And what happens when that renewable drought is 1 terawatt hour?

Australia has added more unreliable wind and solar than anywhere on Earth but when an energy crisis strikes, and those prices are still on fire, the solution is more of the same.

Senator Matt Canavan, The Australian

Map, Australia, Victoria, Vic.

As rest of the world wakes up on coal, we’re closing it down

Perhaps Australia’s broken electricity system is due to this mad rush towards renewable energy? No, according to our energy regulator, “Recent international events and Australian market events have further strengthened the case for the shift to renewables.”

The renewable energy investments must continue until morale improves.

[The energy regulator’s] recent analysis shows that Victoria could experience a “renewable drought” of 1 terawatt hour of electricity over just one week in the future.

How much is 1TWh? Well, the South Australian big battery can produce 130 megawatt hours, so we would need more than 7500 of these to keep the Victorian lights on. At about $100m a pop, that is a total cost of more than $700bn, or more than Victoria’s total annual economic output.

This winter’s energy shortfalls came just after the Liddell coal-fired power station in NSW’s Hunter Valley shut a 400MW unit in April. Its other three units (a total of 1200MW) will shut next April. Then, in 2025, Australia’s largest coal-fired power station, Eraring, also in the Hunter, is due to shut.

By the end of the decade, our energy regulators warn, almost two-thirds of our coal-fired power could shut.

And Victoria is just one state.

Indeed, across the world there are 345 new coal-fired power stations being built. What is the argument against Australia building just a few to guarantee our energy supplies?

A new ultra-supercritical coal-fired power station built in Australia would increase our emissions by about five million tonnes a year. That would mean global emissions would go up by 0.014 per cent. The world has warmed around 1C after 600 billion tonnes of emissions. So this new coal-fired power station may increase the temperature by 0.0001 of a degree over its life.

Yet we are told a new coal-fired power station would worsen climate change and create more bushfires, floods and all manner of other natural disasters. These arguments are nonsensical yet go unchallenged in polite society.

Matt Canavan is a Liberal National Party senator for Queensland and deputy leader of the Nationals in the Senate.

9.9 out of 10 based on 114 ratings

203 comments to And what happens when that renewable drought is 1 terawatt hour?

  • #
    Simon Thompson

    BTW the Battery has a life span of ten years. The most scary mis-allocation of capital imaginablr, but quite compatible with Dictator Dan’s world view!!!!

    480

    • #

      The mining industry is required to put up a bond to cover the expense of rehabilitation should they go bust. The renewable industry (solar/wind/batteries) should also be required to put up a bond in cold, hard cash to cover the cost of removing/recycling/rehabilitating their projects should they go bust as well.

      Then we will see how sustainable they are.

      640

    • #
      Dennis

      For the investor, buy electricity cheaply from wind installations when the wind blows when the grid does not need that electricity.

      Sell the electricity for a substantial profit when the grid is failing.

      40

      • #
        ian+hilliar

        how big is your battery, Dennis?

        40

      • #
        Ted1

        If only we could!

        That’s the theory.

        But what does it cost to do this?

        00

      • #
        Graeme#4

        That concept won’t work for a home solar system, so why should it work for a large-scale battery? You could say that battery costs should be less for a large-scale battery battery, but there is no proof that there is any substantial significant difference. And the battery lifetimes are going to be the same.

        10

    • #
      yarpos

      mmmm its not a one time or even long lasting investment. It would need replacing within peoples memory spans, but perhaps long enough for the decision makers to be collecting their indexed State and Parliamentary pensions so all good.

      30

  • #
    Rafe+Champion

    A bit more about so-called “big” batteries from the Energy Realists of Australia. (Not from the government but here to help anyway!)

    BIG BATTERIES AINT BIG as Matt Canavan said.

    One of the misconceptions about batteries in the early days was the idea that the capacity would grow according to Moore’s Law for data storage – doubling every couple of years. Not so for power storage.

    We are told all the time that prices are plummeting and they may have halved since the Hornsdale was built but they bottomed out last year and now the price is on the way up as supply chain issues arise for the rare earths.

    670

    • #
      ColA

      You don’t realize how useless batteries and unreliables until you look at energy densities and power scales.

      Check the chart at the bottom of the page
      https://www.pbp.ie/is-nuclear-power-a-source-of-green-energy-what-are-the-alternatives/

      https://i2.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2017/11/Electricity-Scale.jpeg

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      • #
        ColA

        We need to keep asking 2 questions;

        1) HOW are you going to do it? and

        2) HOW much will it cost?

        And make sure that everyone knows when they don’t answer these questions with facts!

        410

        • #
          the sting

          Yes ! The key to reeducating the young people , and others , is to ask questions . They are not listening to facts but if you ask questions , like yours , they may begin to think .

          161

        • #
          FarmerDoug2

          1. “How …” Have windmills and solar panels.
          2. “. .. cost” Doesn’t matter.

          Ball back in your (my, our) court.

          Been there, asked that. Then the discussion will go to local government funding for roads.. or something almost irrelevant.

          Recent times, though, there seems to be more beginning to see that windmills aren’t fixing it and the cost might matter. Maybe I’m selecting my company. Or the company deselecting me?

