In a genius move, Victoria, which has “soaring” electricity prices, now announces plan to copy South Australia where people pay more for electricity than anywhere:
The Andrews government this morning unveiled a new renewable energy target with a commitment to power up to 25 per cent of the state from renewables by 2020 and 40 per cent by 2025.
The government has backed the construction of two large scale solar farms in regional Victoria which will provide another 140MW to the state’s supply, and has set up a reverse energy auction system to bring forward an additional 650MW to the state’s supply.
Meanwhile the trams will run on sunshine.
Legislation creates savings, how?
Victorian households will allegedly each save around $30 annually on power bills under the new plan, while medium sized businesses have been projected to save up to $2400 a year under the legislation which will be introduced to parliament today.
It’s almost like Victoria plans to make electricity from legislation (hey, it’s renewable, and will never run out). By making electricity shockingly expensive, Government ministers can talk of “savings”, even though prices will be far higher than the average price of electricity for the last twenty years.
Do the maths. A few months ago, a major Victorian coal generator shut down. Hazelwood provided 1,600 megawatts, 22% of the state’s electricity at $30/MWhr. South Australia just signed a deal for solar power averaging a price of $70-plus-per-megawatt-hour (plus RET scheme, government loans, and who knows what other subsidies).
This is Soviet-style electricity management:
The plan would deliver an increase to the state’s energy supply because it gives investors the certainty they need commit to large-scale renewable energy projects, according to Energy and Climate Change Minister Lily D’Ambrosio.
The word certainty is code for guaranteed profits from forced customers who are not permitted to buy the cheaper alternative.
Strangely coal investors don’t seem to need “certainty” from legislation (governments and investors are building 1600 new plants in 62 countries, but not one in Australia.) Coal power investors get certainty by selling a product that they know freely consenting adults will always want to buy. One version of certainty is driven by the free market, the other by government dictat.
The cumulative effect of the renewable energy target is could cut Victorian greenhouse gas emissions by up to 16 per cent by 2034-2035, in what is the first time a renewable energy target has been enshrined in legislation in the country.
“Enshrined”?
Meanwhile the tariff paid to solar rooftop owners will rise from 5 – 7c per kilowatt hour up to 11c, not because they provide something the state needs, but because other government rules have made electricity more expensive all round. (It takes a lot of bureaucracy to push prices this far above the free market. This spike is an achievement of the Australian Energy Market Commission, the Australian Energy Regulator, the Australian Energy Market Operator and the Clean Energy Regulator. )
Bear in mind that some people are still getting 60c/Kwhr for their solar panels, and will until 2024. The Minister says: “We promised a fairer system and that’s exactly what we have delivered,” Ms D’Ambrosio said.
Meanwhile solar rooftop owners feel ripped off because they have to pay 30c per KWh themselves, but will only get paid a third of that. They might feel less miffed if someone reminded them that they provide an unreliable surplus product at the wrong time of day, yet get paid at three times the rate Hazelwood could have supplied that electricity for. Somehow I don’t think the Andrews government will mention this.
The free market is dead in Australian electricity.
h/t Pat, TdeF, Mark M.
The ALP has made a deal with the Greens to retain the seat of Northcote. This has enabled a magic pudding policy to become law.
Lily D’Ambrosio floats above the covers.
The amazing thing is that they have screwed their own labour base with higher power prices in order to retain inner suburban seats.
351
Hmm…i recall a scene from the ( original ) “Ghostbusters” movie when a demon possessed woman was floating above the covers of her bed…..now why would such a thing come to mind?
It seems to be a politcal unholy alliance…
What also struck me is how little the average bod knows about all this – we here have a lot of knowledge as we study this stuff each day. Your average punter has NO idea of solar vs coal and how it works, all the know is some waffle they ignore from the pollies and ther power bills go up.
We need to EDUCATE the average mug punters, as the reason these snakes get away with stuff is the average punter has no true undertsanding at a deeper level, especially how the market has been completely fixed ( which is illegal unless a gummint does it of course…)
50
If the Libs weren’t such a bunch of wimps, they would be shouting this from the rooftops, loudly.
Talk about dumb and dumber!
70
Its called collusion – the globalists own both parties, so the same agenda keeps moving forward no matter who you vote for.
The definition of insanity is doing the same stuff over and over ( voting for either party ) and expecting a different result…..
Australia needs a real electoral slap delivered to the globalists by forcing both parties from power by voting for neither…..
30
the Melbourne trams will be running on sunshine
I watched Ms Ambrosio [the Minister for something or other] on the evening news making this amazing pronouncement. After I had stopped laughing I again realised just how far down the gurgler my State had gone. Sinking from a centre of manufacturing industry to a barren industrial wasteland under Ayatollah Andrews and his predecessors. I have written to my local State pollie, one of the Ayatollah’s minions, requesting he provide a breakdown of the benefit/cost analysis of this proposal. I am not expecting a reply unless it is one of those “Thank you for your letter. The matter will be addressed and we will get back to you”.
Unfortunately the opposition is not much bloody better.
I hereby retract all those derogatory remarks I made about Jay Weatherwall on the basis that it could never happen here in the Democratic Socialist Caliphate of Victoriastan. If you are looking for me I will be down in my workshop trying to figure out how to convert all my bench tools to steam power.
Thank you to all those knowledgeable people commenting on this site who have provided me with the arguments to use against the mad climate mullahs.
390
Just as a matter of interest who the hell is the opposition leader in Victoriastan?
Our Glorious leader was a born and bred local but now as welcome as a dose of the clap .
140
The glorious Victoriastan opposition leader is a insignificant little fella whose only interest is in real-estate and development. Voting for him is no solution. He has been known to hang around with undesirables, possibly related to his interest in speculation.
120
Who cares anymore? Both major parties at all levels have lost it completely. Time for a major change – but I’m not going to hold my breath. I do understand most people are not going to commit to such a necessary change at the ballot box for a variety of reasons, the most common one being pure ignorance. The nation will first have to suffer major economic and social disasters before enough people wake up.
110
Hazelwood closed down, and now Victoria has only 10 Units generating coal fired power, and that’s two units at Loy Yang B, four Units at Loy Yang A, and four Units at Yallourn W.
So, now, instead of being able to follow the load, they are running at almost maximum power generation all the time they are running.
They are delivering an average power across the day of 4600MW to 4800MW.
So now, here we have two wonderful new Solar power plants announced, amounting to a Nameplate of 140MW.
This may (or even may not) surprise you.
Those two solar plants will deliver around 230,000MWH of power to the Victorian Grid over ONE WHOLE YEAR.
That’s the same power delivered by those ten coal fired Units in, umm ….. 50 HOURS, two days and two hours.
Wow!
That’ll sure ease up the power stress on Victoria, and make the power sooooo much cheaper.
Tony.
793
You Aussies are like a warning label to the rest of the world, ‘don’t try this at home’ … hopefully your total failure happens before the idiots that run our nation decide to jump down this rabbit hole with you. Whenever government gets into science, it’s as if a new form of stupid has entered the marketplace. God bless Australia, and please, please, fail as quickly as possible so we can put this Rosemary’s baby where it belongs.
310
I think the phrase is crash test dummies Bill. All done in glorious isolation so it should be over quickly. I see growth in consumer grade home generators.
70
Bill, we have actual evil running the show, certainly there is a form of evil intent – why else would you deliberately endanger a whole country despite knowing clearly what woudl happen.
We have what you would have had had Hellary gotten in…..
RIP Oz – killed by Communism, and apathetic Australians to dumb to understand.
120
Smaller populations, going driverless and carb-neutral in agile mini-cities. The birth of Davos
ManThing at Year Zero. (Exceptions apply for dear leaders and dear crony class. Will inform daily by app whether war is with Eastasia or Eurasia.)Absolutely everything taken into account except human nature, free speech, privacy, aspiration, individuality…and reality in general.
20
Dangerous experiments should be conducted in places where they are liable to cause least damage. Jay Weatherill buggered SA and now Victoria’s goons are trying to resurrect the cadaver.
20
They are now aiming to shut Loy Yang B.
20
Meanwhile the Federal government is concerned about terrorism. Go figure! If the would-be terrorists had any brains, they’d be tossing bicycle chains over the fences at sub-stations around dusk. Be glad you aren’t relying on nuke power if this occurred.
01
I totally laughed when I heard that it will save consumers $30/year! Does Andrews seriously think that people will fall on their knees and thank him for a $30/year savings on electricity bills?
Whenever government (especially Labour/Greens) announce a ‘savings’, you can guarantee that there’s going to be anything but savings. What on earth are these people smoking?
442
Politicians are now technically, scientifically and financially incompetent.
All we have are dumb front men people who are advised by idiots who only care about what the media says and polls.
They are not leaders, they are incompetent self serving front men for what ever is on the media agenda (who merely push there own agendas for crisis headlines to sell papers) and/or lobbyist who now have manipulated political parties and media for their own gains.
Is this why Donald Trump and Brexit occurred as the middle class wakes up and starts to rebel.
Its getting close in Australia but we don’t seem to have anybody who will take on that role at present.
Still cometh the hour, cometh the man. All things go through their natural cycles including political movements.
Its a pity we will probably have to go through a major economic crisis to get rid of the stupidity that has accumulated over the last 10 -15 years.
420
In 2007 Prime Minister John Howard commented that Australians had never been better off. He was referring to an OECD report on the standard of living in 38 OECD countries and Australia was listed 8th best standard of living.
In 1995/96 Australia had 13th place on the list following the defeat of the Keating Labor government.
In November 2007 Rudd Labor formed government and lost government in September 2013. According to the 2015 OECD report Australia had lost ground with worsening standard of living reported 12th on the OECD list.
Of course Labor today try hard to whitewash their terms in government and place the blame on the present Coalition government.
The present government leaves much to be desired however they have managed to slow the rate of debt creation which was projected in 2013/14 by independent auditors to reach just under $700 billion if borrowing continued at the rate Labor had been creating debt. At this time the federal government debt is just under $500 billion but not including NBNCo debt which is not accounted for in federal government accounts because NBNCo is a government owned private company. And of course state/territory and local government debt is in addition too.
But it should be clear to most Australians now that our wealth as a nation is in decline, national prosperity sliding backwards and our politicians, too many of them, are dancing to the tunes of foreign interests including the socialist UN.
100
JWH was in NY when the towers came down…front row seat …..
He said” the times will suit me..” and proceeded to bring in the Socialist dream of gun control….
Yeah, he’s not a globalist,…ha ha…..”tell ’em they’re dreaming…”
The biggest prioblem in Oz is we have ironically an ingrained distrust of gummint, but not seem not to be able to contemplete creating a turbulence in govt.
Clearly the solution is to not elect either main party, and create a minority parliament so the recalcitrant globalist and their boot lickers are burnt out of the political system.
Nothing quite like a solid lession to show the globalists are not going to be tolerated.
Maybe we need a few French to teach australians who to go a bit bolshie for the good of the country….
21
bemused:
Weatherill is promising a $50 cut with his latest scheme delivering s.f.a. power at 4 times the cost of what it replaces (when the sun shines for more than 5 hours a day).
