on 100% renewables for any period of time. More like 0-40%, and then there were massive problems with supply frequency over about 20%.
110
Better not go to Iceland then they went to 100%
316
Hydro/geothermal? Not so much wind/solar?
101
Some figures there please PF.
61
pfutz, spreading deceitful misdirection yet again.
Does pfutz actually think wind and solar would actually work in Iceland..
so funny.. 🙂
121
65% geo, 20% hydro.
30
Iceland has 100% wind and solar? Do you have a link to an article containing that information, I’d very much like to read it.
90
Renewables was the phrase used by both DaveR and BoyFromTottenham, so renewables is what I searched for. you can do the same search, you don’t need me
215
If you already did the search I don’t see why its a problem for you to supply a link to what you found.
In any case, I did find the 2012 article titled “Iceland: A 100% renewables example in the modern era”
It list the following information for electrical generation:
Hydro: 75.5%
Geothermal: 24.5%
No wind or solar in sight. Also, most greens don’t consider Hydro as a valid renewable resource, so that just leaves Geothermal which is only useable on that scale at a few locations on earth. Bottom line, Iceland is a very bad example of how to go “100% renewable”.
120
“Iceland: A 100% renewables example in the modern era”
link:
https://reneweconomy.com.au/iceland-a-100-renewables-example-in-the-modern-era-56428/
60
So you found the info of 70% hydro and 30% geothermal
And chose not to put it forward.
How squirmy of you.
101
When were solar and wind mentioned at the start of this thread? Off into the weeds you go again.
212
The thread starts with BoyfromTottenham thank Jo for her article. Point 1 of the summary of the article states “•Australia is installing renewable energy (solar photovoltaics and wind) far faster per capita than other countries.” Therefore the thread is implicitly about Wind and Solar.
110
“•Australia is installing renewable energy (solar photovoltaics and wind) far faster per capita than other countries.”
Off to the knackery with you, pfutz.
Although I doubt you would make glue that stuck to anything, more likely an oozing slime.
Zero comprehension ability, INEPT and INCAPABLE.
42
new thread, if it was solar and wind, why not say so?
212
Are you saying wind and solar ARE NOT renewables?
Heck, they need renewing regularly.
You knew you were deliberately attempting a pathetic misdirection.
Don’t double down on your deceit.
71
Peter: When were solar and wind mentioned at the start of this thread?
The entire post is about unreliable generators. comprendre?
111
That’s just classic of your ilk Pete, misdirection. You know you’re being completely dishonest and yet somehow you sleep at night. Jumping through hoops and avoiding the truth making you tired?
72
You’re so right pFitz: we don’t need you …
42
Peter Fitzroy,
You are spot on.
WE DON’T NEED YOU.
32
Truest thing you’ve ever posted here.
42
Geothermal energy in Iceland is renewable but it is always available (ie reliable} unlike wind and solar which are intermittent (ie unreliable). A crucial difference.
20
here are some off the shelf components by a little known company call Siemens, https://www.tdworld.com/svc/new-technology-stabilizes-power-grid-germany. but wait, In Australia they do these things as well, https://new.siemens.com/global/en/markets/power-utilities.html, among others.
28
“…here are some off the shelf components by a little known company call Siemens…”
They must not work very well given that the AEMO has to periodically intervene in the market to curtail wind generation and bring more synchronous generation on line so that the power system does not become insecure (for example, See comment #24).
100
Ergon Energy has been installing Statcoms to control voltage surges caused by rooftop solar.
Just another expense that goes on the electricity bill of everyone.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/ergon-takes-steps-to-manage-booming-rooftop-solar-uptake-44132/
80
from your link
Satcom Solutions, is being installed to manage voltage swings on the network – a problem that has long existed for grid operators, but which they argue has been exacerbated by the uptake of rooftop solar.
So it is solar we should be thanking for Ergon taking the trouble to regulate voltage swings. Win for Solar there
211
That’s a win for grid operators as you implied:
Now you try and spin it the other way? Do yourself a favour and shut up. Foot in mouth disease is all too common among your herd and you’re spreading it like a hippo spreads his stink, but they do it more efficiently.
80
no – or maybe if you consider posting from the link spin, then yes. Voltage swings, have long been a problem for network operators. That is independent of solar power. So solar was the spur, not the reason for doing something
28
Patricia – an easy question – do you favour an unstable electrical grid by installing more than 10% renewables?
41
If Germany can do it a 33% renewables (and this time we are talking Wind, Solar etc) then why can’t we.
However we are starting from a long way back when you look at or SAIDI and SAIFI performance – which is what you would be using to to determine reliability.
Coup of links
https://reneweconomy.com.au/germanys-electricity-grid-stable-amid-energy-transition-13244/ . Renew has previously been used as an authority on this site by RicDre
and this one
https://www.essentialenergy.com.au/-/media/Project/EssentialEnergy/Website/Files/Our-Network/NPR-2015-16.pdf?la=en&hash=A4AD81C8CB12631E3F12018DD18A187F4B025BB5 .
to save you looking them up
SAIFI (System Average Interruption Frequency Index) – a system index of average frequency of interruptions in power supply.
SAIDI. The System Average Interruption Duration Index calculates annual power interruption. It is compiled using the time, duration, extent, and cause of a supply disruption, providing the average duration in minutes of a supply disruption per connected end consumer. A power outage can be caused by many different reasons
19
Germany is heavily interconnected to other nations that have far lower penetration of intermittent renewable generation. In effect, the proper percentage of renewable generation should be taken across most of Europe as a whole rather than trying to look at Germany in isolation
Of course, I am sure you are aware of this but you just want to obfuscate on the issues that intermittent renewable generation causes.
90
So really if Germany is heavily interconnected with other countries, your ereally talking a trans-europe grid. This would also to a large degree obscure the impact unrelables are having on the German grid.
Cool…I win 🙂
50
On the German question.
http://www.thegwpf.com/old-warmth-in-the-sea-and-new-cold-in-the-living-room/
20
Peter, just because grid operators have always needed to maintain voltage in some sense since day 1 does not mean having a 1 GW surge at 1pm (as clouds come and go) is not a Big New Problem. It’s weasel-speak.
We didn’t need Satcom solutions for the first hundred years of the grid because voltages did not hit 253 very often. Doh.