          Doug

          80

      • #
        Tel

        The fixation with energy density only matters for mobile batteries like EV’s and even then only if you want to drive across the country on one charge.

        For a stationary battery in a shed, energy density is largely irrelevant. Only two things matter:
        * Cost.
        * Reliability.

        Batteries have the advantage of being faster than most other energy storage methods, because there’s no thermodynamic conversion process in the middle. They have the disadvantage that they cost a lot and none of the current battery designs will last more than about 10 years in service. If costs come down enough (and they will surely come down over time) then reliability does not matter as much because they can easily be replaced. Current recycling capacity is also rather poor … but at least we see some effort to recycle batteries.

        The trouble is that politicians want to thumb the scale and push this stuff out before it’s really ready. We have at least another 100 years worth of coal, so the urgency of rushing to a clunky overpriced solution shows complete lack of any strategic thinking.

        Consider Malcolm Turnbull’s push for everyone to go onto compact fluorescent lighting … those were junk lights … overpriced, unreliable, and toxic to dispose of, but LED lighting came out a little while later. If Turnbull had simply done nothing at all, the CF lights would have been a failed experiment … and the LED lights (safer, cheaper, more reliable, more efficient) would have naturally rolled out without political interference.

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        • #
          Lawrie

          I accept your premise but to replace the output of Bayswater for a week would require 7500 SA batteries and as they only last 10 years we would need 6 times as many over the life of a coal power station. At the current price that is 4.5 trillion dollars whereas a new Bayswater would cost about 3 billion. Even if batteries get somewhat cheaper they are still much much dearer than a new power station. Bowen might be surprised to learn that a nuclear power station is also much cheaper than storage and transmission although that gives him credit for the ability to think logically which is probably a bridge too far.

          220

          • #
            Chad

            A battery of any size and capacity, can never replace a power station .
            It is equivalent to saying a bucket can replace a mains water tap supply !
            Batteries are storage only, …they have to be charged first.
            power stations are continuous generators.

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      • #
        Graeme#4

        An interesting graph Col. Of course, the graph doesn’t factor in the relative CFs. If it did, the comparison would be more stark.

        30

    • #
      yarpos

      With the current technology set we (meaning mankind globally) do not have a grid scale, effective, affordable and widely deployable storage solution.

      People (politicians and media mainly) talk about storage and batteries in the one breath and totally mislead the public. Current battery installations have effectively zero to do with providing energy to the grid. They are there for stability.

      Cannon Brookes thinks he has it solved with the Singapore extension cord. Lets see shall we? The wannabe Elon Musk is a slow motion train wreck.

      30

    • #
      Ted1

      It doesn’t have to match Moore’s Law to be viable. Part way could do it.

      First, what is this word “battery”? In this lexicon it is an assemblage of similar connected cells.

      But what is happening in each cell?

      To date we have been using cells which function by various chemical actions.

      I don’t see any likelihood of these cells emulating Moore’s Law in regard to production costs.

      But what of supercapacitors?

      They might.

      10

  • #
    Petros

    Canavan has been great on coal and the renewables con. Not much use on the Covid fiasco.

    204

  • #
    Harves

    Not a single journalist has the courage or integrity to ask any “expert”, “So, can you explain why Matt Canavan had said is wrong?

    252

  • #
    Ed Zuiderwijk

    The medieval mindset.

    If the bloodletting doesn’t work, then, obviously, more bloodlettings are called for.

    470

    • #
      ian+hilliar

      Exactly. Just like the church in the middle ages, our modern day medieval greens believe their dogma, and anyone who does not agree and confirm must be [snip] excommunicated and silenced. Have been reading Bernard Cornwall’s excellent Uhtred saga, after binging the netflix Last Kingdom series, and the parallels are all there. Unfortunately, our education and political systems have reinforced this nonsense to the extent that the World Economic Forum and the World Bank can pressure a country like Sri Lanka to ban pesticides and fertilizers, with the inevitable outcome. Now the Netherlands is trying to ban fertilizers, against the protests of farmers. Fertilisers , pesticides , and plastics created the green revolution that saved billions of lives, when Ehrlich (The Population Bomb) and his “profits of doom” were forecasting mass worldwide starvation, and calling for immediate end for aid for India, whose population was already doomed and beyond saving. India now exports food. I never thought this Medieval Green Madness could continue this long, but the world of politics continues to disappoint. Plaudits to Matt Canavan, for stating the bleeding obvious to the curia.

      10

    • #
      Ted1

      Bloodletting as in Ukraine.

      00

  • #
    Ken Stewart

    I watched The carbon Movie on ABC last night for a while. The first part was good but then came the misinformation and I switched off when the tree hugging started.
    They mentioned that a lump of coal was stored solar energy, but no one said how much compared with solar or wind energy. (Clue: ginormous.)

    370

  • #
    Penguinite

    It’s ludicrous even to think that Australia, by building a coal-fired power station to replace the current ageing capacity, will negatively affect so-called global warming. This is dumb political egotism writ large! We can all see what these inane policies have done to Europe and the USA but still, we blunder on. Matt Canavan knows!