It is very simple for politicians, they flap their mouths and savings are promised, usually for some time after they have retired overseas, out of sight and reach.
201
The sad thing is that the MSM is complicit in this entire, sordid, social engineering scheme.
The MSM are not saying a word, or even bothering to check numbers, such that the Today Tonight, Home and Away etc viewers have no idea how badly they are begin conned.
I really wish Australia had the equivalent of a Breitbart to bring an alternative, open, and honest view on what’s happening in Australia and the world.
310
Heh! We’ve got Jo!
250
Yes, you have Jo!
There is, however, a Breitbart UK; has anyone contacted Breitbart to see if they will open a Breitbart Australia? Steve Bannon may be looking for something to do 🙂
120
I was thinking about Breitbart right before I read the last sentence. I asked an Australian on Breitbart comments if there was any equivalent Australian site to Breitbart. He said not really, the closest he could thin of was this site!
110
Retired or have accepted a position with the United Nations, their reward for contributing to the NWO agenda.
40
$30/year compared to what? Prices of today, or what they PROJECT it to be if they follow a different approach? And given the previous Labor Governments projections (Gillard’s “we have delivered the surplus as promised” a whole 13 months before the surplus was supposed to eventuate and then it didn’t) I’ll even take the latter with a few bags of salt.
40
Well, when he campaigned on the promise to tear up the contract for the East West link and that it wouldn’t cost a penny, they elected him.
It then cost $1 billion to get out of the contract and no one batted an eyelid.
So, yeah . . they’ll lap it up.
50
The renewables lunacy goes on, and on, and on . . .
But when the power goes off, and stays off, then perhaps the citizens of Victoria and South Australia will wake up to themselves and realise that they have been ‘dudded’ by their respective governments.
I just hope that they do not drag the rest of us down with them. But then it certainly is a possibility.
GeoffW
302
As many of the frappe drinking Conversationalista reside and lecture in the ivory tower of Victoria, it’ll be fascinating to watch how they may find that they need to renegotiate their ideology and incompetence back from the brink. Who will they screw to keep the Universities running and their jobs intact? Little wonder they advocate for more lectures to be delivered on line.
101
Maybe the students could sit on generator bikes in the main Presitly quad at melbourne U and pedal to keep the power on?
Certainly would be a good use of the academic boofheads, maybe the first actual real use they have been put to? Ambulance on standby…..
40
That’s a good idea. At the very least, all the gym bikes, rowing machines, cross trainers, steppers and climbing stairs on campus should be wired into the grid. Oh, and only cold showers permitted.
10
This I found striking;
“The plan would deliver an increase to the state’s energy supply because it gives investors the certainty they need commit to large-scale renewable energy projects, according to Energy and Climate Change Minister Lily D’Ambrosio.
The word certainty is code for guaranteed profits from forced customers who are not permitted to buy the cheaper alternative.”
Here in the US, we have protesters protesting fascism. They have no idea what fascism is, yet the above quote perfectly describes it. Using Soviet Russia comes no where near fascism, as even they were fighting against it.
40
john mentions this:
Right! Yeah, of course it does.
As I mentioned above, these two glorious new solar power plants will generate around 230,000MWH of power each year, so that’s 230GWH, or 0.23TWH
Victoria currently generates around 48TWH of power a year, so these two solar plants will add 0.48% to that total power generation for the State.
Not even half of one percent.
That’ll ease the strain surely!
Tony.
110
Incidentally, Victoria, with the second highest population in Australia is only the third largest consumer of electricity, after NSW and Queensland, and some of you may find that a little odd, perhaps thinking that Victorians are less profligate in their power consumption and more frugal when it comes to the use of electricity.
The reason that Queensland is a higher consumer than Victoria has nothing to do with that.
Victoria is much more compact in area, and Queensland vastly more spread out and decentralised, hence the generated power has to spread out more from where it is generated, while in Victoria, the consumers are a lot closer to the actual power generation sources, hence a lot less losses, which are much higher (due to distance) than they are in Victoria.
Queensland has an area that is 7.8 times larger than Victoria, and that is the reason why Queensland is a larger consumer, those vast areas to be covered. Incidentally, that area to be covered is even 2.7 times greater than Texas in the U.S.
South East Queensland is good for its generated power but when you have the situation where the coal fired power plant that is furthest North is the one closest to me, Stanwell, near Rockhampton, and there’s no major power plants North of here.
Look at a map of Queensland and you’ll see Rockhampton is perhaps a little less than one third of the way up the Queensland coastline.
So, calls for a new coal fired power plant in the North of Queensland are not unreasonable if they want to expand tourism and increase the population because of that in the North of the State.
All of those 8 Queensland coal fired power plants virtually service just the South East corner of the State, and the excess generation is fed into Northern NSW, a helluva lot closer than trying to transmit that power into the North of the State, another reason why power generation is higher in Queensland as well, what with their supplying 12 to 15% of their generated power into Northern NSW.
Tony.
70
I note that nowhere in this account is mentioned the amount of global cooling likely to be achieved by this insanity. It would seem that, since this number is indistinguishable from zero the tinfoil hats have decided not to let this unfortunate statistic deter their mad rush for ‘renewable’ energy. It is a fascinating story unfolding here – why are they doing it? Is it money? And how can such an irrational course of actin be defended on ideological grounds? We are all very grateful to you Jo for recording all this – future historians and sociologists will be fascinated and many important papers written about it. Lets keep our eyes on the big picture here – a sense of scale is vital in this particular universe.
291
It is a very sad nation that votes for imbeciles such as Weatherdill and Joan Kirner in men’s clothing.
182
We have reached the mature stage of our civilisation.
90
Just waiting for the rubber band to snap. Assuredly it will.
70
How big the Obeid-like kickbacks to the ALP & unions are for these unreliable power contracts?
http://reneweconomy.com.au/victoria-plans-650mw-renewable-auction-plus-two-new-solar-farms-15047/
132
And especially for the desalination plants.
00
Do we need any more evidence that global warming is a deliberate hoax to destroy Capitalism?
They are running this country into the ground quite deliberately. This is not “lunacy” or “stupid” but rather following plans that have been centuries in the making. God help us all.
250
As UN Official and socialist Christiana Figueres admitted in October 2015, as reported here later.
30
‘God help us all.’
Up against the heathens in Beijing your deity is powerless, its a Chinese hoax.
01
No.
00
The RET is a parasitic funding scheme that will sterilize Victoria’s brown coal resource and advance unfit technologies beyond their useful bounds. How can we rid ourselves of these parasites.
321
As Maggie Thatcher said “Socialists are good at spending other peopels money…”
Ergo, socialists are economic and moral parasites…
“For even when we were with you, this we commanded you,
that if any would not work, neither should he eat.”
( 2 Thess 3:10 )
40
This is sad and bewildering. Seems as if SA, and Victoria and Tasmania are in big trouble with their electricity generation and grid stability.
That only leaves NSW, QLD, and WA to carry the load. If these three states were also to try and maximize the percent of electricity generated by renewables, then all of Australia would be in trouble for industry, jobs, etc..
Seems to me that the time for the remaining states to take steps for base load and reliable electricity generation and distribution.
If not, then can you depend on coal and gas exports to keep the economy and employment improving? If not, decline of a great Nation seems inevitable.
281
A divided country perhaps, NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian is keen on new infrastructure and intends winning the next election.
81
On closer inspection Gladys has zealot Don Harwin as energy and utilities minister, its not looking good.
30
Ah, so she has been nobled already then…..
Peopl;e who can do stuff are often assigned “mionders” to make sure they stay on song.
Abbott was removed as he wasnt an CAGW “believer”
Now we have Turncoat who is a CAGW believer, and is working hand in glove with ( other ) Socialists to bring the country to its knees, while he retains his private fortune.
Gotta love socialism…..like we love the bubonic plague….( not!)
00
Don’t worry: Premier Pluckachook is promising more renewable energy for Queensland. A wind farm of 115 turbines planned for southern Queensland, will be built by AGL. This project, costing $500million, will generate 460Mw of power, power 240,000 homes and save 1 million tonnes of greenhouse gases per year. No doubt the bean counters at AGL are factoring in big subsidies so that the company can make some big profits when the wind blows.
130
Yeah I’d be intersted in what people think, but surely by now when we see all the State “leaders” all lining up, happy to sacrifice their states economies on the altar of Gaia, surely by now you could conclude its all a fixup?
How else do you explain the consistent approach to tear down our western civilisation, all pretty much at the same time, no matter who is in power?
Its pretty clear Democracy, to survive, needs to be very forcefully exercised, so both main parties are thrown out at the next election, so they can be sidelined.
I’m not saying we elect ratbags, but we need to inflict real damage on the globalists to show them we wont put up with their little barrow boys ( and girls ) brutalizing out civilization.
Its funny – Churchill understood evil, he realized that to defeat it you have to go full Bolshie on it, and you have to be brutally one eyed about it. I’m not advocating violence, by the way, rather a scourge of the labor and liberal parties at the ballot box that creates an electoral crisis that slaps the globalists so hard across the moosh, it will sting for years.
… of ocurse there will be serious payback, like banks calling on loans etc, but bug deal, maybe we could get rid of a few bankd too iof they really want a stoush…..better to cut out the cancer before it gets too big.
We need to do an Iceland on them, when they prosecuted the bankers who caused all that mess….
10
While you hear different stories on who has how much lithium, there is talk of Afghanistan being “the Saudi Arabia of lithium”, as well as being a potential source of rare earths and other critical minerals (which is why China has been investing so heavily in the mining sector there).
Then there is Saudi Arabia, which is, obviously, the Saudi Arabia of oil.
Then there is Russia, the ME, Suez, all those worrisome straits, and potential hot wars, trade wars, pipeline wars, sanctions etc.
What does all this have to do with the decisions of Andrews and Weatherill go green? Because instead of using Australian coal both as domestic power and export cash-cow, we are heading into a situation of heavy dependence on every commodity, every technology and every place upon which we should not be depending heavily. Yes, we have lots of rock lithium in Oz, but it can only come back to us as an Asian manufacture or (God help us) as a Musik Man show. The mineral is domestic, the usable product is anything but domestic.
Our coal is our peace. Using imported oil for any purpose other than transport and minor power needs should be viewed as a threat to national security, especially if it is used to supplement green energy, which is a threat to national sanity. It should be illegal under Federal law. Big Battery should be satirised under Federal law.
Coal. A secure domestic power supply for however long it is needed or desired. In such a naughty world, how is it possible that people have not worked this out? Or maybe the very worst people have worked it out.
321
You know that mindlessly red-thumbing on Jo Nova is not yet classified as a “green job”? Not even GetUp has a budget for the service.
191
Yes mosomoso,
Let’s hear it for ol’ King Coal,
for reliable energy in place of
inter-mittent ‘renewable’ energy.
Lets hear it for ol’ King Cole,
full steam ahead for productivity
and energy security, not teeter-
tottering backwards towards the
socialist-left Distopia-State.