161
I’ll refer to this:
https://www.essentialenergy.com.au/-/media/Project/EssentialEnergy/Website/Files/Our-Network/NPR-2015-16.pdf?la=en&hash=A4AD81C8CB12631E3F12018DD18A187F4B025BB5
Section 4 has the records for my claim.
212
https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1485530/german-redispatch-costs-hit-record-high
71
Analitik,
Very interesting article, and it raises an issue which I was unaware – that of redispatch power. Thanks for the post
27
The price of unreliability.
too much, too little, too erratic
That is wind and solar.
“The cost of stabilising the German grid reached a new high of €1.4 billion in 2017”
Sounds like great plan … … NOT !
71
Link Link Link
to eyes that are bright and shining
as ……….
Thanks Roy, everything links together.
41
Peter Fitzroy, open mouth change feet:
Oh, laugh out f*****g loud!
Siemens, and umm, let me quote here
Founded 171 years ago.
Seriously!
Tony.
81
sorry Tiny, I keep forgetting that this site does not do irony or sarcasm.
29
opps /Sarc off
16
I actually delve into a bit of sarcastic satire here Peter but if you’re not a parody troll then I’m enjoying one of best Cliché warmists that transcends anything I could conjure up.
61
Peter Fitzroy,
come ooooon, tell the truth.
You’ve done sarcasm here before, and each time, you have indicated it as sarcasm, except for here.
Methinks your
GetUpsponsors have given you too much license here.Tiny, sorry, Tony.101
On many sites that are greenist, anyone who actually posted contrary to the site would have been booted off it by now.
However, sceptics do allow differing opinions to be heard, such is reflective of the value of democracy that we value.
91
The SMH posted a contrarian letter, explaining simply that CO2 doesn’t cause global warming. The masthead is now owned by Channel 9 and I sense this is a slap in the face to the faithful.
71
Economic illiteracy of this level is truly alarming at any time, let alone 2019.
But I guess its a sign of the times, a period which will be identified in history by polarised politics, the great green religious fraud, fake news, out of control political correctness, internationalists trying to overrun sovereign states, marxist control of institutions, snowflake thinking.
Sound like Europe in the 1930s? – just substitute a few names.
50
The paper pretends that the objective is more renewables and maybe lower emission levels. It’s not. The objective is to ameliorate global warming, reduce sea level rise and “extreme weather events”. So, what has our stupefying investment in renewable energy and the highest electricity prices in the world achieved on those measures?
Sound of crickets…
91
Aww.. Methinks they somehow believe that sea level rise and extreme weather events will be curtailed around Australia’s local bubble.
70
heard the last couple of minutes of Alan Jones (2GB) this morning. regular pro-coal caller Jo on Rocky Hill decision by Justice Brian Preston. what’s next – ban steel? ban limestone?
Jones interrupted and ended the program with how Justice Preston is a very good man. he’s just fed up. this has gone on so long.
Ray Hadley comes on and reads from what I thought he repeatedly says is a story in The Australian – front page, and pages 4 and 5, by Jack Houghton. search results suggest it is Daily Tele. maybe both? maybe I misheard.
behind paywall:
Rocky Hill coal mine: Judge who blocked proposal had possible bias
by Jack Houghton, Exclusive, The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph can reveal Justice Brian Preston co-founded the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) NSW in 1987..
Chief judge who dismissed Rocky Hill mine appeal founded eco legal centre that helped win…
Daily Telegraph-14 hours ago
The Telegraph is not suggesting any bias on the part of Judge Preston…
11 Feb: Guardian: Hunter Valley coalmine ruling buoys other anti-mine campaigners
Bylong Valley residents hope Rocky Hill decision will sway state commission to reject proposed open-cut mine
by Lisa Cox
David Morris, the chief executive of NSW Environmental Defenders Office, which acted on behalf of Groundswell Gloucester, said there were a number of proposed mines being assessed in the state that “should now logically follow the approach outlined by Chief Judge Preston”…READ ON
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/11/hunter-valley-coalmine-ruling-buoys-other-anti-mine-campaigners
11 Feb: Spectator Australia: The Rocky Hill horror decision show
by Viv Forbes
Firstly, this decision must be appealed and overturned.
Secondly, Australia must immediately withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement…READ ON
https://www.spectator.com.au/2019/02/the-rocky-hill-horror-decision-show/
30
15 Aug 2015: SMH: ‘If you have a degraded environment, you’re impoverished’: Justice Brian Preston
Brian Preston, chief judge of NSW Land and Environment Court, joins Peter Hannam for a chat over lunch.
During one summer in his youth, Brian Preston scaled the pinnacle of the highest Mayan pyramid at Tikal and was mesmerised as the Guatemalan jungle below came alive with toucans and monkeys at sunrise.
“Just for a moment there you could almost put yourself back into the time of the high priests,” said Justice Preston, who is now the chief judge of the NSW Land and Environment Court. “To look out to the horizon, to look over the rainforest, they must have felt that power, that they were closer to their gods.”…
But long before he got the top job at the court, he helped found another key organ of environmental law: the Environmental Defender’s Office of NSW.
It was the EDO that last week won a ruling in the Federal Court that found Environment Minister Greg Hunt had not properly considered advice on two threatened species, the Yakka skink and the ornamental snake, when approving Adani’s huge $16 billion Carmichael coal mine in Queensland.
The verdict prompted Prime Minister Tony Abbott to declare that courts were being used to “sabotage” mining projects, adding that Australia “must, in principle, favour projects like this”. The NSW Bar rejected the comments…
While our lunch preceded Abbott’s outburst, Preston defended the importance of judicial independence, and later remarked that miners too often view environment checks as merely red tape.
Preston makes time for our lunch between his court duties, ongoing research for a book on environmentally sustainable development, and his work for a global effort to find ways the law can be used to curb climate change (***LINK)…
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/lunch-with-justice-brian-preston-20150812-gixcdb.html
***Updated 24 Jun 2015: SMH: Warm crimes: The bid to put ‘toxic’ carbon in the dock
By Peter Hannam
Justice Brian Preston, chief judge of the NSW Land and Environment Court, is among leading jurists exploring how domestic and international law might be used to address or remedy such “warm crimes” – and many others – caused by human activities.