    540

    • #
      Graeme No.3

      Especially if the newer technology coal-fired power station had lower emissions than the older one it replaced.
      But the real problem is the privileged position of renewables, being able to disrupt reliable supply and being subsidised to do so.

      440

    • #
      Daffy

      The rough figures about putative contribution to global temperature (whatever that is physically…) seem to make the assumption that atmospheric concentration of CO2 has a linear effect on temperature. As I understand, in the lab. the temperature effect of increasing CO2 is logarithmic, so it becomes less and less the more there is, until almost no effect discernible for vast increases. So, beyond a certain concentration of CO2 (if it has the effect claimed, and that’s another rag doll to shake), increases are meaningless for average global temperature. Thus to follow the sage advice of the Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy DON’T PANIC.

      220

      • #
        Graeme No.3

        Daffy:
        The Beer-Lambert Law. Known for over 100 years. Was used by Guy Callendar in 1938 in his paper printed in The Artificial Production of Carbon Dioxide and Its Influence on Temperature.” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 64 (1938): 223–240.

        His graph (maybe from another paper) shows this effect, with much less temperature rise as the level of CO2 increased.
        Even by 600 p.p.m. he thought that the temperature rise wouldn’t get to 2℃
        I can send you a .pdf copy (via Jo) if you want.

        This explains why those giant (warm blooded) dinosaurs didn’t die of heat stroke even at 6 times the current level.

        40

      • #
        PeterPetrum

        Quite correct. Basically the concentrations have to be doubled each time to achieve the same “greenhouse” effect, so if increasing the levels, say, from 300ppm to 400ppm achieves a 1degC rise in temperature the concentrations would have to go up to 600ppm for the next 1degC and up to 1000ppm for the next degree, or so I understand. Obviously, the chances of that happening in any short time frame, based on human emissions alone, is very unlikely.

        30

      • #
        Old Goat

        Daffy,
        Trouble is the Vogons are in charge….

        20

      • #

        Actually CO2 has no effect on atmospheric temperatures. CO2 only absorbes radiation in a small wavelength range around 14.7 micron which according to Wien’s Distribution law is around 200K which is at the outer edge of the atmosphere where it radiates to space as has been found by satellites. The amount of radiation absorption is close to zero because 1/ the wavelength range is small and it is practically not emitted by the Earth Surface which has a peak wavelength around 10 micron (equivalent of about 288K) 2/ there is practically zero amount of CO2 in the atmosphere compared to other radiation absorbing gases (mainly H2O). Then there is another factor the second law of thermodynamics with the lapse rate (6.5K reduction for every 1000m of height from the surface which means any radiation absorbing gas in the atmosphere can only radiate to space -this is also measured by satellites.

        60

        • #
          Kalm Keith

          Good; and that completely demolishes this false Climate Change concept.

          A simple thermodynamic analysis of the progress of the supposedly “dangerous” ground origin InfraRed up through the atmosphere to the upper, upper atmosphere proves conclusively that Nothing Happens which could be taken as Global Warming.

          First they came for our Industry; Demolished.

          Then they smashed our reliable, relatively cheap electricity generation system.

          Right now they are gloating that we have stood by while they used the CV19 monster to imprison us, smash small businesses, destroy the education of our youngsters, damage us physically with VaXXines all while They took our taxes to get filthy rich.

          Evil is active among us and is the greatest Evil ever known.

          KK

          30

        • #
          Graeme No.3

          And the NASA satellite measuring “long wave radiation” from the upper atmosphere says that this has been increasing.
          What you might expect from simple thermodynamics Warmer Planet, more radiation of extra heat; but NASA claims this extra radiation “proves” that CO2 is trapping heat.

          20

          • #
            PeterPetrum

            Counter intuitive, I think!

            10

          • #
            Kalm Keith

            It just shows how idiotic they are. That “escaping” radiation is known as PWIR and has essentially no power left for anything. Measuring it is dumb.

            00

  • #
    Kalm Keith

    Government and Union “investments” in renewables doesn’t leave any room to manoeuvre.

    To accept the stark reality of the failure of renewables is to condemn super funds to oblivion.

    So we must continue the race to the cliff.

    Greed triumphs again.

    350

    • #
      Lawrie

      But the renewable collapse will come one day soon. It will be interesting to see the super funds scurry to protect the trustees, not so much the beneficiaries. There are a bunch of banks that could see major changes at the top as woke execs are shown to be just stupid. Much safer to have your own SMSF and run it yourself. We give far too much credit to so called fund managers who for the most part make money when things are good and lose when it it goes pear shaped just like anyone else. Why pay someone to get the same result you could manage.

      140

    • #
      yarpos

      So does anybody know of Superfunds that are non woke/ESG?

      What are the options for retired folks? does it basically come down to self managed super ?

      I know my Super fund (wokus maxmimus) still provides direct customers controlled Share investment, so that is one path. However if you diversify at all into and Fund style investment it is likely that they are infected.

      I have been moving very slowly towards precious metals for diversity. If I was richer I would happily dump half my worth in it today, but I still need regular income.

      10

  • #
    David Maddison

    Australia has gone so far down the track of unreliables insanity that it is basically impossible for any politician, public serpent, “scientist” or “engineer” who supported or supports this nonsense to admit they have made a mistake.