150
If I had the money to invest [ I haven’t ! Made a million or two dollars off and on over my lifetime but kept right on farming until it was all gone. ] I would not be putting it into lithium of any sort for quite some time ahead.
Reasons being that this battery thing might just collapse as both major drawbacks, relying on the grid / solar / wind to recharge the batteries particularly when everybody else is trying to do the same will mean either a complete collapse at some point with the whole Grid going black or a rebuild of the grid and energy power sources to cater for the recharging of all those batteries in what ever energy requiring application they drive at a cost that will make the cost of the NBN fiasco look like buying a tin of fish for the Cat.
That cost will have to come from somewhere and you can lay odds that the car-less mob are going to get Very upset if they are expected to pay for a very expensive, heavy duty grid system that is built solely to service the EV owners.
I would be watching to see how the new version of the Zinc / Air battery technology was developing which if successful will wipe Lithium batteries off the map due to a greater energy storage capability up to a theoretical five times as much energy in the same package and far better safety particularly re fires ;.
Engineers charge ahead on zinc-air batteries
And maybe even more promising but still to have even basic anlysisw to check for a viability and useability or even if it functions outside of the laboratory, the Nano aluminium offers fuel cells on demand – just add water
Now THAT would be a breakthrough with massive implications.
No charging or waiting.
Just unload / empty perhaps a canister for reconstituting at the servo and load the next canister[ s ] and fill the water tank, nothing at all polluting there or damaging to health, and get in and drive as the aluminium and water combination releases hydrogen to power the fuel cells to generate the electricity of the needless to say Electric motorised vehicle.
If electrical power agains became very cheap and plentiful and it will as one day controlled Fusion power will be cracked by somebody, somewhere and the consequent potential power production will be to all intents and purposes almost infinite then hybrid systems combining the aluminium / air hydrogen generator /fuel cell combination and a Zinc / air battery as a short trip and booster combination might become the norm.
So for the near term if the temptation to invest in lithium was attractively offered, I would consider developing very short arms that couldn’t extend very far into my pocket to prevent me getting hold of my wallet.
100
ROM,
The experts in supply and demand of minerals are the mining companies. At various times I ran teams doing international commodities studies and we drilled down deep in the info. At one time, about 1985, we looked into lithium. In a case like this you can put it on hold or you can make a gamble to be an early entry and risk the market not rising to demand. But that is business as normal. Note that fortune seldom favours the brave. If more favours the studious. Geoff
20
inflicting so much pain, to what purpose? surely not this:
23 Aug: TheConversation: Why is climate change’s 2 degrees Celsius of warming limit so important?
by David Titley
(Professor of Practice in Meteorology, Professor of International Affairs & Director Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk, Pennsylvania State University )
Disclosure statement: David Titley is a member of the CNA Military Advisory Board, He is an advisory board member of Citizens’ Climate Lobby, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Center for Climate and Security, and is a member of the National Academy of Science’s Board of Atmospheric Science and Climate.
Recently a series of scientific papers have come out and stated that we have a 5 percent chance of limiting warming to 2°C, and only one chance in a hundred of keeping man-made global warming to 1.5°C, the aspirational goal of the 2015 Paris United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conference. Additionally, recent research shows that we may have already locked in 1.5°C of warming even if we magically reduced our carbon footprint to zero today…
That’s a lot of numbers and data – so much that it could make even the most climate-literate head spin. How did the climate, and climate policy community, come to agree that 2°C is the safe limit? What does it mean? And if we can’t meet that target, should we even try and limit climate change?…
The academic literature, popular press and blog sites have all traced out the history of the 2°C limit. Its origin stems not from the climate science community, but from a Yale economist, William Nordhaus…
In his 1975 paper “Can We Control Carbon Dioxide?,” Nordhaus, “thinks out loud” as to what a reasonable limit on CO2 might be…
Nordaus himself stressed how “deeply unsatisfactory” this thought process was. It’s ironic that a back-of-the-envelope, rough guess ultimately became a cornerstone of international climate policy…
Perhaps the most powerful aspect about the 2°C threshold is not its scientific veracity, but its simplicity as an organizing principle…READ ALL
https://theconversation.com/why-is-climate-changes-2-degrees-celsius-of-warming-limit-so-important-82058
FIRST COMMENT OF 66: Molly Glassey, Audience Development Manager, The Conversation
If your comment references unreliable sources, links to dodgy websites, pushes smear campaigns or gives inappropriate weighting to poor quality science, we’ll delete it. It’s our way of sifting out misinformation, and ensuring evidence-based and accredited research enters the public sphere.
Thanks and happy commenting, Molly.
30
btw ClimateChangeNews has Titley’s piece, but they have inserted a perfect ***sub-heading:
23 Aug: ClimateChangeNews: David Titley: How did we end up with a 2C climate limit?
***The global temperature goal started life as a back-of-the-envelope guess but become a powerful principle for political organising
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/08/23/end-2c-climate-limit/
50
Bannerton Solar Park, near Robinvale, won a tender to provide 100 megawatts of solar energy for Melbourne’s trams.
But where is the detail? Capital cost? Backup?
The state government has so far refused to release the modelling its figures are based on.
“In a pure economics sense more supply means cheaper prices and that’s what we will be modelling it on,” Minister D’Ambrosio said. What??
Found one report that says that Syncline’s Bannerton Solar Park will cost about $150 million to build and should come on line by September 2018. The Victorian government will buy the renewable energy credits under contract for Melbourne’s 400-plus trams and Bannerton will sell the power into the market. Mr Galloway said the combined price would be a roughly at grid parity – $90 to $100 per MWh.
Dr Finkel reported large scale solar PV with 3 hours storage will cost $138/Mwhr, solar thermal with 12 hours storage $172/MWhr, Gas $83/Mwhr, Coal $76/MWhr. So presumably no backup for Bannerton, leaving high priced gas to provide backup (with still no relaxation on Victoria’s ban on gas exploration).
In SA, it was recently announced that Port Augusta will be home to a new $650 million solar thermal power plant of 150 MW capacity with storage that will supply all of the State Government’s power needs.
So in Vic, 100 MW for $150 million, in SA 150 MW for $650 million. Full business cases please. We have completely lost control of our governments when they can make these decisions with no accountability, because the costs will be borne by electricity consumers, not governments.
150
Robber:
The Port Augusta solar heat plant will be built by SolarReserve whose previous plant at Crescent Dunes (Nevada) has so far been less than wonderful. Despite that they are able to build a slightly larger plant for less than half the cost and reduced the cost of the output by 56-60%. Oh, and build it in less than half the time of the last one.
The claimed output can only be achieved by running at maximum generation for over 10.4 hours a day every day of the year (incl. overcast winter days).
In other words the press release is total B.S. which is becoming standard practice for Premier Weatherill, and seemingly now adopted by Premier Andrews.
Electricity policy in Australia can be described in 2 words, the first is barking.
200
Ah, so it’s all going to be done with smoke, mirrors and certificates. That’s alright then. I was wondering how they’d go operating the trams when the sun didn’t shine. I had visions of Melbourne being even more stuffed up than usual every time the trams slowed or stopped for want of some lovely solar output.
60
Hmmm…having watched some of the older trams wind up, then back off ( the trammies used to sit on an old rotating rheostat in the drivers cab ), and watching as the 1500 VDC flash from underneath as the contactor opens, reminds you how just much energy is needed to move a tram…..
Smoke and mirrors doesnt translate into hard motive force…..
60
How the heck can I get power for 30 cents a kilowatt in Victoriastan? I pay up to 8 cents more .
80
Robert, change retailers. My latest bill in Melbourne totals 25 cents/KWhr, including the daily supply charge. On usage I am receiving a 42% discount, although 14% of that is only valid for one year.
70
Here in Broome, we have a small gas power station, where the gas is trucked by road from the Pilbara. We pay 24.0673 per unit, whatever their unit is, it’s unclear on the bill. Plus a supply charge of almost $40 for 5 weeks, plus GST.
00
Despicable Despot “Dan Andrews” has NEVER run a commercial profit orientated business in his entire life and it sure does show.
He has a Batcherlor of Arts in Politics and Classics; [ I guess he read Machiavelli for inspiration. ] and then he went straight to the electoral office of federal Labor MP Allan Griffin.
[ “Machiavellianism” is a widely used negative term to characterize unscrupulous politicians of the sort Machiavelli described most famously in The Prince. Machiavelli described immoral behavior, such as dishonesty and killing innocents, as being normal and effective in politics. ]
.
He has NO knowledge, he is totally ignorant of what it takes to run a business no matter how small or minor.
And it is so very, very obvious he has NO grasp at all on what is required as a leader or any technical knowledge or background on just what is required to run a State and keep it functioung efficiently to the long term benifits of the residents of that state.
Of course we have here the classic case of somebody who may be very good at something, politics in this case, but will still be of a well below average intelligence and be almost totally ignorant about anything outside of politcs.
——————–
Lily D’Ambrosio.
She is presently Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change and Minister for Suburban Development in the Andrews Ministry.
She was an organiser for the Australian Services Union.
She has NEVER run a commercial profit orientated business in her entire life.
She has an Arts Degree [ who hasn’t. Got a postage stamp! Get your arts degee! ] and a Diploma in public policy
Just another gender version of the standard strong arm union thug who has made her way into politics via the union route, [ what Labor politician these days has got into parliament by any other reasonably honest means other than through thoroughly corrupted union affiliations ] and not a brian cell to bless herself with.
————–
And to quote Albert yet again as applicable to the Despicable Despot Dan Andrews and his Victorian Labor Party
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein
281
Thumbs up x 1000 ROM, Union thugs? HA! they were supposed come around to “sort me out” back in 2005 still waiting boys, in fact I even showed them my drivers license so they got the address right, never fear cowards people this is why a pack of rats never attack a lion!
162
Father in law had a brother who was known as Dangerous Dan and this fits our Glorious leader .
31
Desperate Dan? Another moniker for our esteemed great leader.
30
During 2006 journalist Max Walsh wrote in The Bulletin Magazine about the union movement and their ALP. The article was published around the time Kevin 07 was campaigning for government and the unions were campaigning for their ALP using the Howard Coalition’s Work Choices industrial relations legislation as their focus point for deceptive advertising.
By the way, The Australian reported later that the unions spent around $20 million on that campaign 2006/07 and that by 2009/10 when the next federal election was due the unions had received their money back by way of grants of taxpayer’s monies from the federal and state Labor governments, grants applied for by the unions. Former senior executive in Treasury, Dr Des Moore, wrote about the grants in a book he wrote after he retired referring to the Labor in government period 1983 to 1996 when, according to him, close to $100 million in grants were paid to unions. He called it “laundering” of taxpayer’s monies by way of grants that were “donated” to the ALP directly or via campaign advertising expenses.
Max Walsh wrote in The Bulletin magazine that the union movement had effectively launched “a corporate style takeover” of the ALP and had provided union trained executives to become ALP MPs parachuted into safe seats, even replacing sitting MPs. He wrote that the objectives of the unions included taking control of Australian governments.