He co-chairs an International Bar Association group that is developing a model legal statute which could be applied a range of jurisdictions. It builds on the IBA’s landmark report last year – Achieving Justice and Human Rights in an Era of Climate Disruption – that identified the main constraints holding back legal action…
The legal work is seen by some as a fallback plan should nations fail to sign up to ambitious cuts to carbon emissions at the Paris climate conference late this year. For Justice Preston, the aim is also “to set people thinking, to influence” the summit’s outcome…
Justice Preston, who has been active in environmental law since the 1980s, said the legal scope must be broad.
“I have an ethical belief we should be caring for all of the earth, and not just the humans,” Justice Preston said. “It’s an important thing to do it for people but there are a lot of non-human members of the Earth who nobody really stands up for.”…
“We’ll identify the hurdles and match them with the course of action, and then say what we need to do about it,” Justice Preston said, adding his group plans to complete a report on the “menu” of options by September 2016.
“We’ll be saying, ‘Countries you can do something, and here is what you can do,'” he said…
40
Sorry Pat, in my rush to post the one below I failed to read your post first.
20
Says one who advocates killing and eating animals of many kinds and their children at every opportunity. How’s the venison Judge?
Hypocrite.
31
Alan Jones know full well what another contempt of court charge could do to him. Make no mistake, accusing a Judge of bias can result in a charge of contempt of court.
213
Thanks for that advice Roy.
Much appreciated.
51
The blind monkey speaks !!
If you can’t see the complete and total sham of bias in this judgement…
Your only excuse is wilful blindness.
61
This court seems to have contempt for the people of Australia.
111
Remember the story about the Judge who blocked a new coal mine for the Gloucester NSW District?
Read all about his background at Andrew Bolt, Daily Telegraph …
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/how-could-this-green-judge-sit-on-this-case/news-story/8e873a980641cfa4b34f5b42c0e27d65
40
The pushback should start with questions in parliament, state and federal.
30
As we said there is a massive bias / conflict of interest here .
20
With unreliable energy supplies comes potential health hazards. There are the well known ones such as overheating etc, but I see another one. At some stage authorities decided that all new houses should have water collection tanks to provide water for toilet flushing. The system requires an electric pump to get the water into the cistern. If there is no power, the toilet will only flush once, but the system won’t refill the cistern, so next time the toilet is used it can’t be flushed.
50
If the tank is put on a stand and has a tap near its base, you can collect a bucket of water by gravity feed to use to flush…not very efficient!
60
Those same “authorities” would like to charge more for rates due to the “capital improvement” of a property by adding a water tank, and there’s no better way to force the issue by creating a dire need such as health and safety.
I did an online course recently that somehow added a lot of green hogwash to its program, including how beneficial it would be to collect rainwater for “grey” purposes in a factory environment. I did that, but also in my answer added the caveats such as cost for pumps and tank, redirection piping and the probability of local council greedily stealing more rates in the process, not just for the tank, but also compliance and inspection costs, illegal GST et al.
91
It’s not so different from city water use. Water and sewerage services account for a majority of the electricity use in many locations around the world. Some places approaching 40%. Now turn off the electricity for a couple of days and see what happens.
60
We have tanks for toilets and washing machine. If tanks are dry or power off we switch to mains.simple plumbing set up.
20
Rural areas don’t have mains; not here anyway. Close-by towns do have them.
30
Only reticulated dam water for toilets and garden , the rest requires a pump and tanks even the septic has a pump .
20
Australians are the Renewable crash Test Dummies – or is it Germany?
Report by Vernunftkraft, a group of German economists, energy experts, engineers and technicians, medical professionals and ecologists in Nov 2017.
The Energiewende has the goal of making Germany independent of fossil fuels in the long term. Coal, oil and gas were to be phased out, allowing drastic reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. However, these goals have not even begun to be achieved.
Carbon dioxide emissions in Germany have been rising since 2009, even though well over a hundred billion euros have been spent on the expansion of solar and wind energy over the same period. The financial obligations undertaken in the process will continue to burden taxpayers for another two decades and will end up costing German consumers a total sum of around 550 billion euros.
The report shows that wind and solar energy, which seem to promise a quick fix, are not simple alternatives to fossil fuels. Indeed, they are not even part of the answer; as their deployment becomes widespread, they become a problem in themselves and make it even more important to find sensible solutions.
Instead of delivering the promised protection of the climate, current energy policy is causing a biodiversity disaster. The protection of nature and wildlife is suffering, and populations of endangered wild animals have been decimated.
Renewables are being given perverse economic incentives, giving rise to undesirable developments that pose considerable risks to economic growth and prosperity in Germany.
Consumers pay for the costs of maintaining two parallel generation systems with a sharp increase in the number of emergency interventions.
The peak power supplied to the grid by renewables systems is increasing and at times delivers over 50% of demand. However, despite the increased capacity and the increasing peaks, the guaranteed output of all 27,000 wind turbines and the 400 million m² of PV systems remains close to zero because of their weather- dependency. This is a particular problem in the winter months, when electricity consumption is high.
Sufficient quantity of pumped storage would cost a minimum of 1 trillion euros.
The use of batteries to absorb the fluctuating output of renewables plants is far removed from any economic and physical reality.
The levy on energy consumers to fund the Energiewende, which was 0.68 cents/kWh in 2005 has risen continuously since then. By 2017, it was approaching 8 cents per kWh, a more than tenfold increase.
In the period 2000–2016, 176 billion euros were paid by electricity consumers to renewables companies, for electricity with a market value of just 5 billion euros.
The idea of meeting Germany’s energy needs with wind power and solar energy has proven to be an illusion.
The cardinal problems – weather-dependence and low energy density – are unsolved or unsolvable.
To compensate for the lack of reliability of wind and sun and to be able to actually replace conventional power generation, gigantic amounts of electricity storage would be required. The replacement of controllable power generation with a fluctuating power supply is impossible without storage and unaffordable with it.
As a result of the rapid expansion of ‘renewable energies’, electricity prices have risen steadily and further cost increases are inevitable. Germany as a desirable location for business is suffering.
The present energy policy does not serve the alleged climate protection. CO2 emissions are rising instead of falling.
The EEG should not be reformed, but abolished and not replaced. Renewable energy companies must hold their own against the competition and be subject to the same regulations that apply to other economic actors.
Vote now: The biggest renewable crash dummy country is:
a) Australia
b) Germany
c) Other – please nominate
Only 16 countries meet their commitment to Paris Agreement, new study finds. Algeria, Canada, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Indonesia, Japan, FYR Macedonia, Malaysia, Montenegro, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Samoa, Singapore and Tonga.