    No matter what the facts, such as the obvious fact that more unreliables always means higher consumer electricity cost, the psychology involved does not allow them to admit error.

    In any case, we know the true reason, known only to the Elites and present company, not the useful idiots of the Elites, behind unreliables is the destruction of Western Civilisation.

    If an engineer makes a design mistake causing a disaster such as a bridge collapse or plane crash their are repercussions such as legal action.

    What are the consequences of designing a fundamentally defective and unreliable energy system whose high cost has caused massive economic damage and when it goes down will cost lives as well as economic damage?

    460

    • #
      David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

      Consequences? Not sure whether the answer is zilch, or promotion.
      Cheers
      Dave B

      140

    • #
      Graham Richards

      All others have “ duty of care” but the governments &/ or ministers are immune from prosecution ???

      Same as immunity for big pharma & government for the Covid vaccines???

      60

  • #
    Eng_Ian

    An alternative storage, one that has been promoted as the solution to the problem, Snowy 2, it has a rated storage capacity of 350 GWHr, which is about 1/3 of a TWHr.

    So it won’t supply VicDanistan for the week. It also has the limitation that it can only supply at 2000 MW, compare this to the winter demand rate peak of around 8000 MW, clearly this storage was not designed to provide reliable power to even one state. And what happens when that blocking weather pattern repeats for weeks at a time, like it is doing currently.

    Now picture this, Snowy 2 can only supply that power when the top lake is full to the brim and the lower lake is sufficiently drained to allow it to flow in without causing overflow, this is unlikely to ever occur and has caused problems in recent weeks with Snowy 1. After draining the top lake fully, yes fully, it will result in a puddle with smelly mud banks and no potential for a recreational lake, (one of its current uses), what are the locals going to do? Where did those introduced fish go?

    And the recharge time…. 350 GWHr / 2000 MW = 175 hours = 7.3 days and that is allowing for NO LOSSES, I’d edge my bets and say it would be closer to 10 days. Adding salt to the wound, the last time I looked, the windmills never produced a spare 2000 MW for 7 days straight. So how is this going to be refilled? Have they ever?

    PS, if Snowy 2, which is costing an absolute fortune and is located in potentially the best possible site, can’t meet the demand for just one state, what is going to do the real work of providing that power to meet the real demand. And that’s before the electric cars kick in.

    I’m waiting for the minister of blackouts to provide a worked answer. I don’t expect it, I’d also love to see what solutions AEMO has in mind. This is not going to end well. When will this end, will it be after the blackouts, will be after the pitchforks and torches?

    410

    • #
      David Maddison

      The Snow Hydro 2 disaster is a perfect example of why politicians shouldn’t be allowed to make engineering decisions.

      360

      • #
        Zane

        It is a disaster for financial reasons. What’s needed in government is a good cost accountant. They exist, but the politicians ignore them and are too busy spending the windfall billions from stamp duty on houses and the GST bounty from Canberra.

        90

      • #
        Dennis

        Look at the history, Snowy 02 pumped hydro electricity was part of the original Snowy Mountains Hydro Electricity Scheme design but later abandoned because the costs far exceeded the benefits and presented major engineering problems at the proposed site.

        The Snowy Mountains are not stable as was highlighted when the Thredbo Village disaster took place, a lodge slipped downhill due to a build up of stormwater and other sources building up behind the wall inside the excavation into which the lodge was built. The building slid on muddy rocky ground. Polish engineers who built the original Thredbo Village used only pole foundations, never excavating the hillside. The main road above Thredbo Village added to the water problems of seepage. One elderly Polish engineer interviewed after the lodge disaster also said that Parks & Wildlife added to the problems poisoning and otherwise removing the willow trees planted to drain the soil when the original Thredbo Village was built.

        Many construction workers lost their lives during construction of the Snowy Mountains Scheme when gravel roads gave way and the vehicles they were in crashed down the side of the hill.

        So Snowy 02 is not a new plan.

        And by the way, $6 billion of the cost blowout was paid to the State Governments that held shares in Snowy Hydro, their demand in return for the required State planning approval, development application approval, etc.

        The original Federal Government proposal for Snow Hydro took more than ten years to negotiate with the States.

        80

    • #
      Graeme#4

      Well done. An excellent analysis of the types of problems that can occur. And it hasn’t even been built yet…

      50

    • #
      yarpos

      Snowy 2 is one off show pony BS (and that is being kind). We need a widely deployable storage solution. ATM there is none.

      20

  • #
    John Hultquist

    I just checked the populations and the 25M people of OZ could move to India and the 1.4B people there would hardly notice. The OZ to India ratio is 0.0184, sort of.
    Okay, there may be better destinations, but don’t wait until you are the one to turn out the lights and lock the door.
    I have a spare room for the right person.

    150

    • #
      David Maddison

      Indians aren’t forced to use unreliables so pay only a third of what Aussies do for electricity.

      U.S. Dollar per kWh Domestic 0.076 Commercial 0.104

      https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/India/electricity_prices/

      Also, if Aussies did want to go there, immigration issues aside, with money, you can live a Western-style life there, just like the million or so US dollar millionaire Indians.