He pointed out that “rank and file” membership were no longer relevant except for being useful volunteer workers when needed, for example handing out advertising pamphlets on polling days and paying membership fees.
When I learnt about the takeover of the Liberal Party by unelected lobbyists who now control it and even appoint candidates for elections and no longer allow electorate branch members to choose their local candidate as used to be the situation, a secret ballot following presentations from people standing for the position, I was very concerned. Recently a motion at the Liberal Party Conference put forward by Tony Abbott and his supporters was passed by a substantial majority vote. That was to return the selection of candidates to branch members.
Until there is a major change on both sides Australia will continue to decline from political manipulation and self interest on the part of too many politicians and their “faceless” controllers.
40
Recently I have begun to wonder if some of “The Australian’s” opinion writers and reporters regularly read the comments here on Jo’s blog to get ideas for their articles and the punters thinking and attitudes towards some of the latest developments in our politics and business and societietal developments.
For many months now it so often seems to be so very coincidental that the trend and substance of the comments on some subject that Jo or one or more of of her commenting denizens has posted up turns up in “The Australian’s” columns albeit in a much changed format only a couple of editions later.
This morning Friday 25 August Australian’s headline is “Labor’s narrow job skills stoke business concerns” followed by a graphic which shows that out of Shorten’s eleven Labor shadow front benchers, ten of them including Shorten are ex union thuggees with NO business experience and only one, Joel Fitzgibbon has business experience as an auto electrician and TAFE lecturer and some small business experience.
So Dennis at # 17.3, it looks like you are very right in that a very small Marxist dominated group using Unions and the Labor Party as their vehicle to gain power are close to achieving their aims.
If they do achieve power due to stupidity and ignorance on the part of the voters then we as a nation are in for a very rough ride indeed.
How ever having been around on this planet for over 79 years I well know that “the best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray” as we have seen a number of times over the last half a century where another of the endless hard Left / communistic politcal groups take over power in a country only to see the economy of that country destroyed in a generation.
And those same hard Leftist groups then turning to violence and armed force in their endeavour to maintain their power over the nation as a full scale revolt and opposition to them gets under way..
Going back over half a century now to 1963 the Labor Party here in Australia was in a similar throat hold by the socialist left and communist run unions when the very well known and respected political reporter Alan Reid labelled the Labor Party’s Federal Conference as the “36 Faceless Men”.
To quote from Wiki;
Photo of Whitlam and Arthur Calwell standing in the corridor to get their instructions on fighting the election from the “36 Faceless Men” Meet the original faceless Labor men
So again it looks very much like Australian Labor’s political history may be repeating itself all over again particularly when we see the quite well documented and apparently very strong hold and influence that the Firemans Union secretary Peter Marshall has over Despicable Despot Dan Andrews, the Victorian Premier.
40
Thank you for your interesting comment ROM.
Our political problems now extend from Labor to the Liberal side in that Liberal Party HQ is now under the control of left leaning lobbyists and controllers. It’s similar to the union “faceless men” situation but not a union movement in numbers.
However, remember the video made by Christopher Moncketon to warn Australians to watch the back of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, that he was under attack from political enemies inside Australia and external threats combined (UN etc).
There can only be one conclusion to be drawn based on the RET and related madness, that it is calculated economic vandalism engineered by experts to dismantle our wealth as a nation and our strengths as a politically stable society until recent times.
And the wealthy followers who are capitalising on the short term viability of so called renewable energy businesses.
00
Why do governments keep lying to voters ?
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/08/23/why-wont-the-government-admit-the-true-cost-of-renewable-energy/
131
“… and 40 per cent by 2025.”
My “used-up” by date will likely occur before all these grand green schemes are recognized for being stupendously stupid.
I’ve not decided whether that makes me happy or sad.
100
That $30 Dan promises I’ll save would be trivial in this year’s near $4000 accumulated twelvemonth of bills.
There’ll be no significance at all saving thirty dollars in five years time when it’s anybody’s guess what power will cost: having tripled price in the last twenty years it seems on track to at least triple again over the coming five.
This is all so utterly criminal and yet nobody speaks.
170
Desal insanity redux.
Even if utility-scale solar were generally viable and reliable energy sources, a glance at the cloud cover maps illustrates Victoria would not be the place to put one.
80
Hey Victoria, we’re with you. We NSW lemmings are not to be outdone as we bolt towards the renewables cliff together.
https://stopthesethings.com/2017/08/20/appetite-for-destruction-wind-power-obsessed-nsw-energy-minister-deluded-dangerous/
In particular note the graph of Indexed Real Consumer Electricity Prices where price rise is plotted against the rise of renewables and the commencement of the NEM. Very telling stuff.
100
More proof that Lib ,Lab and green are essentially the same beast and between us we seem to be voting them back in well Libs and labs us deplorable’s don’t vote green .
When you start to pick a politician because you dislike them the least it’s a sign that something is terribly wrong somewhere .
80
I have no doubt that faceless controllers and foreign forces have infiltrated our system of government and now, with some politicians including Tony Abbott (noting the warning issued by Christopher Monckton to Australians to watch PM Abbott’s back) the exceptions, our system of government is beyond our control as voters.
There must be a third way to escape from the major parties and corruption they represent.
50
G’day Dennis,
I reckon optional preferential voting in the Reps would do it. But I don’t see it happening in my lifetime. Too many pollies rely on not being put last for it to be changed by them.
Cheers,
Dave B
60
This is the same type of argument that Chris Huhne, a now disgraced Liberal Democrat ex-MP and ex-government minister in the UK, made. With a straight face he continually told the public that renewable energy would Save them Money – whilst admitting it would cost more ….
The entire basis of this argument appeared to be that it would save people money because the cost would put them off using electricity ….. and would encourage them to better insulate their home
That about sums up the madness of ‘green economics’.
BTW Huhne was disgraced through being convicted and sent to prison by the UK Criminal Justice system for lying about who was the driver of a car that picked up a speeding ticket – he had claimed not to be the driver until the Court determined he was and gave him a prison sentence.
110
Amazing what you can get away with when you can dismiss counter arguments with “Murdoch minion” or “in the pay of big oil”
90
first, about the writer of UK Telegraph article linked below:
Wikipedia: Michael Liebreich is Chairman of the Advisory Board at Bloomberg New Energy Finance…
Michael Liebreich was born in 1963 in Northolt, West London…He graduated from Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1984, specialising in Mechanics, Fluid Dynamics, Thermodynamics and Nuclear Engineering. He graduated from Harvard Business School in 1990…
Before starting New Energy Finance, Liebreich worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company from 1990 to 1995…
He also worked as a venture capitalist with Groupe Arnault, and was commercial director of Associated Press Television (now APTN), and founding director of Sports News Television (SNTV)…
Liebreich is a member of numerous energy-focused industry groups, including the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the New Energy Architecture and the UN Secretary General’s High Level Group on Sustainable Energy for All…
Liebreich is a former member of the advisory board of the Clinton Global Initiative’s Energy and Climate Change working group, the selection panel for the Zayed Future Energy Prize, Accenture’s Global Energy Board and the UN Secretary General’s High Level Advisory Group on Energy and Climate Change…
He is also a visiting professor at London’s Imperial College Energy Futures Lab…
Liebreich sold his company to Bloomberg L.P. in 2009 in hopes of strengthening the company’s position in the energy industry…
22 Aug: UK Telegraph: The Tories should embrace electric cars and make them a green capitalist triumph
By Michael Liebreich
In 1911, Winston Churchill, the new First Lord of the Admiralty, began to switch the navy’s most powerful battleships from coal to oil power. He did so in the face of withering scepticism from the establishment. Just a few years before, Lord Selborne, a predecessor, had thundered that “the substitution of oil for coal is impossible, because oil does not exist in this world in sufficient quantities”.
Just over a hundred years later, many leading establishment figures are again dismissing the notion of an energy transition, in eerily similar words. Prominent Conservatives in particular seem to be fighting tooth and nail for the preservation of the technologies of the past, rather than embracing those of the future.
The electricity grid of the future will be centred on renewable energy, supplemented by natural gas, made flexible and resilient by power storage and digital control. Global coal…BEHIND PAYWALL
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/22/tories-should-embrace-electric-cars-make-green-capitalist-triumph/
FROM THE 133 COMMENTS (READ ALL FOR READERS TAKING ON LIEBREICH & HIS SOMETIMES ARROGANT COMEBACKS:
#1 Jerry Maher: Pure salesman’s BS. What does this bloke’s fund deal in again?
#2 Michael Liebriech: @JERRY MAHER I don’t have a fund. I’m an analyst, built a very successful business providing information on energy and transportation to the world’s largest investors, energy companies, technology companies and governments. You’re welcome.
40
heck, just use the land for solar & wind “farms” and import the food, so it’s some other country’s problem:
22 Aug: ThomsonReutersFoundation: Agriculture a culprit in global warming, says U.S. research
by Ellen Wulfhorst
While soil absorbs carbon in organic matter from plants and trees as they decompose, agriculture has helped deplete that carbon accumulation in the ground.
Agriculture has contributed nearly as much to climate change as deforestation by intensifying global warming, according to U.S. research that has quantified the amount of carbon taken from the soil by farming.
Some 133 billion tons of carbon have been removed from the top two meters of the earth’s soil over the last two centuries by agriculture at a rate that is increasing, said the study in PNAS, a journal published by the National Academy of Sciences…
Global warming is largely due to the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere etc…
But this research showed the significance of agriculture as a contributing factor as well, said Jonathan Sanderman, a soil scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts and one of the authors of the research…
“It’s alarming how much carbon has been lost from the soil,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation…
21 Aug: PNAS: Soil carbon debt of 12,000 years of human land use
Jonathan Sanderman, Tomislav Hengl, and Gregory J. Fiske
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/08/15/1706103114.short?rss=1
31
IF YOU ARE NOT SHILLING FOR WIND AND SOLAR, YOU ARE EVIL:
22 Aug: The Conversation: Nuclear and coal lobbies threaten to scupper renewables in South Africa
by Hartmut Winkler, Professor of Physics, University of Johannesburg
(Disclosue statement: Hartmut Winkler receives funding from the NRF. He is a member of Save South Africa and OUTA, but writes this article in his personal capacity)
South African power utility Eskom recently repeated that it will not conclude supply contracts with the developers of new renewable energy power stations. These developers were selected under a programme to facilitate private sector involvement in the building of medium-sized renewable energy power stations.
The programme has won ***plaudits for its success in facilitating the establishment of multiple solar and wind farms in record time. But Eskom is once again stalling.
The power utility’s stand threatens the viability of the entire renewable energy sector in the country.
???It’s hostility also defies logic given that the whole world is embracing renewable energy as key to a clean energy future and combating climate change…
So what lies behind the opposition?