Oddly, another study shows only Bhutan, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, India, Philippines, Morocco and Gambia as compliant.
And the worst: Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, USA, Ukraine, Argentina, Canada, Chile, China, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, Sth Africa, Sth Korea.
60
lol:
11 Feb: ClimateChangeNews: European Commission classifies most palm oil fuels as unsustainable
Deforestation-linked stocks cannot be counted towards renewable targets, commission rules, but green group angered by small farm loophole
By Natalie Sauer
The draft legislation (LINK), which has two months to be approved by the European parliament and member states and cannot be amended, means most palm oil biofuels would not be counted toward EU renewable energy targets…
According to Brussels-based NGO Transport & Environment (LINK) (T&E), palm-oil based biodiesel releases three times more greenhouse gases than fossil fuel diesel, once land use is taken into account…
A commission spokesperson said the new criteria, which was published on Thursday, were “reasonably strict and significantly reduce the scope of eligible feedstock compared to the current situation”…
Of particular concern are exemptions for palm oil cultivated in plantations measuring less than five hectares, or produced on “unused” land, said T&E.
Palm oil giants such as Malaysia’s FELDA/FGV often base their business model on patchworks of small holdings, the NGO said. It also took issue with the classification of ‘unusued land’, which could benefit local communities by providing habitat or storing carbon.
“The commission sends an important signal by deciding that palm oil diesel is not sustainable,” said Laura Buffet, clean fuels manager at T&E. “But it gives with one hand what it takes away with the other. You can’t label palm oil diesel as unsustainable, then open a loophole as big as the current consumption levels and think people won’t notice. This decision is arbitrary, breaks the mandate the commission had gotten from ministers and the European Parliament and ignores the massive public support for ending the palm oil diesel nonsense.”…
At the time of writing, a petition circulated by Transport and Environment calling on the EU to halt subsidies to palm oil biofuel has garnered more than 630,000 signatures.
European policy makers have been under pressure from the two largest palm oil producers – Indonesia and Malaysia – which have threatened the block with trade retaliation and challenge through the World Trade Organisation.
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/02/11/european-commission-classifies-palm-oil-fuels-unsustainable/
10
some excerpts found at Press reader under headline –
Telegraph – Sky-high bills and flailing upstarts … why is it so difficult to topple the Big Six energy suppliers?
Political intervention was supposed to fix the market, not make things worse for hard-pressed households, reports Jillian Ambrose
—
note the cheek of Dieter Helm! as for “unintended consequences” – the CAGW future is full of them:
10 Feb: UK Telegraph: The making of a broken market – how did Britain get home energy so wrong?
By Jillian Ambrose
Britain’s energy industry is about to blow a fuse. At a stroke, 15m homes are facing one of the steepest hikes to energy bills in years. Households will be faced with some of the highest energy bills ever seen in the UK. It is far from the first price hike in a market overrun by rising costs, but it is the first that cannot be blamed on energy company greed…
It is perhaps easier to criticise energy companies for “unjustified” price hikes, and “rip-off” tariffs than it is to take charge of a £1.7bn blow to hip pockets…
Already billions of pounds have been wiped from shareholder portfolios. Thousands of job losses are expected to follow. Meanwhile, the influx of financially unstable energy upstarts means hundreds of thousands of homes run the risk that their supplier may join the 10 failures already recorded over the last year. This is not the energy market Whitehall had hoped to create.
By 2013 the energy regulator had undertaken 18 reviews of the energy market as concerns over the rise of energy prices and profits rose up the political agenda…
***There is no way around the cost of cleaning up a market run on fossil fuel in a low carbon world. And so, the task of protecting customers is passed from ministers to the market…
The largest company collapse could emerge within weeks, this time due to a lack of regulation. Utilitywise was one of the industry’s first major energy brokers and amassed a market value of more than £300m. When its shares were suspended last week the firm was worth just £1.4m and managers admitted they could not guarantee pay for their 3,000 staff in the North East beyond this month…
Industry experts predict more failures and sweeping consolidation. In response, Ofgem will toughen up its rules to ensure that only financially robust companies can provide homes with this essential service. In many ways this comes as too little, too late for the overall health of the market.
“There are currently more companies seeking to exit the domestic retail energy market than enter it, given the low returns available and political and regulatory risks involved,” says Virley…
The price cap may be the market’s most obvious policy fracture, but the fault lines run through to the core of plans to reshape the market, according to Dieter Helm, a government adviser and academic.
***The entanglement of policy approaches pushing plans from renewable energy to smart meters has created a web of costs in which energy bill payers are caught, he says.
“They interact, overlap and produce a myriad of ***unintended consequences. They drive up costs and prices. We all pay for this mass of interventions. There is no escape from the consequences of the way energy policy has been built up, sticking plaster by sticking plaster,” Helm says. “Whatever the political spin at the time, the fact is that all these costs have to be paid for. This is all part of what you are paying for and why your electricity bill keeps going up.”…
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/02/10/making-broken-market-did-britain-get-home-energy-wrong/
30
behind paywall:
Taiwan offshore wind saga rattles global investors
Financial Times – 1 day ago
However, Taiwan’s fledgling offshore wind market is in a state of flux with international investors spooked after the government cut by nearly 6 per cent the price it would pay for the power source. The change, announced in November and only partially unwound on January 30, was a blow to international developers, engineers and banks that had flocked to Taiwan over the past two years to t ake part in what promised to be one of the world’s fastest growing offshore wind markets, projected to bring in $30bn of investment to the country by 2025.
Danish energy company Orsted, which was weeks away from approving an investment decision for a $5.4bn offshore wind farm, on January 31 warned investors it was reassessing the project’s viability. It is in talks with scores of its suppliers, which include Spanish turbine giant Siemens Gamesa, to rehash contracts to make sure it can still make money under the new pricing structure…
—
too bad what the people want. the CAGW RE mob – so beloved by Greens/NGOs/FakeNewsMSM – have plenty of muscle to flex:
12 Feb: SouthChinaMorningPost: Will trimmed subsidy roll back knock the wind out of Taiwan’s offshore turbine sector?
•Taipei forced into climb down from aggressive cuts after industry players voice concerns
•Taiwan still the most attractive market in Asia for western developers, but they will give Japan and China a harder look, says consultant
by Eric Ng
A retrospective reduction in subsidies for offshore wind power development by Taiwan could take the wind out of international developers’ sails, and erode some of the sector’s attractiveness relative to Japan, mainland China and South Korea as an investment destination.