      70

      • #
        Kalm Keith

        So, both India and Indonesia each have inherently greater disposable wealth and we dumb Australians believe that they need our condescending donations.

        Why don’t we ask those in the Northern Territory if perhaps our Governments could provide some input and guidance to Fix the immense social catastrophe there.

        No worries mate, out of sight out of mind.
        They would rather spend a week in New York donating our taxes to the UNIPCCC for use in those poor countries and come home with swelled heads.

        Like CO2 in the atmosphere our Humanitarian gifts are purely Tokenism.

        The only area in which Australia demonstrates superiority is in our Gullibility.

        KK

        180

        • #
          Ronin

          “They would rather spend a week in New York donating our taxes to the UNIPCCC for use in those poor countries and come home with swelled heads.”

          Absolutely correct, the rot starts right at the very top, they need to have something for ‘show and tell’ at these g? meetings and UN galas, that’s why they just can’t bring themselves to realize they are flogging a dead horse.

          80

        • #
          Dennis

          When I researched this several years ago there were over 40 million well off consumers in Indonesia, and many more very poor people.

          40

      • #
        James Murphy

        The Australian branch of the company I work for, used to take the best people from the local technical college every year, with occasional university graduates. This worked for the most part, with extra staff brought in from overseas when it was urgent.
        Since being taken over by another company, they decreed that only university graduates would be hired, and now, almost the entire workforce is expat, majority from India, working on rotation, being paid (hopefully, but unlikely) the same as an Australian citizen, while living in India. The competition for positions is incredible, and the number of fake certifications is equally amazing, because the pay is good for Australia, so, is pretty amazing for India.
        The competition is so fierce that where we used to have a pretty egalitarian system, and senior people were mostly very happy to teach junior people new skills and help them progress, now it’s every man for himself, and junior people are not taught anything in case they threaten the positions of more senior people. It’s really disappointing and is killing quality of service, amongst other things.

        However, bad working culture aside, I don’t blame people for being very keen to do a legitimate high skill job and get paid very well for it.

        40

    • #
      JoKaH

      but don’t wait until you are the one to turn out the lights and lock the door

      Would there be any lights still on to turn out?

      80

    • #
      yarpos

      I’ve been to India. There is no way I am moving there. There is a good reason you see so many Indians resident in other countries around the world.

      10

  • #
    David Maddison

    Don’t forget the Dunning Kruger effect.

    There is a lot of that going on in the anthropogenic global warming scam.

    There’s probably also a fair bit of group think.

    https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/11/18/16670576/dunning-kruger-effect-video

    QUOTE

    Why incompetent people often think they’re actually the best

    There’s a psychological phenomenon behind it: the Dunning-Kruger effect.

    Maybe you’ve experienced this at school or work before: Dealing with someone who thinks he’s much better at his job than he really is. This can not only be really annoying, but it can lead to disaster as a group project is made much more difficult by someone’s unchecked ego.

    [..]

    So what’s going on here? There’s actually a reasonable explanation: “When psychologists Dunning and [Justin] Kruger first described the effect in 1999, they argued that people lacking knowledge and skill in particular areas suffer a double curse. First, they make mistakes and reach poor decisions. But second, those same knowledge gaps also prevent them from catching their errors. In other words, poor performers lack the very expertise needed to recognize how badly they’re doing.”

    [..]

    SEE REST AT LINK. ALSO VIDEO.

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    • #
      Zane

      Politicians are the best example of the DK effect. Nothing else even comes close, except maybe local councils. Look at Biden and Kamala Harris. Look at Gavin Newsome. Look at Andrews. Look at Jacinda Ardern. Look at the clown in WA. Heck, I can’t bear to see them!

      40

  • #
    tomdundas

    Victoria; the place NOT to be!

    141

    • #
      Ronin

      Dan should resurrect that old plate, ” Victoria, on the move “.

      80

      • #
        Ross

        Weird, because now the bulk of new car number plates in Victoria are the plain black and white versions with no motto like ” Education state” or ” On the move”. NSW was once the “Premier state” which was a bit annoying if you were from the rest of Australia. Its like we’ve transitioned back to the 1960’s.

        60

    • #
      Dennis

      State Of Terrorism

      20

    • #
      yarpos

      they would be pleased to see us wasting time on parochial BS like this

      10

  • #
    David Maddison

    Most Australians have no idea of the compact size of proper coal, gas or nuclear power stations or how many thousands of windmills over hundreds of square kms of cleared land and inconceivably huge and expensive battery backup is required to replace a real power station.

    310

    • #
      Daffy

      Nor have they a clue about the almost inconceivably vast quantities of concrete needed to base the windmills.

      220

      • #
        Graeme#4

        Somebody once said it took 60 truckloads of concrete to build a tower base. No doubt it’s a lot more now with the bigger turbines.

        70

        • #
          Graeme No.3

          200 tons for smaller turbines but there were accidents when they fell (or pushed by the wind) over. So 4-500 tons became the usual. THe new really big ones might have to have 2,000 tons (but it is simpler to put them off-shore).

          80

        • #
          David Maddison

          Concrete production is a huge emitter of supposed greenhouse gases, not that it matters to rational people, but warmists believe anthropogenic CO2 warms the planet (which would not be a bad thing even if true, it might offset the coming cooling).