The answer lies in the fact that two powerful lobbies are at work in South Africa. One is pro-coal, the other pro-nuclear…
The global ascendancy of renewables and their particular pertinence in South African climatic conditions may even make coal and nuclear energy technologies obsolete in the distant future. Ultimately South Africa won’t be able to buck international trends. That means that, in the longer term, the future of renewables in South Africa remains bright.
https://theconversation.com/nuclear-and-coal-lobbies-threaten-to-scupper-renewables-in-south-africa-79799
***”PLAUDITS” IS AN ARTICLE BY HARMUT WINKLER IN JAN 2016, WITH NO PLAUDIT FROM ANYONE ELSE!
Jan 2016: The Conversation: Hartmut Winkler: Explainer: South Africa’s developing solar energy landscape
https://theconversation.com/explainer-south-africas-developing-solar-energy-landscape-50537
20
24 Aug: RenewEconomy: Giles Parkinson: Australia urged to aim for 100% renewables by 2030s
One of the world’s leading climate experts says Australia needs to aim for 100 per cent renewables within two decades as part of its efforts to meet climate targets, and it stands to reap enormous economic – and environmental – benefits if it does.
Bill Hare, a Perth-based climate scientist and director of research group Climate Analytics, says there is renewed pressure for the world to act to cap average global warming at 1.5°C given the increasing evidence of extreme weather events, heat-waves, coral bleaching and other impacts…
“There is no fundamental technological limit to renewable energy integration to existing energy system,” says Hare, who delivered a major lecture, The Keith Roby Memorial Lecture at Murdoch University, in Perth last night. (His full presentation can be found here)(LINK).
His comments come on the same day as a 27-strong team from Stanford University, led by Mark Jacobsen, released an updated plan on how 139 countries, including Australia (LINK), could reach 100 per cent renewables based around wind, solar, storage and hydro…
The Australian network operator Transgrid says 100 per cent renewable energy is both feasible and affordable (LINK)…
http://reneweconomy.com.au/australia-urged-to-aim-for-100-renewables-by-2030s-195/
10
Despicable Dan has recently been touring rural and regional Victoria throwing money around like confetti at a wedding with about as much effect.
Looks OK for few minutes then somebody has to come along and clean up the mess that is left behind, particularly after a polly of Mr Andrew’s rotten tomato’s standard has passed through at the usual political’s velocity.
It seems that his numbers men in the last month or so, they are not very fast thinkers, realised that Victoria did actually extend beyond Melbourne’s outer suburbs and in a “my god” moment realised that Labor held some seats out in that vast Terras Ignotis of which they had almost no knowledge of and had studiously ignored for their term of government as being of no consequence.
But, but, the polls from out in that land of slow talking hayseeds and even slower thinking knuckle draggers say that those knuckle draggers out there are about fed up to the back teeth with Premier Andrew’s Labor government and we could lose every single one of those seats.
So the United Firefighters Union secretary Mr Peter Marshal decreed, [ going by the evidence so far, he decrees everything to Premier Andrews] that Premier Andrews had better get off of his very shiny arse andpronto and get himself out into the land of the knuckle draggers and spread the good will confetti around lavishly to show everybody what a good bloke he is so that Mr Marshall and his Union thuggees won’t be shut down, shot down and possibly locked up for a term when a new conservative government gets back into power again.
Which might just happen maybe a bit too quickly for Mr Marshall’s liking and his sense of comfort.
[ Terras Ignotis = Unknown Land ]
71
And if you doubt the “Thuggees” label above [ in moderation as I post ] ] then;
JUNE 15 2017
Firefighters union seeks to block release of bullying inquiry
80
And if it is released, they will beat the sh*t out of someone – BECAUSE THEY ARE BULLIES.
81
Somehow I get the feeling that I better not call you comrade .
51
Someone should tell this Minister that the sun does not shine for many hours every day. How is it possible for solar energy to contribute to the States energy supply when there is no sunshine!!!. It is so naive to think that adding more renewable energy will lower costs.
I can make my own power using unsubsidised rooftop solar and battery cheaper than any grid scale solar or wind system. The simple fact is that there is no economy of scale with this technology and any locational advantage is more than offset by the cost of transmission. My unsubsidised cost is working out around 47c/kWh on the basis my LiFePO4 battery lasts at least 10 years – 5 years in and still looks good. That is buying components direct from China at prices in AUD lower than is possible now and installing them myself. My view is the lowest possible wholesale cost that grid scale intermittent generation, with adequate storage for despatch able output, can achieve is $500/MWh. Add the transmission and retail margins and the unsubsidised price of electricity is AUD700.
The problem with this is that no heavy industry can survive with electric energy costing from $500 to $700/MWh. All the components that are needed for on-demand renewable energy; panels, wind generators, batteries, chargers, inverters and transmission lines installed in Australia are supplied from China. Australia sends its coal to China so it can be used to convert all manner of materials into the components that Australia needs to make so-called renewable energy. Very few people actually understand that this is a DEAD END. The energy out for energy spent making on-demand renewable energy does not provide an economic return. The energy system is not able to produce enough excess to enable the cycle to repeat. Fundamentally the energy generation system becomes an energy sink. It is the same as a farmer consuming all his grain this year, depriving him of the ability to sow the coming year.
The cost of power that the SA government has locked into at $70/MWh plus the contribution of LGCs is way below the true cost of that power. When the new solar plant is not producing it will fall to very expensive gas plant to make up the difference. The government has hoodwinked the people of SA into believing that electric power produced at any time of day on any day has a constant value. Real power price can go from a large negative number to a very large positive number on a daily basis. The TIME of production MATTERS most.
Right now the 4395MW of installed wind capacity in Australia is producing 600MW. None of the installed solar capacity in the Eastern States is producing power. SA has a demand of 2080MW with 1500MW coming from gas 96MW from wind and the rest from Victoria. ALL this wind farms producing just 96MW!
All the States that are pushing higher RETs are de-industrialising their economies. For heavy industry to survive it needs to isolate itself from the grid. In fact anyone who has space for their own generation should be preparing to go off the grid. I think 70c/kWh will be here by 2020 – well before I thought possible just a few years ago.
130
All these claims about “cheap” green electricity are based on
1. the forced increase in cost of conventional generation by making them less economic by interrupting their income, while loading the cost of always available backup onto them.
2. The sale of LGC’s (handed out under RET to ‘renewables’) which are then loaded onto the RETAIL price. The Governments and their minions claiming to have negiotiate a price lower that wholesale always ignore the added cost to the average consumer.
If these gullible politicians persist in forcing up the cost of electricity, hence food etc. with business closures hance higher unemployment, then there will come a time when the Mary Antoinette treatment gets applied to them.
110
‘ In fact anyone who has space for their own generation should be preparing to go off the grid. ‘
“History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes”.
There, looking back, an absolutely clear solution. It is easy and cost effective.
Therefore, it will happen, unless banned by the iron heel of the state.
Power generation may be the rock upon which a free people founder, and another socializing experiment
by politicians who know nothing of the business they are socializing will lead to yet another
authoritarian state, and untold misery of the masses.
I doubt anyone thought it could happen in parts of Aus.
If the grid fails, and the industrial economy fails, a free people can turn, in a comparative instant,
to their own resources. A small generator can power a house, a decent size one on a lorry can power a
town. Streams can be dammed, and small water driven units brought to bear. Individuals can power household things
with DC. Sources, as they come online, can be interconnected voluntarily through the magic of wires.
Package plants are readily available; port cities can anchor surplus ships with significant capacities as instant
plants requiring neither construction nor infrastructure.
A totally unfettered free market, I predict, given a world of off-the-shelf bits and pieces, could re-electrify in a matter of months.
And probably would, in the the event of catastrophic failure.
And what will the government do?
It might shed read tape, eliminate import rules, suspend zoning, and ask for help.
Or it might declare rationing, eliminate all markets in favor of simple direct allocation, undertake massive (time consuming) “solutions”,
and enforce the elimination of individual initiative in the name of “fairness”, confiscating any private assets to serve “essential state purposes”.
In one direction lies a return to normalcy, and a huge national pride in having faced down an energy Dunkirk, even if self-inflicted.
But the signs point the other way, do they not?
When they ban comes out on putting diesel in the shed to forfend blackouts because you, you greedy bastard, are killing the polar bears, it may be time
to simply give up on the sanity of your fellow voters. This will likely be followed by a proscription the the only alternative you can install is
solar or wind from the government monopoly, and you must feed the collective first, “fairness’ dontcha know.
There are lots of nice places in the US. Come for a visit and stay if you like…we’ll figure something out.
And we’ll explain why we are nuts about our second amendment, because taking guns away turns out to have been just the
first step, no? We’ve all seen this movie before, its just hard to believe its playing out again among your friends and neighbors.
The first villains may well be earnest individuals of genuine good will, who are simply fools in thrall of some convenient myth,
but soon enough hard, determined men will follow them, and as you have been rendered defenseless, they will warm to the task of
authoritarianism are ever bedfellows.
A few may adopt the flag “don’t tread on me”, but most will be in “boiling frog” mode.
120
So alternate energy investors need certainty to proceed. What sort of certainty of supply will Victorian consumers endure? Sir John Monash must be “turning in his grave”.
90
RickWill currently @ # 30
The moves are already under way for major companies here in Australia who want to if the can to continue operations in Australia, to install their own generating plants.
Anthony Pratt of the Visy Group, the cardboard box makers will generate over half of their own electricity needs by converting paper mill waste into power [ “The Australian” front page; Thurs. 24th Aug ]
Cost of energy in the USA where Visy’s have two plants is two and half times lower than here in Australia.
They are going to spend about $2 billion dollars to go down the generating at least part of their energy needs path..
Never mentioned at all any more is the fact that in that European centre for renewable energy, Germany with its onshore 27,250 turbines [ one turbine every 13 sq kms = every 3.6 kms average distance ] a couple of years ago the major manufacturers began to install their own large back up generating systems to ensure they could continue to keep their critical and continuous process production lines running when the power supplies went out.
110
Nor is mention made that 34% renewables (including hydro) has resulted in 1% reduction in CO2 emissions in the last 11 years.
90
It is interesting turn of events. Visy were one of the driving forces behind eliminating state monopolies on power generation. They wanted the right to use the grid to wheel power from their sites with waste heat for cogeneration to other Visy sites that did not have generation back in the late 80s. They wanted a fair price for their generation into the network rather than the tiny fraction of the buying price that was on offer. They were prepared to pay a wheeling charge that could be determined on technical grounds based on the losses and proportion of the capital in the poles and wires. The formation of the national grid was a great benefit for that.
The national grid performed well for almost two decades. Then the introduction and the acceleration of the RET had government meddling in power supply again. What a mess it has become. All intermittent sources should be banned from the grid. If the generation is not dispatchable it has no right being on a grid where consumers expect to take power on demand. Let renewables stand on their own where they make economic sense without impairing the security of the grid and forcing prices to skyrocket. Allowing intermittent generation to degrade the grid and displace cheap coal for expensive gas has caused power cost increases in ways that many people simply cannot grasp.