The Taiwan government had proposed an aggressive cutback in subsidies for offshore wind power projects in November 2018, after the ruling Democratic Progressive Party suffered a major election setback at the hands of the opposition Kuomintang Party, which has criticised offshore wind subsidies previously given as too generous. It initially proposed a 12.7 per cent cut in tariffs and the restriction of subsidies to output within 3,600 hours of operation in a year.
But it was forced into a climb down after affected industry players voiced their concerns. On January 30, when the reduced subsidies were announced, the cut in tariffs was trimmed to 5.7 per cent and the cap on subsidies was replaced with a less punitive limit of 4,200 hours.
The subsidy cutback, and related tariff mechanism changes also announced last month could increase policy risks attached to infrastructure investment, which will raise financing costs, said industry watchers.
“Everyone expects subsidies to fall over time … but having retrospective changes is a big shock that hits both confidence and the cost of debt, which will be as big a deal as power revenue reduction,” David Sanders, a managing director at FTI Consulting’s global clean energy practice, said in an interview. His team advises European and Asian clients.
And to make the situation worse, international developers that won tendered project development rights in April 2018, were unable to benefit from higher tariffs last year because the government failed to issue their permits by January 2, 2019, a prerequisite for the signing of power sale and project financing agreements…
Orsted said it would renegotiate with suppliers and see if any adverse impact from the tariff cut and subsidy cap could be mitigated so that its projects were still investible…
“The Taiwanese government needs to be very careful with its approach to supporting infrastructure investment, or regulated assets, with the international investment community,” (James Knight, a partner at renewable energy financial consultancy Augusta & Co) said…
A retrospective cut by the Spanish government in solar power subsidies in 2010 dented the appetite of international investors for years, and was a case in point that Taipei should heed, he added…
Qiao Liming, the China director of Global Wind Energy Council, which represents equipment manufacturers, project developers, suppliers and financiers from more than 80 countries, said she was cautiously optimistic about Taiwan’s offshore wind sector following Taipei’s climb down…
The mainland China market has been dominated by state-backed energy giants and is difficult for foreign developers to break into, said Sanders (FTI Consulting)…
East Asia will need about US$37 billion in investments in the next five years to meet the nascent industry’s growth, according to Wood Mackenzie.
https://www.scmp.com/business/article/2185679/will-trimmed-subsidy-roll-back-knock-wind-out-taiwans-offshore-turbine?edition=international
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CHEIFIO’S MUSINGS
ThIS is a blog site I visit regularly. He posts informed and intelligent postings about a wide range of topics INCLUDING ‘Global warming’ and such..
For the past few days he has been gradually accumulating and then charting all the temperature recordings he can find since the 1860’s. for the planet
WHY ?
1: To see if where the dat comes from is representative of the entire globe.
Answer : it isn’t. Huge areas of the planet are poorly represented in the data including the oceans, the deserts, the Arctic and Antarctic etc.
2 : TO SEE IF THIS WHOLE MASS OF DATA ( such as it is ) SHOWS ANY GLOBAL WARMING !
And guess what : ON HIS WORK THERE IS NONE !
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/02/11/ghcnv3-3-by-continent-scatter-graphs/#comment-107668
Cheifio also did a post specifically about Australian BOM temperature records since the 1860’s as well
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/02/10/an-intriguing-look-at-temperatures-in-australia/
And guess what no major warming shows up in that either.
So what is this whole ‘decarbonisation’ of the Australian economy effort all about ?
It’s bloody wild goose chase !
And an expensive one at that !
Bugger !
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Thanks for posting those links Bill.
30
Australia is a test site for the destruction of Western Civilisation via Agenda 21/2030 because it is large enough to be noticeable in world affairs but not too large to dominate world affairs.
It is an easy target due to
a) a mostly apathetic and dumbed-down (by Cultural Marxism) population and
b) is rich enough with a large amount of exportable natural resources that it can sustain huge amounts of economic damage due to both unreliable “renewables” plus the mass importation of some of the world’s most uneducated, unassimilable, unemployable and violent people;
that no one will notice the economic damage until it is too late (the huge wealth will act as a buffer).
41
CHEIFIO’S MUSINGS
ThIS is a blog site I visit regularly. He posts informed and intelligent postings about a wide range of topics INCLUDING ‘Global warming’ and such..
For the past few days he has been gradually accumulating and then charting all the temperature recordings he can find since the 1860’s. for the planet
WHY ?
1: To see if where the data comes from is representative of the entire globe.
Answer : it isn’t. Huge areas of the planet are poorly represented in the data including the oceans, the deserts, the Arctic and Antarctic etc.
2 : TO SEE IF THIS WHOLE MASS OF DATA ( such as it is ) SHOWS ANY GLOBAL WARMING !
And guess what : ON HIS WORK THERE IS NONE !
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/02/11/ghcnv3-3-by-continent-scatter-graphs/#comment-107668
Cheifio also did a post specifically about Australian BOM temperature records since the 1860’s as well
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/02/10/an-intriguing-look-at-temperatures-in-australia/
And guess what no major warming shows up in that either.
So what is this whole ‘decarbonisation’ of the Australian economy effort all about ?
It’s bloody wild goose chase !
And an expensive one at that !
Bugger !
30
Bill in Oz asks –
So what is this whole ‘decarbonisation’ of the Australian economy effort all about?
it’s about the likes of ex-BBC Richard Black’s ECIU and the rest of the CAGW mob, including their FakeNewsMSM friends:
behind paywall – if only more costs had been levied on builders/home buyers:
11 Feb: BusinessGreen: Study: Axing of Zero Carbon Home standard costing households £200 a year
by Business Green staff
ECIU think tank calculates that 2015 decision to scrap Zero Carbon Standard has added more than £200 a year to energy bills for occupants of new build houses.
It has long been regarded as one of the most damaging environmental policy decisions taken by the Cameron government, but now a new analysis has detailed how it is also leading to higher living costs for thousands of households across England…
11 Feb: ECIU: Leaky new build houses put £200 on energy bills
Former Chancellor George Osborne’s 2015 decision to scrap the Zero Carbon Homes policy is costing occupants of new-build homes more than £200 per year on their energy bills, finds new analysis from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) (LINK).