          41

          • #
            Graeme#4

            And wind farms already require around 8.6 times more material than a coal power station.

            30

          • #

            Sorry David, you are one of the many that mix up cement and concrete. Cement is a powder that acts like a glue and when hydrated it holds the concrete mix together. These days the cement has less than half the Portland cement of the old days. Cement contains ground blast furnace slag (nearly 50% in Australia), ground limestone, sometimes fly ash, gypsum and in Europe calcined tuffs (volcanic origin). The CO2 emitted is less than 30% of the 1960’s when the wet process was used.
            Concrete contains very little cement less than 300 kg/ m^3. If you have ever made concrete at home the sort of mix ratios are 1 part cement 2 parts sand and 3 parts aggregate (crushed rock). Concrete is the most energy efficient and least CO2 emitting building material. A concrete road is cheaper than a bitumen covered roads in capital costs and then it last at least 50 years without maintenance.
            The greens like to exaggerate by talking up cement as concrete and then compare with conditions 60 or a 100 years ago. They do the same with Nuclear power which has proved to be the safest and cheapest form of power.

            40

            • #
              James Murphy

              It seems that there is a saviour on the horizon, with “green cement”…. it seems all too good to be true, in my opinion.
              https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-12/green-cement-facility-at-port-augusta-to-cut-carbon-emissions/101229516

              In my line of work, “green cement” is cement that should have cured, but hasn’t, usually a result of contamination… so it’s useless… and yes, in this case it is cement not concrete. Cement and water with additives to adjust curing time, density, viscosity, loss of water, and to block gas migration, amongst other things.

              10

            • #
              David Maddison

              Cementafriend, I an very well aware of the difference between cement and concrete. I was speaking to a general audience and my comments are still valid for the overall product known as concrete even though it is only the cement component that produces CO2 in its manufacture.

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        yarpos

        Its the wrong argument. To them its just concrete and reo, they have no clue what that means. If thats the basis of your argument you have already lost, although you may feel good about the intellectual point.

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    robert rosicka

    I’ve been watching the NEM energy mix widget for a while now and quite often see less than 10% for solar , wind and battery and have seen 5% a few times , when there’s no wind there’s no wind and when it’s dark there’s no solar . Adding more of the same is green economics .

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    RickWill

    The world has warmed around 1C after 600 billion tonnes of emissions. So this new coal-fired power station may increase the temperature by 0.0001 of a degree over its life.

    No it won’t. The Southern Ocean will continue to cool. The Equator will remain at the existing temparature and the North Hemisphere will continue to warm until the ice mountains return. All to do with the shifting solar intensity and NOTHING to do with CO2.
    https://149366104.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/NCEP_Three_Trends-3-1657607161.2964.png

    Note in the middle chart that Jupiter’s beat of 11.8 years is clearly visible. This is the result of Jupiter muscling the sun’s position relative to Earth. ENSO is the most significant variable for the Nino34 temperature but Jupiter’s influence is obvious.

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      Graeme#4

      Why is the southern SST dropping at a slower rate than the northern SST? Because of the comparative size of the oceans?

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        Graeme#4

        Sorry, should have said “changing” instead of “dropping”.

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        RickWill

        More to do with where the solar intensity is changing. Since 1982 to 2020, the mid latitudes in the northern hemisphere has increased in solar intensity; the peak at 10N of 0.05W/m^2. Only the Southern Ocean south of 60S has had less sunlight. 2020 has the most sunlight of any year this century. The ocean has surface memory as well due to the surface circulations from the tropics to the polar regions and back.

        The region of the Southern Ocean getting less sunlight is mostly ice-prone and has low response to changing sunlight – but the change is also small – down 0.025W/m^2 at the South Pole. Ice is a good insulator so mostly keeps heat in but also keeps heat out. it takes time for direct sunlight to melt the ice. The ice-prone regions respond at 25% of the rate to solar EMR as the ice-free regions.

        I first looked at the change in sunlight before selecting the northern and southern regions to look at actual temperature. It is all explained by the orbit and the ocean response to solar EMR.

        Jupiter’s beat in the Nino34 region was a serrendipifdous finding that follows Earth’s orbital changes driven by Jupiter’s large mass.

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    The Australian Energy Regulator is very irregular. Who are these people and have they been tested lately for the ‘Insanity Gene’? I just cannot believe the crazy stuff that they keep on spouting. Just look at the evidence that continues to pile up especially in Europe. Oh well, brick wall here we come……………..

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    TdeF

    This insanity is driven by the belief that man made CO2 is piling up in the atmosphere. That is not true, provably not true or even possible, and total man made CO2 at 4% is such a small part of estimated total CO2 that it is nothing more than noise. And it joins all the other modern cults like the patriachy, the toxicity of all males, that the only victims of slavery were black, women don’t exist and the Irish had ‘white privilege’.

    I have to quote from The Spectator. ‘

    “David Flint Truth Number One ‘When a man stops believing in God, it’s not
    that he will believe in nothing. He will believe in anything”

    Nett Zero has no basis in science, but the latest Green mantra being enshrined in Australian law. How long will it be before school children have to swear allegiance under a UN flag to Climate Change? Greens have become toxic, led by Woke universities and the media just parrot what they are told.