The only prospect of arresting the RET momentum is for SA to move ahead so decisively with its planet saving folly that it becomes a black hole sooner rather than later and people seek the exits in large numbers. What the SA government is doing with its own power purchase at a fixed price is a hidden tax on the population paying the wholesale price plus the RET component plus the distribution and retail margins. With Victoria also moving toward higher RET, the ability for SA to dump excess energy into Victoria (and getting paid for it) will disappear and, more importantly, the ability for Victoria to send cheap coal fuelled power into SA will diminish. SA is only a few hours ahead of Victoria in terms of timing of wind power so they go up and down almost in unison. Little chance of one state supporting the other state in times of need.
Imagine if an empty nester with a large solar array made a deal with a young family member living in a flat to do their own deal on electricity. The empty nester agrees to supply power into the network at any time and the offspring gets free power all the time providing they do not use more than the parent puts into the grid. Sounds fair – the grid just works as a big battery and there is still a connection fee to pay for the wires. I reckon 90% of the population would accept this as reasonable. It is exactly what the SA government is planning to do with the CSP generation. They will not pay for any LGCs because all their energy is coming from a so-called renewable source. They will pay a constant $70/MWh at the wholesale level. Not sure how transmission charges will be applied.
THE GRID IS NOT A BIG BATTERY!
80
.
ROM @#32
Incidently and to repeat from another of Jo’s blog posts and comments, those 27,250 on shore German wind turbines annual combined total output of electrical energy is enough to provide just on two thirds of the electrical energy required to run Germany’s four aluminium smelters.
The rest of the energy to run those aluminium smelters and to run all of the rest of the large German industry and domestic useage comes a little from off shore turbines, a lot from Germany’s nukes which are to be shut down by 2022 and the rest from Lignite ; ie Brown coal and gas via pipeline from Russia.
10
Jo, it still seems to be only the lefties, not just here, but all around the world, that are building these 1600 new coal stations. You mention the free marketeers a lot, but how many of those are truly free market driven projects? Notably, that prototype of the free market, the USA, does not have a big appetite for them. I guess we will be getting all of our aluminium from China in the years to come as we wont have the power to refine it here.
50
You should take note, Joe, that the *market* in the USA has plenty of appetite for cheap coal power, but the previous *socialist government* didn’t. They have inserted all sorts of taxes and regulations to prevent new coal-fired plants from being built. That’s not the same as “does not have a big appetite”.
80
Joe the aluminium smelters in Australia are heavily subsidised and cannot survive in a free market environment.
10
Andrews and D’Ambrosio mouth inane generalisations with such earnest surety its hard to determine if they are stupid, badly advised or totally disingenuous.
How adding expensive low output intermittent power, adding complexity and retaining real generation to back it up can reduce overall costs defies common sense. I think on this topic they are both empty vessels.
Dont now about you fellow Victorians , but my generator has been purchased.
70
Something that is in exceedingly short supply.
The so called legislators create their massive word salads, call them laws, and enable the other branches of government to make them so by the force of the gun of government. Since their laws were made by whim and whimsy, they know that the can be changed by that same method.
The Three Laws of Thermodynamics are also called “laws”. By the legislators’ way of pretending to think, they too can be changed by whim and whimsy. Nothing is really real. Everything is supposed to be subject to their dictates. On the other hand, reality continues being exactly what it is and does not cooperate. Is it reality’s fault, the legislators’ fault, or We the People’s fault for voting them into office and expecting them to produce a free lunch at no cost to themselves no matter what it costs others?
Then one cold dark morning, everyone wakes up and discovers the cupboard is bare. It wasn’t reality’s fault. Reality was what it had always been. It was the search for a free lunch by using the gun of government to take from the productive and give to the non-productive: government et al.
Mean while back in reality: there was no political freedom, no economic freedom, and no intellectual freedom for the truly productive. Because they were productive, they had no rights to what they produced and thus no right to their lives. Those who did not produce had the government to take what they wanted to have without considering from whence it came.
The three things that are necessary for the productive to continue to be productive was taken away in the search for that fantasized free lunch. Reality provided the final blow because to consume, that which is to be consumed must first be produced. If it cannot be produced, there is nothing to consume. The cupboard became bare because of a major philosophical flaw: the notion that reality is supposed to be subject to the whim and whimsy of government then, if that doesn’t work, all you need is more brute force to make it so.
We the People have a choice: think and work to earn your keep so you can live or demand a free lunch to be provided to you without effort or thought. If you choose the latter, you will wake up one cold dark morning with your cupboard bare with no way to replenish it. You will have forced the productive out of existence. Don’t blame The System nor Realty, blame yourself for demanding to live without effort or thought. You did it to yourselves. You chose your path and you received justice.
60
note Tristan Edis gets the last words:
24 Aug: Age: Adam Carey: Industry fears 40 per cent renewable energy target will push up power prices
The Matthew Guy-led state Coalition has already pledged to abolish the Victorian renewable energy target if it takes government next year…
Tim Piper, Victorian head of the Australian Industry Group, said hitting the 25 per cent target within three years would be simple, but there was no clear pathway to reaching 40 per cent without imposing extra costs on energy users.
“We’ve got low-hanging fruit that will enable the 25 per cent target to be achieved, with wind and solar but … to get to 40 per cent within another five years is going to require significant investment,” Mr Piper said.
“That might mean that we are looking at higher priced electricity.”…
The head of the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Mark Stone, also said its members were hurting due to skyrocketing energy bills.
“The target must not put upward pressure on prices and put Victorian jobs at risk,” Mr Stone said.
“What we need is a coordinated national approach to deliver emissions reductions and new energy supply in the most efficient way.”…
This 650MW could help to raise the proportion of green energy supply in Victoria to more than 30 per cent by 2020, well above the state target, according to analysis by Tristan Edis, a director at Green Energy Markets, an advisory business.
Mr Edis said the state would likely need to add a further 3 million MWh of renewable energy into the system by 2025 to reach its 40 per cent target.
“That isn’t all that challenging when we consider that what has been committed to construction or contracted over just the past 12 months of 3.5 million MWh substantially exceeds that amount,” Mr Edis said…
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/industry-fears-40-per-cent-renewable-energy-target-will-push-up-power-prices-20170824-gy3j81.html
50
This proves that due to excess bureaucracy that has has been introduced and enforced in the last 100+ years (especially during both world wars) in Australia (my country of birth), combined with government’s price fixing of resources, that amounts of the latter were needlessly wasted. Prices usually show what resources are either scarce or plentiful. Price fixing by governments eroneously distorted those sound facts. Additionally, with the introduction of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and the Department of the Environment and Energy along with the these bureaucratic emissions caps (under the guise of the hoax called manmade climate change. Climate change is natural and is only caused by the sun.) and the bureaucratic hurdles, which have prevented cheaper competitors from entering the marketplace, it is no wonder that energy prices are excessively expensive. Here are my answers to this problem:
1. Scrap all energy related laws and emissions caps that were introduced and enforced from 100+ years ago to today!
2. Completely withdraw from the Paris climate treaty and the United Nations!
3. Abolish both the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and the Department of the Environment and Energy and replace them with NOTHING!
4. Scrap ALL energy related subsidies! Leave energy issues to the private sector ONLY! That is none of government’s business.
5. Privatise the energy sector!
6. Support of the most efficient and effective energy generation, with no options off the table. E.g. legalise und support Fracking.
Government is only good in wasting other people’s money. Let the market / the private sector take care of it! Who are the markets? We the people. Since we are the markets, there is a demand for a clean environment. How can that demand be achieved and sustained? Simple: By using your own resources wisely. Capitalism is the voluntary exchange of goods and services. What we have today is corporatism (economic fascism) which is the merger of state and corporate powers. Corporatism/Fascism, just like nazism, is a subset of the democidal cancer called socialism and is therefore left wing only. Corporatists, who hate competition, always need government to survive, and since they receive subsidies (tax payer’s money) by government, they waste resources.
As Senator Senator David Leyonhjelm once wrote on Facebook:
One of the most common phrases I hear is that privatisation is the cause of high power costs.
This is just plain wrong. If private companies deliberately put the prices up, it only increases the incentive for another company to create more affordable electricity. The more profit, the higher the incentive for competition. That’s how the free market works.
The real reason is government interference, subsidies, red tape and regulation that muddies the waters so much that it artificially raises prices. The worst distortions however are caused by State-owned companies that are not accountable to consumers, but are used as pawns to pay back Government debt.
100
IDEA! Let’s have a complete reformat and reinstal.
1. WA secedes from the Federation and declares itself the Independent Sovereign State of Westralia.
2. Westralia collects its own GST and keeps it within the country.
3. Westralia offers resident industry and individuals a tax free state for all revenues retained within the country,
GST being the sole tax or duty collected by government.
4. All levels of government, bureaucracy and quangoes funded by taxation are abolished,
their ‘duties’ devolved to private industry. A small National Organising Committee is retained.
5. Governance is conducted by Citizens Initiated Referenda.
6. Currency is issued digitally, backed by real assets ( gold, silver, nickel, copper, steel …)
7. Public works (infrastructure, services, energy, etc) are funded from the GST pool by private tender.
8. A cap is placed on annual immigration to control the flood of applicants 🙂
70
9. No seat is ever sought at the UN General assembly.
10
Look at the bright side, we will now have a second Renewable Energy Crash-test dummy. If you are going to do an experiment, it is always good to do it more than once to verify the results of the first experiment. The politicians likely consider anyone hurt by these experiments as regrettable but necessary collateral damage that must be incurred while they refine their policies to Save The World.
80
Whilst I blame primarily the Andrews government and the idiot voters who put them there, the Liberal Federal government has to shoulder a lot of the blame. By allowing alarmists to run the party they are complicit in the economic vandalism being undertaken by the States. We have an energy crisis of a magnitude that over the next summer when both Victoria and South Australia experiences blackouts the government should declare a state of emergency. The Liberals one minute chance to win the next election was to differentiate on energy policy but they are too indoctrinated by the climate cult to take the opportunity. We have to pray that an Australian Trump equivalent emerges to lead us out of this mess. I think the most we could hope for is that by some bizarre twist One Nation holds the balance of power and some sanity is injected into energy policy before it is too late. ( maybe it is already)
111
Where is TdeF? I think there would be some grounds for electricity consumers taking class actions agains the state government for inflicting financial loss for electricity purchasers through the operation of the RET. The evidence is clear now that:
1. Renewable generating capacity does not replace fossil fuel generation – there are many occasions when the sun is not shining and the air is still; probably 30% of nights fall into this category.
2. Renewable generated energy does cause a small reduction in fossil fuel consumption – less than many imagine as power plants need to be available to produce at short notice.
3. Renewable generating capacity displaces low cost, slow response coal fuelled generation with much higher cost gas fuelled generation causing dramatic increase in wholesale prices.
4. There has been no planning with gas supply infrastructure to cope with the increased demand for gas to supply power generation thereby stretching gas supplies and forcing costs to rise dramatically. A responsible government would ensure an orderly transition if such a transition was economic.