For comparison, the £200 per year saving that would have resulted from the Zero Carbon Homes policy is nearly three times the amount sought by the Government’s recently-introduced energy price cap.
Since 2015, owners of new-build homes in England have collectively paid more than £120 million in additional energy costs – a figure that will rise to over £2 billion by 2020 as more and more new dwellings are occupied
The Zero Carbon Homes policy was due to come into effect in 2016 after nine years of discussions with housebuilders and other stakeholders, but Treasury cancelled it six months before implementation. A poll of MPs conducted last year for ECIU by YouGov (LINK) showed that more than half (55%) support re-introduction of Zero Carbon Homes, with only 18% opposed…
Commenting, Paula Higgins, Chief Executive of the Homeowners Alliance said: “One of the most regular concerns that people raise with us is energy bills. Britain’s leaky homes mean that people can struggle to manage their bills while keeping their homes comfortable and warm.
“For the ***less well off, this can have a real impact, with the threat of fuel poverty and very real health risks.
“One of our long-running campaigns is for better new-build homes; low standards, thin walls and inadequate heating are problems that we see time and again. Homes should be built to the highest standards to be fit for this and future generations; Government and industry need to recognise that it’s in everyone’s interest to get this right.” ..ETC
https://eciu.net/press-releases/2019/leaky-new-build-houses-put-200-on-energy-bills
***as if the less well off would be living in the new build homes!
ECIU: All of our funding comes from philanthropic foundations. We gratefully acknowledge support from the European Climate Foundation, the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, the Oak Foundation, the Climate Change Collaboration and, previously, the Tellus Mater Foundation. During 2018, we received £132,000 from ECF, £88,000 from Grantham, £116,000 from Oak, and £10,000 from the Climate Change Collaboration.
ECIU Team includes:
ex-BBC Richard Black, Director; ex-E3G Sepi Golzari-Munro, Deputy Director (Strategy); ex-WWF George Smeeton, Head of Communications ETC
ECIU Advisory Board includes:
Prof Michael Grubb; ex-BBC Robin Lustig; Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti, Former Commander, UK Maritime Forces; Lord Oxburgh of Liverpool; Sir Crispin Tickell, Former Ambassador to the United Nations; Lord Turner of Ecchinswell ETC
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TOTALLY UNBELIEVABLE POLL, THEREFORE BEING CARRIED BY:
WaPo, Time, VOA, Fortune, Deutsche Welle, ETC:
11 Feb: Reuters: Climate change seen as top threat, but U.S. power a growing worry – poll
by Andrea Shalal
BERLIN: Climate change is the top security concern in a poll conducted by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre, followed by Islamist terrorism and cyber attacks while respondents in a growing number of countries worried about the power and influence of the United States…
PIC: FILE PHOTO: Vapor is released into the sky at a refinery in Wilmington, California March 24, 2012. REUTERS/Bret Hartman
In 13 of 26 countries, people listed climate change as the top global threat, with the Islamic State militant group topping the list in eight and cyber attacks in four, the ***non-profit, ***non-partisan Pew Research Centre said in its report.
Worries about climate change have increased sharply since 2013, with double-digit percentage point increases seen in countries including the United States, Mexico, France, Britain, South Africa and Kenya, according to the poll of 27,612 people conducted between May and August, 2018…
The largest shift in sentiment centred on the United States, it said, with a median of 45 percent of people naming U.S. power and influence as a threat in 2018, up from 25 percent in 2013, when Barack Obama was U.S. president…
In Mexico, where those concerns have spiked since the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, the percentage jumped to 64 percent, the poll showed…
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-security/climate-change-seen-as-top-threat-but-us-power-a-growing-worry-poll-idUSKCN1PZ0QU
WaPo is insane, read all via Zimbabwe Mail!
11 Feb: Zimbabwe Mail: Why much of the world now feels more threatened by the US than by China, Russia
by Rick Noack, Washington Post
Far more people around the world now believe that their countries are threatened by US power and influence under President Donald Trump than they are by the other global heavyweights, Russia or China, according to a new Pew Research Centre survey, released on Sunday…
The sudden rise of the United States as a perceived major threat in other countries likely comes down to a number of different factors. The most prominent one is Trump…
Despite Trump’s summit with Kim Jong Un, a vast majority of people in South Korea and Japan said U.S. power and influence were perilous…
The survey comes at a time when Trump also appears to be following through on his promises to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan, effectively disengaging from international conflicts, despite warnings by allies that the time may not be right…
Trump may be able to find some comfort in the fact that the United States is actually not considered the world’s biggest threat by the citizens of the 26 polled nations. Instead, climate change came out on top last year, followed by the Islamic State group…
Trump’s perception of global threats doesn’t appear to be exactly aligned with that view of the world, however. One of the president’s early moves was to withdraw from the Paris climate accord which aimed to lower the emissions most believe are behind climate change…
https://www.thezimbabwemail.com/world-news/why-the-world-now-feels-more-threatened-by-us-than-by-china-russia/
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More hemogenised temp adjustments from the BOM, leading to much higher temps across Australia.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/02/11/another-bureau-rewrite-warms-australias-climate-history/
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Neville
My red thumb is NOT directed at you. It is directed at the dopey bloody ‘scientists ‘ ( ? ) in BOM who are doing this crap.
The solution is to sack all the idiots.
Bill
41
Libs lose the vote on the floor , lil Bill with help from the greens and greener independents have voted to weaken Border protection .
Only question now is will the floodgates open straight away or will the people smugglers wait till after the election .
61
If the boats start immediately, the government needs to start publicising how many the border patrol turn back, how many people are on each boat, etc. We need government controlled cameras on every patrol vessel so voters can see what is going on. The general public also need to be kept up to date about how quick all the remaining economic “refugees” on Manus and Nauru develope life threatening diseases. The government needs to stop fluffing about like an old mole at a christening and start laying the boot in. This is effing ridiculous.
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I hope the smugglers get a head of steam up well before the election so voters can see the effects before they vote.
70
If the govt was smart they’d let a few through
21
ACORN adjustment, its warmer than we thought.
‘That’s a 23% increase in the warming rate of Australia’s mean temperature since 1910 (28.9% for max and 19.3% for min). Compared to the per decade increase in unhomogenised Australian Water Availability Project (RAW) temperatures, it’s a 54% increase.