    And stolen from My Fair Lady..
    “Why is thinking something Greens never do?
    And why is logic never even tried?”

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    • #
      TdeF

      And the believers in Global Warming are now coming after methane, so they are going to eliminate all herbivores in captivity, cows, horses, pigs. But why stop there?

      Vegetation including grass and trees rot to CO2 and CH4 so you need to stop all fungi and termites too.

      And we can stop growing grasses including wheat, rye, barley , too. Rotting grasses produce methane. So where will Bill Gates get his vegetarian burgers? Because the stalks rot, the bulk of the grasses simply because humans only eat the grass seeds and cannot digest the cellulose stalks.

      So the true believers are against all grasses and fruit trees as well. But that’s fine, because humans are the real problem and if you get rid of humans, who cares about temperatures? And the horses, pigs, cows, buffalo, wilderbeest, oxen, hippos can go back to eating the grass. And the monkeys can keep eating the fruit.

      Get rid of the humans and the planet will be saved, but why?

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        David Maddison

        And the believers in Global Warming are now coming after methane

        And also what they ignorantly call “nitrogen” when they apparently mean certain oxides of nitrogen, in the same manner as they also get confused between “carbon” and “carbon dioxide”.

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        • #
          TdeF

          Nitrogen is essential for plants, but it is only 3-4% of plant tissue. And it is very difficult to capture from the air. Legumes can do it so without understanding the chemistry, farmers would rotate the crops with legumes. Nitrogen based fertilizers have been a boon to food supplies and these fertilizers are made directly from ethane, natural gas. Using the natural gas for heating has pushed the price of gas up so high that fertilizer production has stopped in some places. And the byproduct was CO2. Lack of CO2 in the UK in turn hit meat supplies this year. It’s all connected.

          So we have a real disaster looming. Natural gas being used to replace coal is itself essential for fertilizer which is essential for food and essential for CO2 which is essential for meat preservation. Using natural gas for heating instead of coal is a massive waste of one of our most useful resources. And now billionaire Dr. Andrew Forrest, PhD in Marine Biology, has decided we need to spend hundreds of billions converting natural gas to hydrogen, throwing away most of the energy.

          The science question which bothers me most is whether we have reached peak stupidity? They have in Sri Lanka where everyone is now broke and starving and their socialist President has fled the country, presumably with plenty of $US.

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            TdeF

            In humans the elements are

            Oxygen 24%
            Hydrogen 62%
            Carbon 12%
            Nitrogen 1.1%

            That’s 99.1%. Three gases and one solid. We are Hydro Carbon life forms filled with water. No wonder the Greens hate us.

            And teal is a shade of Green. Slightly less bright but richer.

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          James Murphy

          Now it’s also nitrates in food as preservatives, particularly meat. There has been a flurry of articles in the French media saying that ham is terrible and causes cancer because of the nitrates used in its production. I guess its just another angle on the war against meat…
          From what I recall of a tv series where people tried to replicate mass produced food, ham without nitrates looks grey and very unappetising – though I could well be thinking of a different solution they use.

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      Maptram

      “This insanity is driven by the belief that man made CO2 is piling up in the atmosphere.”

      Perhaps whether CO2 is piling up in the atmosphere depends on the level in the atmosphere at which the CO2 is emitted. We know that plants convert CO2 to carbon and oxygen using photosynthesis. However the CO2 must be accessible to the plants, so the CO2 emitted at levels close to ground level, such as by humans breathing, automobiles, or even coal burning generators, is available to plants. But how long does the CO2 emitted in the upper levels, by air travel for example, remain in the atmosphere?

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        Kalm Keith

        Think of the churn.
        Nothing stays still.
        The oceans have hold of 98% of all unbound CO2 and they like exchange with the atmosphere.

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        Lucky

        Most research on the time CO2 stays in the atmosphere gives it in the range four to seven years (half-life). A vastly higher life is used by UN/IPCC, over one hundred years.

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      Ross

      “Net Zero” suddenly became a thing during 2021. Certainly in the lead up to COP26 in Glasgow the term went viral. I had the impression that it was mostly UK based, as Boris J was one of the first to use the term. It’s popularity as part of the commentary is obviously due to the success of the Coke Zero marketing program done years ago. Now we also have a lot of the beer makers doing the Zero alcohol products. So, the term “Net zero” was definitely not based on science, but more likely dreamt up by some advertising executive somewhere in London.

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        Graeme No.3

        Not just the beer makers. Saw a bottle of sparkling wine labelled Zero Alcohol in Dan Murphys yesterday.
        (It would still release “carbon” when drunk, but who cares.

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    el+gordo

    In the antipodes we are slow on the uptake, Albo pushing his net zero barrow in the middle of a world energy crisis is embarrassing.

    Even with the Nat moderates holding sway, Canavan is leading the charge against insanity.

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      RickWill

      his net zero barrow in the middle of a world energy crisis is embarrassing.

      It could not happen to a nicer guy! It is a result of the incompetence that pervades academia and CSIRO. They are the cheer leaders in all this nonsense.