5. Purchase of LGCs at retail level is a direct cost to consumers Australia wide with a net transfer to SA.
The situation with the SA government locking in a price of $70/MWh for CSP intermittent generation for on-demand government consumption while the general consumer carries the can for all the extra costs of making dispatchable power plus paying for LGCs paid to the CSP really stinks. The real wholesale cost of power in SA will be around $500/MWh with the state government getting power to diverse commercial premises at $70/MWh is a great deception.
The details of the CSP is yet to unfold but there is already clear evidence that the RET is causing financial harm to many electricity consumers. It takes some understanding to appreciate why the costs are rising but this needs to be bought into the open. This is financial harm that is now occurring not some nebulous future loss forecast by the planet saviours. It would be great to see some hard evidence in the formality of a court room.
60
It would except for one problem. The judges are selected directly or indirectly as the politicians commuting their acts against the real interests of individuals. The courts themselves say they are not fit to judge the science but must rely on experts. Experts selected by the same or similar process that selected the self same politicians whom we wish to bring to justice. The whole scene is fixed from top to bottom to come to the concision that the only way to solve a real or imagined problem is to give government still more power and authority. Which leads to more of the same.
The only court that will judge carefully, justly, and fully is reality itself. Said judgement cannot be escaped. Our challenge is not to become collateral damage as the process plays out. In the best of circumstances, if the situation continues along the lines it currently is for long enough, the outcome will be grim for all.
It is sad to think that all we had to do to escape the pending consequences is to choose to think and work to earn our keep rather than ask the government to give us a free lunch for simply existing. You make your choices and, like it or not, the consequences happen.
70
As our schools move farther away from actually grading students lest their delicate little psyches be damaged, they fail to understand that life grades everyone. And life’s standards are far more harsh and cruel than any school ever thought of.
And the beauty of the thing is that the grades life hands out are given very publicly and visible for all to see because we can all see who is failing and who is succeeding.
How well are our governments doing according to life’s grading system?
70
By the standard the government uses, “the only good government is more”, they are doing great. They are increasing their take, decreasing the ability of the people to do anything about it, and escaping being held responsible for the damage they cause. That is until they run out of other people’s money. Then it is the people’s fault for not continuing to produce wealth in an unlimited supply. After all, the government “meant well”. Out come the boots, knives, whips, guns, and the like to force the people to deliver thereby making things still worse buy their own standards.
Now if you judge the consequences of government action beyond the range of the moment and by the standard of human flourishing, all but a few have to improve to get a grade as good as a fail. On a good day, those few who do pass, pass by a rather thin and decreasing margin.
In my opinion, they all have grown way beyond the bounds of a rational and useful government. Further, over 90% of what they do does more harm than good and should not be done by any government for any purpose. Especially when judged by both the seen and unseen consequences of their actions. They help pitifully few at the cost of huge harm to everyone else. It never ends well.
It is either political, economic, and intellectual freedom and life worth living or slavery and death. There is no third way.
40
Lionell,
You have no idea how bad it really is… …or maybe you do. But if I can manage to paste in a picture I’ll show you the least offensive example from an email I just received. And if not I’ll have to describe the contents of the message.
And I can’t get a picture in this comment from my system so-o-o-
The subject line says, “Mom, why can’t I get a job?”
And the rest of the message is pictures of some of the most extreme body piercing and so-called body art that I’ve ever seen. You meet some weird ones from time to time. But this starts to turn my stomach. The world used to take care of such people by not catering to them or enabling them, although a few did. But now the damned world is embracing this junk as normal and good.
The failure is obvious to you and me. But we’re dinosaurs soon to be extinct, much to the joy of the younger generation that wants pot, sex and music that isn’t musical, entertainment that has no plot except to blow things up or kill people. TV is leaning more and more toward nudity and a recent edition of TV Guide did a spread on it as a warning to parents.
And I confess, I was wrong. This is not insanity. It’s much worse than that. It’s corruption of the human soul, mind and spirit. We have jumped off a cliff into an abyss that goes so deep we can’t see the bottom.
I hope I’m gone before the bottom comes up and confronts everyone with the reality they have denied for so long.
50
So true. I am always amazed by the unemployed youths who don’t have any money, but somehow can afford cigarettes, tattoos, body piercings and drugs. Most disturbing stat I read was that 30 years ago 95% of men aged 18-65 had jobs, today it’s only 80%, with 20% living off the dole and disability pensions.
Human Services Minister Alan Tudge has set out a new approach to welfare reforms that impose drug tests on recipients, restrict payments to cashless debit cards and demand the return of money that recipients should not have received. He provided a blunt warning that ramping up spending and rolling out more services will not be enough to solve child neglect, homelessness and joblessness.
10
Roy, you chime exactly with my views on all this degradation. It is a rot throughout society. I just do not watch tv any more because I cannot stomach the offensive rubbish on it.
20
Annie @ # 40.1.1.1.2
You and me both, Annie!
10
Crime, Justice and the Media By Ian Marsh, Gaynor Melville
The more it changes, the more it remains the same.
10
Roy
That’s a wonderfully insightful comment.
There is however one observation that could draw comment: ” the grades life hands out are given very publicly and visible for all to see”.
That is quite true, life’s grades can be seen but the problem, at least as I see it, is that so many people can’t interpret or understand what it is they are seeing.
Politicians and media manage to control the perception of “facts” way too easily.
KK
20
KK,
You’re right, but see the comment I made to Lionell about, “Mom, why can’t I get a job?” And we have such people, those who can’t or won’t get a job in ever increasing numbers. And it’s not nearly all because of piercing everything in sight (and I’ve no doubt they do it to what’s not in sight) but because they can’t meet the qualifications for even easy jobs. And worse, because they can get away with flipping a finger at working altogether and live on welfare.
And they are becoming very visible because they become more and more of a burden. Politicians can only cover up the truth for so long before it pops up and bites them. That’s what got Donald Trump elected. Otherwise he wouldn’t have had a chance even as good as a snowball in a red hot furnace.
30
They have made their choices and they won’t like the outcome. They expect a magical someone will fix that which cannot be fixed. It can only be stopped. Stopping it takes a lot of thinking and even more very hard work. They are not willing to expend the thought or effort to do even a tiny bit of what needs to be done.
Follow this link for a nightmare vision of the future, if the current trend continues: Venezuela crisis has gone beyond politics. It is a nation that is imploding because of the lack of individual responsibility and the demand that the government take responsibility for taking care of them. The government took over and ran a once wealthy nation into the ground. It was inevitable. History is filled with many such events. They should have known.
No more free lunch and hardly any lunch at any price. They consumed the productive by confiscating their products and tools of production. Thereby making production no longer possible. They made their choice and the consequences happened. Reality has delivered justice to them such that they cannot escape. Brutal but, in my opinion, more than deserved.
20
Lionell mentions this: (my bolding here)
I seriously wonder just how these politicians will back down (and back down they will have to) when they finally realise that to actually keep things going, they have to have that electrical power generation in place that can actually keep their cities from becoming ‘dead zones’ without the power to keep them open. When you need 18000MW of dedicated 24 hour power just to keep things operational while nearly all of us are sound asleep, then there is only one source which can supply that.
It’s no good to do a considerable overbuild to supply the requisite power, because, as can be seen by wind power right now (440MW from a Nameplate of 4400MW) there will be times when even that supplies very little, and you need that total ALL THE TIME.
When that time to back down comes, those politicians will stand in front of the lectern with the media laid out in front of them, and the State Premier(s) or Prime Minister will look like a deer in the spotlight, eyes flicking left and right. They will say the words, the media will record it, go away and check for veracity, and then what happens next will be merciless, not because those politicians did not know, but because they failed to take advice on what really WAS required, and then act on that advice.
Tony.
50
Tony,
I sincerely hope that the day of reckoning comes while I’m still alive just for the pleasure of watching it happen, even though I’ll be caught up in it with the rest because from where I sit the problem looks intractable and ultimate collapse inevitable.
I want a little recompense for what’s happening. That seems to be all we can hope for the way things are going. When “Yes California” is actively soliciting me to join them in leaving the United States of America I know there is no sanity anywhere anymore in the halls of government. It’s sickening to read the email they send me.
10
And I just contradicted my earlier statement. But I want the fun of seeing them go down in flames.
10
Sadly reality is often escaped by lying and denial as in the SA blackouts. It only has to last long enough for a clean getaway and pension pick up. Or there is the Musk approach, not working out well? LOOK! SQUIREL! over there! its fantastic!
30
Personal experience here is that we, the average person in Australia can no longer afford to pay what is demanded by the legal proffession to correct an injustice or to go to through a highly restrictive legal and Court process.
40
Isn’t a higher price better than a lower one? After all, this is the insane world inside some padded cell somewhere that we’re now living in.
I’d really like that sane world back but no one seems to know where it went or how to find it.
To paraphrase Ms. Bo Peep — you all remember her I’ve no doubt. Her solution was excellent, needing no action whatsoever. Ad that’s what we’re doing, no action…
60
Wustralia has fallen into the hands of The Wreckers, one Party pretending to be several.
50
When the system fails, they’ll blame it on corporations and nationalize them.
60
Perhaps the most tragic aspect of this whole disaster is that the state government liberal party believes in global warming and that we must convert to wind and solar. They also voted to ban fracking and conventional gas drilling.
I predict that one day they will realise there are mega votes in store for the party who promises to stop the madness and restore cheap electricity.
100
They’re insane !
50
In reply to jorgekafkazar I am old enough to remember when the Queensland Government and Councils owned all of the generation and distribution.
We had reliable cheap power and politicians had a vested interest in maintaining this – today they have been able to wash their hands of responsibility.
Free enterprise and “competition” delivered nothing but higher pricing from assets the public used to own and then this climate insanity kicked in to accelerate the process.
That said – They’re insane !
100
Yes indeed. One has to wonder then if the politicians of today in both major parties have decided (either separately or collectively) to destroy this once great nation for whatever purpose. I find it hard to believe anyone of consequence in any area, be it politics, business, science or whatever can be so stupid and dumb to allow things to continue as they are now for so long. Either that or we have to believe the voters are so stupid to keep voting for them, which is the more plausible explanation. Simply put we get the government we deserve.
50
In Los Angeles, California the city owns the Department of Water and Power. The city figured out that the DWP was a cash cow they could milk for money. And Los Angeles has higher priced electricity than that provided by the privately owned Edison company in surrounding cities. That’s not to say that the state hasn’t learned how to milk both DWP and Edison customers but the plain fact stands for itself, city and county owned utilities are not accountable to the public utilities commission, being city owned so they can do as they damned well please while the voters appear to be afraid to throw out those who are responsible for efficient operation of DWP, their city council members and the mayor.
Our other mistake was to let the state get it’s hands on the distribution and generation system. I think you in Australia call it a stuff up.
But either way you stack it my Edison bill needs an accountant to figure it out… charge for this, charge for that, charge for… ad nauseam.
30
An article (Paywalled) in todays Australian sums up the problem we have in Australia today.
A shortage of ‘real-world’ experience on Labor’s frontbench is fuelling concerns about its blue-collar base.
30
Dopey Dan, you’ve done it again!
41
This madness will not stop until regular blackouts begin.