‘The bureau has been claiming for several years that Australia’s mean temperature has risen by 1C since 1910, and the 23% increase per decade will presumably mean it’s risen by about 1.3C. Don’t be surprised to see a slight increase in the southern hemisphere’s historic land area temperature trend.’
wuwt
61
el gordo
Following info from another poster here I got a copy of “The Weather Watchers” – the book of the BOM’s first 100 years.
Can’t be much demand as the library system got it pretty quickly.
By their progress to Acorn 2 the next volume might well be called (IMO)
“The Weather Makers”
51
AOC changing the world!
11 Feb:The Green New Deal offers radical environmental and economic change
The proposal is incredibly ambitious, both on climate change and with its reimagining of society
by Ann Pettifor
(Ann Pettifor is director of Prime: Policy Research in Macroeconomics and a fellow of the New Economics Foundation)
The revival of the Green New Deal framework (first developed in a report published in 2008) and popularized by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Justice Democrats in the US, is a huge advance for green campaigners and, hopefully, for our threatened species. That is because it has a single radical ask: an ecological and economic transformation of the current system to end our addiction to fossil fuels and endless consumption of the earth’s finite assets.
The Green New Deal demands major structural (governmental and inter-governmental) changes (not just behavioural change) in our approach to the ecosystem. In addition, and as in the 1930s, such change to be driven by radical structural transformation of the finance sector, and the economy. It was developed on the understanding that finance, the economy and the ecosystem are all tightly bound together. Protecting and restoring the ecosystem to balance cannot be tackled effectively without transformation of the other sectors. Financing the transformation of the economy away from its dependence on fossil fuels cannot be achieved without a transformation of the finance sector…READ ON
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/11/the-green-new-deal-offers-radical-environmental-and-economic-change
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behind paywall:
12 Feb: UK Times: ‘Perfect storm’ of obstacles ahead for renewable energy
by Mark McLaughlin
Renewable energy in Scotland is facing multiple threats including the end of subsidies, rising planning fees and a shortage of viable new technologies.
There is a “perfect storm” of challenges approaching, according to Scottish Renewables, which represents the green energy industry
UK government feed-in tariffs, which support small-scale and household generators such as solar panels or wind turbines, will come to an end next month. The Scottish government will also increase fees for planning applications, up to a maximum of £280,000 for the largest projects.
Scottish ministers were forced to scale back the reform, which would have led to fees increasing tenfold, after an industry backlash. Paul Wheelhouse, Scottish energy secretary, said that the scaled-back plan could still lead to “marginal” projects being axed.
The last of the wind farms approved in 2015, when the Conservative government announced that onshore wind would no longer be eligible for subsidies, is due to be completed this summer. Scottish Renewables said this would have “enormous implications” for the supply chain, which would have to find new ways to make money…
Ageing wind farms are reaching the end of their operational life with no support for replacement. About 10 per cent of Scotland’s large wind farms will have reached 20 years of life by 2025, and will probably be lined up for decommissioning, according to Scottish Renewables. This will rise to about a third of onshore wind farms by 2030…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/scotland/perfect-storm-of-obstacles-ahead-for-renewable-energy-8n7v0pt92
30
AOC has competition – make way for Leo…and Sven Teske pops up again:
5 Feb: CatholicClimateMovement: World can get on the 1.5 C path for about a quarter of the cost of current fossil fuel subsidies
The world can meet the Paris climate targets at about a quarter of the cost of current subsidies for fossil fuels, according to a new climate study (LINK) funded by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.
The study, entitled Achieving the Paris Climate Agreement, is the culmination of a two-year scientific collaboration with 17 leading scientists at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), two institutes at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), and the University of Melbourne’s Climate & Energy College…
It was funded by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation and released by the scientific publisher Springer Nature. The model produced by the authors, called One Earth, offers a roadmap for surpassing the targets set by the 2016 Paris Climate Agreement.
According to Karl Burkart, Director of Innovation at the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, the One Earth climate model “is groundbreaking in that it shows the 1.5°C can be achieved through a rapid transition to 100% renewables by 2050, alongside land restoration efforts on every continent that increase the resilience of natural ecosystems and help to ensure greater food security.”
Lead author and editor Dr. Sven Teske, Research Director of the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), said, “Scientists cannot fully predict the future, but advanced modeling allows us to map the best scenarios for creating a global energy system fit for the 21st century. And with momentum around the Paris Agreement lagging, it’s crucial that decisionmakers around the world can see that we can, in fact, meet global energy demand at a lower cost with clean renewables.”
The scientists at UTS created a sophisticated computer model of the world’s electrical grids to date, writes Burkart, “with 10 regional and 72 sub-regional energy grids modeled in hourly increments to the year 2050 along with a comprehensive assessment of available renewable resources like wind and solar, minerals required for manufacturing of components, and configurations for meeting projected energy demand and storage most efficiently for all sectors over the next 30 years.”
The result shows that “not only is it possible to switch to 100% renewables for all energy uses, but it will cost no more to operate than today’s energy system…
The proposed energy transition outlined in the One Earth climate model will require an investment globally of approximately $1.7 trillion per year, according to the study…
https://catholicclimatemovement.global/world-can-get-on-the-1-5-c-path-for-about-a-quarter-of-the-cost-of-current-fossil-fuel-subsidies/
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Thanks Pat; “advanced modelling” raised a chuckle.
40
Yes. Bizarre stuff.
Coming from UTS.
How far we have fallen.
21
it’s getting even crazier than we imagined:
12 Feb: Guardian: Climate and economic risks ‘threaten 2008-style systemic collapse’
Environmental and social problems could interact in global breakdown, report says
by Jonathan Watts
“A new, highly complex and destabilised ‘domain of risk’ is emerging – which includes the risk of the collapse of key social and economic systems, at local and potentially even global levels,” warns the paper from the Institute for Public Policy Research. “This new risk domain affects virtually all areas of policy and politics, and it is doubtful that societies around the world are adequately prepared to manage this risk.”…
The new paper – This is a Crisis: Facing up to the Age of Environmental Breakdown – is a meta-study of dozens of academic papers, government documents and NGO reports compiled by IPPR, a leftwing thinktank that is considered an influence on Labour policy…
The IPPR report, which launches a wider 18-month project on this topic, urges policymakers to grapple with these risks as a priority, to accelerate the restoration of natural systems, and to push harder on the “green new deal” transition towards renewable energy. In particular, it says, “the younger generations will need help in finding the energy and a sense of control that often eludes them as they begin to realise the enormity of inheriting a rapidly destabilising world”…
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/12/climate-and-economic-risks-threaten-2008-style-systemic-collapse
20
““the younger generations will need help in finding the energy… “
Yes, that will obviously be a problem under the “Green Deal”
42
Ah, Socialism. Working it’s magic once again.
I can see mass graves… as far as the eye can see. A vision of the future.
72
In our area of the SW of WA bores run intermittently. To manage that we use a controller which reacts to the power factor (PF) of the pump motor: when the PF drops below a set level this is taken to mean “no more water”, the pump is turned off, and the whole thing tries again later when there should be water again. Our business has sold 30+ of these units and all are working fine. Except for 4 of them (mine included) in an area where a few new homes have sprung up with solar panels on the roof. The voltage fluctuations are creating havoc, with the equipment shutting down when voltage is high and the PF is thus lower, even though there’s plenty of water. But if I set the PF lower still then on a low voltage day the damn thing does not turn off and we’re running the pump dry. On the weekend my unit indicated that it had retried 5 times in succession and the PF was below threshold every time so it called a halt to proceedings. That was a very sunny day…
I’m now wondering if a UPS would help – not for power cuts but to stabilise the voltage so things work as intended. No idea what this is doing to my other appliances, they don’t tell me until they die…
90
Interesting to get some real feedback on the issues with having rooftop solar in the grid.
This would be glossed over in some way by the “renewables” scientists.
KK
41
Damn….throwing away a perfectly good civilization / white boy like that….
Funny movie…. “Better Off Dead”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6srI0EVwTUE
20
Australian seem intent on having their nation go on a perpetual walkabout. Makes sense, really, since without modern power generation facilities, you will revert to subsistence hunting and gathering. This means the Nirvana of the New Green Deal of elimination of inefficient transportation, housing, food, water, clothing — you know, the things of life. This, in turn, will lead to the latest version of the Greens Final Solution – the elimination of homo from the planet. Darwin it seems wins again.
51
I was going to pedantically nitpick your ungrammatical heading which should read “any other country” but then I looked again at the chart and yes, Australia is faster than itself so the absurdity gets a pass this time.
20
Australia is not alone in madness. I figured out the US Green New Dealers “business model.” It makes what they say a lot clearer (and even crazier):
The Green New Dealers want 100 trillion dollars!
http://www.cfact.org/2019/02/12/the-green-new-dealers-want-100-trillion-dollars/
The beginning: “People keep asking what the Green New Deal will cost, but that is the wrong question. The question is how much do they want? It turns out the New Dealers are pretty clear about the answer around $100 trillion over ten years. They are working to a very big budget. What gets done depends on the money, not vice versa.
Representative Ocasio-Cortez (who has a degree in economics) and her crew have a clear idea of where the money for the Green New Deal is going to come from and roughly how much they want. As with WW2, the Green New Deal will simply consume about half of American GDP. I am not making this up. That WW2 was a time of great sacrifice and hardship, as a direct result of this dramatic mobilization, does not matter to these folks. War is war, right?
Here it is in its clearest form: “The resolution describes the 10-year plan to transform every sector of our economy to remove GHH and pollution. It says it does this through huge investment in renewables at WW2 scale (which was 40-60% GDP investments).” This recent quote is from Representative Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti.
If you start with a budget of 40-60% of US GDP you can think really big, and the Green New Dealers have done just that. GDP is running around $20 trillion a year, or $200 trillion in ten years. Taking 40-60% of that is $80-120 trillion, so let’s call it an even $100 trillion to finance the Green New Deal dream.
The ways and means of raising this stupendous sum of $100 trillion are also clear in their minds. It will be done the same way WW2 was done, however that was. It is obvious to them that we can do this, because we have done it before. The specifics do not matter to the Plan. The Government can work them out.”
There is a lot more in the article.
Let’s ask the 70+ House and Senate co-sponsors of the Green New Deal Resolution if they endorse this $100 trillion goal. I bet not, for most of them.
71
Thing is, David, that as soon as they start down that road the actual yearly GDP will drop like a stone.
And they will be wanting nearly all of the GDP.
Where are all the materials for this idiocy coming from anyway?
Someone is going to have to manufacture them.
61
The Democrats in the US like our ALP+Greens counterparts are doing their best to destroy our respective nations. Let’s see who wins the race to the bottom of the abyss. The next federal election will be key.
How to Destroy Civilization by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
41
The Chinese may well be laughing at us as the article states. I bet they are also salivating over the thought of picking up the pieces that will be left, by the left.
10
[…] of the week. Jo Nova’s commentary on Australia’s dash to disaster, leading the world in the Green Energy race (to the […]
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MY Story
In 1981 at Caringbah in Southern Sydney, I installed a solar roof top hot water system connected to an off peak electrical hot water unit installed in the ceiling of my house. I installed a 2″ x 6 foot copper pipe, into the flue of my living room wood heater, connecting this to the hot water tank above. . In winter time we had hot water heated by the room heater, and solar panel heated water at all other times, and a backup by off peak electricity element if we had extra visitors and were afraid of not enough hot water. ( a few cents cost for the whole year.)
Everything worked fine, but the main point I want to make is that I had my own fun WITH MY OWN MONEY, no fuzzy feeling about “Saving the planet”, and no government subsidising money paid by any other people.
Please view the Documentary below that will explain the whole Global Warming Sham.
“THE GREAT GLOBAL WARMING SWINDLE – FULL DOCUMENTARY HD” U TUBE
Here are three more very good videos on U Tube you must view.
1. Our Last Year of Freedom Christopher Monckton’s Warning
2. Professor Bob Carter on Global Warming Science.
3. Dr Fred Goldberg Squashes Climate Alarmism
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[…] Of course, the new cost is zero if you ignore the subsidies, extra transmission lines, larger generation footprint, rising electrical bills, blackouts, emergency demand management, damage from surging voltages, wasted capital expenditures, diesel backup, and the burden unreliable generation dumps on the entire grid. Bottom line in Oz is that coal gave the nation 30 years of falling electrical prices and renewables wiped all those gains out. While renewables save on fuel, it wastes infrastructure, land, labor and resources. http://joannenova.com.au/2019/02/australians-destroying-their-grid-faster-than-any-country-on-earth/ […]
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