50
Most Green policies are environmental disasters. Masses of dead fish due to closure of Hazelwood and cooling off of pondage.
http://www.latrobevalleyexpress.com.au/story/4661219/tilapia-dead-at-pondage/
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-17/sick-barramundi-from-hazelwood-pondage-disposed-of-in-cull/8714224
41
The New York Times recently reported that some 1,600 (sixteen hundred) new coal-fired electricity plants are under construction or are planned around the world out there. So, what contribution do the 27 Oz plants make to CO2 global emissions?
Reality Check: My calculations based on estimates from four different authorities shows a proportion somewhere in the range between 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 10,000:
As a proportion of total global emissions of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels, Australian coal fired electricity generation contributes only about 0.04%, or, only about 0.01% of all of the multiple sources of CO2 emissions globally.
Data and arithmetic as follows [source]:
Share of all global CO2 emissions from all global electricity plants = 25% (in 2014) [1]
Share of all global electricity generation from coal fired = 45.9% (in 2014) [2]
Net global share of CO2 emissions from coal-fired plants = 11.5% (in 2014) [1] + [2]
Australian share of global emissions of CO2 = 1.23% (2015) [3]
Proportion of that 1.23% from electrical plants = 34.2% (YTD March 2017) [4]
Proportion of that 35.2% from coal burning = 78% (YTD June 2017) [5]
Thus:
Australian net contribution to total global emissions of CO2 from coal fired plants as a proportion of global burning of all fuels is roughly 11.5% x 1.23% x 35.2% x 78%….. roughly equals 0.04%
Or:
As a percentage of total global emissions of CO2, Australian coal fired electricity contributes only roughly 0.01%
[1] International Energy Agency
[2] USA EPA citing the IPCC
[3] European Commission Research
[4] Australian Department of Environment and Energy
Are Oz pollies aware of the futility of their efforts to save the world?
Bob Fernley-Jones
41
It’s not about “saving the planet”. It’s about money and power. Facts and figures are of no consequence to those elected into government, present and near future.
70
‘Are Oz pollies aware of the futility of their efforts to save the world?’
No, the herd mentality is alive and well.
50
So there will no longer be any tram services in Melbourne after dark? Perhaps they will introduce pedal power to the trams for those keen to get home after the sun goes down.
60
Cloudy days may also be a problem.
30
Some puzzlement here on my behalf!
I have wondered for some time now about the almost total lack of any rational set of reasons being provided these days in the media releases and the media for the politicals close to fanatical attempts to force our society into using the so called and grandiosely misnamed Renewable Energy as the power source for our [ temorarily if the politicals get their way ] “advanced” and industrialised western society.
There simply seems to no longer be any reasons given as to why we should be forced to use renewable energy and pay truly near criminal extortionist rates and charges for that energy.
The only reason sometimes mentioned these days is that the coal fired generators, coal being the villian here, have to be shut down.
But where are the actual explanations and rational reasons and hard data to back up the politician’s fanatical push to shut fdown coal and force us to use the renewable energy without independent and comparitive data that would provide the reasons for the politicals fanaticsm’ of this anti coal drive.
OK! I know in asking this I sound somewhat naive as the politicals are as we know incredibly ignorant about most things that runa society and civilisation, most particularly what are the true and actual drivers for a civilisation’s advancement .
Grand corruption, gross ignorance, unlimited arrogance and hubris along with a communistic type power grab are now starting to be seen by the public as being at the center of this politically enforced drive to renewable energy and nothing in the way of real world hard earned experience and technical knowledge and consideration for the people and their lives and living standards and society at large are involved.
60
Try starting from the axiom that “Coal is a Crime against Humanity” and the scales will fall from thine eyes.
20
The question to be demanded of the politicians now, is not about electricity and the grid, but how do they propose to defend the nation?
Without the electricity available to run the industry to support the manufacturing, how do they propose to defend the nation?
Much of that industry was developed over WWII to make munitions and were regarded as key defence industries after the outbreak of peace. Now, can the nation be defended at all? For more than a day?
If it can’t, could they, the architects of this developing catastrophe, be removed for treason?
30
8,000 – sounds impressive as told by The National (the low-selling newspaper that supports an independent Scotland), but it’s really an organised group:
23 Aug: TheNationalScotland: Kathleen Nutt: Holyrood warned to move faster in Climate Change Bill aiming to reduce toxic emissions
More than 8000 people responded to the Scottish Government’s consultation on its Climate Change Bill calling for zero toxic emissions by 2050, and a 77 per cent decrease by 2030.
They say the current aim for a 63.5 per cent reduction by 2030, which the Bill proposes to increase to 66 per cent by 2030, and then to 90 per cent by 2050, does not go far enough.
Tom Ballantine, chair of environmental coalition Stop Climate Chaos Scotland (SCCS), which wrote to the First Minister last week, said: “In 2009 Scotland was setting the pace internationally when we agreed our climate targets but now people are urging the Scottish Government to keep the country on the leaderboard on this issue.
“The urgency of the climate crisis has grown in the intervening years and Scots want to see more done to ensure we continue to deliver leading action.” …
“The most up to date climate science clearly demonstrates that we need to rapidly cut emissions if we are to avoid catastrophic temperature increases and irreversible change…
“Our climate plans should deliver real action to make every home a warm home, stop the sale of fossil-fuelled vehicles by the end of the next decade and provide help for farmers to go greener.
“The additional benefits of acting now are many: a reduction in deadly air pollution, less fuel poverty, reducing local environmental pollution from agriculture along with the economic advantage gained by leading rather than following.”
Research from WWF Scotland recently revealed that 68 per cent of Scots want to see the government invest in projects that cut emissions, with 76 per cent wanting to see more done to improve the energy efficiency of homes…
Transport is the biggest polluter, responsible for 27 per cent of emissions, followed by agriculture which accounts for 22.5 per cent…
Last month the UK Government announced a ban on diesel and petrol car sales from 2040. The Scottish Government had previously pledged to reduce sales of fossil-fuelled vehicles to just 60 per cent by 2032, but SCCS wants the phase out of the sale of new fossil fuel cars by 2030…
***The 8000 responses calling for more ambitions targets have been submitted through a range of organisations including Oxfam, Christian Aid, Friends of the Earth and WWF.
http://www.thenational.scot/news/15489153.Holyrood_warned_to_move_faster_in_Climate_Change_Bill_aiming_to_reduce_toxic_emissions/
Wikipedia: Stop Climate Chaos Scotland (SCCS) is a coalition of organisations in Scotland that are campaigning on climate change, including trade and student unions, environmental and international development organisations, faith and community groups. The coalition has close links with the Stop Climate Chaos coalition in London although it is a separately constituted organisation.
Stop Climate Chaos Scotland played a key role in the development of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009, the strongest climate change legislation in the world…
As Scotland’s own emissions account for only a relatively small percentage of the global total, SCCS is also working with civil society groups in other countries to promote the Scottish climate change example…
Member organisations include….SEE LIST, WHICH ALSO INCLUDES CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, GREENPEACE, ETC
See also Stop Climate Chaos (UK) Members (LINK)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Climate_Chaos_Scotland
the sooner these non-taxpaying, well-funded NGOs stop being quoted on CAGW the better.
50
recently I posted this about Paris-based Greenwish:
21 Aug: WaPo/Bloomberg: Solar Telecom Company Calls Ex-Morgan Stanley Manager to Africa
GreenWish Partners, a renewable energy company run by a former Morgan Stanley executive (Charlotte Aubin-Kalaidjian), is planning to invest $800 million on solar-powered telephone towers across Africa…
She raised $20 million in June 2015, largely from African investors such as the Senegalese sovereign wealth fund. A year later, she raised $250 million, counting Boston-based private equity firm Denham Capital Management LP among her investors…
GreenWish expects to raise debt from a combination of commercial banks and development institutions such as the Overseas Private Investment Corp, the African Development Bank, KfW and FMO of the Netherlands…
it all sounds like some nice bunch of philanthropists, but it’s fascinating to click on the photos on their Team page, then scroll down where bio appears, to see all their connections, e.g:
Greenwish – Team
Strategic Advisors includes:
Paulo Gomes: He has served at the World Bank Group as an Executive Director where he represented 24 Sub-Saharan African countries…
Paulo is engaged in several organizations, including the Green Climate Fund.
Hassan Ba previously worked in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations in New-York. http://www.greenwishpartners.com/team/
LinkedIn: Paulo Gomes: Member of the Board, Green Climate Fund, January 2013 – Present
Executive Director, World Bank Group, October 1998 – November 2006
big banks, EDF, lots of other connections.
00
OT,
Just to show how screwed up this country is. A guy comes from Iraq and gets a protection visa. Gains employment as a hair dresser and so pays taxes and contributes to society.
After 3.5 years his visa expires so he can no longer work, has no access to medicare, cannot hold a drivers license etc, etc, etc.
So OK thems the rules but the government can’t send him back to Iraq. He can stay here in perpetuity we cannot send him back.
The question then becomes why do this to him in the first place?
I could understand if he was a dole bludger living on the gov teat but this is insane. Typical incompetent gov and the incompetence is across the board it is in every facet of government and so here we are discussing the erection of tourist attractions in Vic and SA
20
So how did he arrive?
If on a people smuggler vessel (Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel) he was an illegal immigrant, no passport or visa.
Did he arrive when Labor were using RAN ships to ferry boat people to Christmas Island and allowing them to settle in our country.
So, he is one of less than 10% who are not Centrelink clients.
Maybe he should have taken the UN Convention route or applied to migrate?
20
And so it is starting, the beginning of the end of the Renewable Energy honeymoon.
Despot Andrews and Whirling Windless Weatherall are about 15 years to late to the Renewable Energy honeymoon party so as to get a real bit of good party high jinks
By the time they get their renewables energy tax guzzling , economy destroying pet renewabl energy projects up and running , at least running every now and then we hope, the rest of the world will be well along the way towards getting a divorce from the sordid renewable energy stand over mob.
From The GWPF
IS THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION WAKING UP TO ELECTRICITY CONSUMER PAIN?
10
How does the climate change if the temperature doesn’t change?
Click bait Climate Change in the Telegraph. Biologists warn.. “Grizzly bears go vegetarian due to climate change, choosing berries over salmon”
Now how sensitive are Grizzly bears! They have completely changed their diet because of a 0.5 degree change in 50 years in an average, maybe? In a swing which is ten times as large. So who needs scientists? We should ask the bears about the future of the world’s climates, which is of course all bad. Just when all the world’s scientists are struggling to find any change at all, the bears know all. Must be. Scientist biologists.
20
Let’s put Australia’s energy policy in football terms … Own goal after own goal .
Easy to understand the plight of countries lacking their own resources but self inflicted
economic suicide and citizen abuse is really rather sad .
Australia isn’t the only one drinking the cool- aid but the sheer stupidity conflicts with the smart common sense
approach the wonderful people of Australia usually are able to muster .
Sometimes things need to get bad before they get better . The voters will eventually sort it out .
10
are you collecting clichés?
01