      I am willing to show them the light once they are willing to listen and learn.

      Going on from yesterday, I did check that 2000 was a low sunlight year and 2005 a higher sunlight year. 2005 peaked at 0.015W/m^2 up on 2000 at 40S; was up all the way to 50N then dropped to 0.01W/m^2 less at the North Pole.

      This means that Jupiter’s 11.8 year beat in the Nino34 temperature record aligns with orbital shifts rather than solar surface activity that follows Jupiter.

      Correlation between solar activity and earth’s surface temperature is driven by Jupiter but through just muscling the sun gravitationally rather than solar sunspots.

      It appears not many people understand how much Earth moves relative to the sun. The solar intensity at any location is never the same from year-to-year. It appears climate models are not into the detail of orbital mechanics although there is some input related to the orbit.

      2011 was also a low sunlight year with perihelion 7700km more distant than the average eccentricity and aphelion 4500km more than average aphelion. The timing of perihelion is also significant. In 2020 perihelion occurred on 5 Jan. In 2021 it occurred on 2 Jan. It will be 2101before it gets 6 Jan for the first time but then makes 7 Jan for first time by 2104.

      Anyone interested in orbital mechanics can get information from this link:
      http://www.astropixels.com/ephemeris/ephemeris.html

      I have no doubt that open oceans cannot exceed 30C. This needs to be widely known. It is so simple and yet compelling to kill any notion of catastrophic warming.

      The Northern Hemisphere is 500 years into a warming trend that will last another 9,500 years. But the boreal winters are getting less sunlight so more winter precipitation will occur as snow. No change in CO2 level is going to alter this.

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        el+gordo

        Careful mate, you’re way off topic.

        Even though its a failed star, Jupiter is still a big planet with the power to influence the sun and earthly climate through oceanic oscillations.

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    Zane

    Nothing to add. The lunatics are in charge of the asylum and people voted for them. Creo quia absurdum est.

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    Kalm Keith

    The “Renewables” drought, a link from a friend to a comment on this stupidity; demolished in the first minute.
    Stop dreaming.

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    Neville

    That’s a very good summary by Senator Matt Canavan and I’d be interested if anyone can find fault with what he’s written?
    I think it’s critical that we stop building any more of the TOXIC, UNRELIABLE S & W disasters and BIG batteries are also a super expensive TOXIC joke.
    So what trouble would Australia be in now if we’d never built any of their S & W lunacy over the last 20 years but instead updated or renewed our very reliable coal fired plants?
    We’d have zero problems and cheap RELIABLE 24/7 electricity and even better if we also started to build new HELE coal plants as well. AGAIN no problems for another 50 years or more if proper maintenance was carried out.
    Of course the entire SH is a net co2 SINK, so obviously no change to future temperature as well. See CSIRO quote.
    BTW SH countries combined only emit about 6% of total global co2 emissions. So what’s the problem?

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      RickWill

      if anyone can find fault with what he’s written?

      Canarvan stated:

      The world has warmed around 1C after 600 billion tonnes of emissions. So this new coal-fired power station may increase the temperature by 0.0001 of a degree over its life.

      He is into the CO2 nonsense. It is utter drivel. Anyone willing to open their mind and care to understand how Earth’s atmosphere and oceans respond to solar EMR will know CO2 does zip directly to the energy balance. CO2’s contribution is through biomass and that can influence atmospheric moisture over land.

      CO2 would have to be a magic gas if it is controlling the energy balance on Earth. The Northern Hemisphere is warming. The Equator is neutral and the Southern Ocean is cooling. Tell me how CO2 does this:
      https://149366104.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/NCEP_Three_Trends-3-1657607161.2964.png

      All the nonsense on “greenhouse” gasses and CO2 has to be nipped in the bud. It is not science. It is a belief system with no basis in science.

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      Chad

      Neville
      July 13, 2022 at 9:41 am · Reply
      That’s a very good summary by Senator Matt Canavan and I’d be interested if anyone can find fault with what he’s written?

      Well, technically he got the capacity and cost of the SA big battery wrong,… it is 194 MWh, and $180million !
      …And as Rick pointed out, he is still assuming that anthropogenic CO2 influences global temps .
      But, i can overlook such inaccuracies for relative arguments from a high level public voice.
      Hopefully it will encourage others to speak out for common sense.

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    Ross

    I’ve been following Matt Canavan for a while now on twitter. But since the election his pro coal commentary has gone ballistic. Sure, I can remember him doing some pro coal commentary when the LNP was in power, but not to this extent. Obviously, during his “in government” days his commentary was restricted by party or government policy. He wanted to keep his cushy senator job as long as possible and not become a Craig Kelly. Now that he’s out of government, suddenly all the policy he supported in the party room previously is now bunkum. Which to me indicates that this is government policy to rush to renewables and be anti-coal. That this strategy has been in put in place by public servants for probably decades and in reality the politicians have little influence in its implementation.

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    David Maddison

    Australia is like a sinking ship and the captain is going around putting holes in all the lifeboats.

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    Neville

    Again here’s my comment yesterday about selected countries’ co2 emissions. Again why does Canada smell like roses and we Aussies smell like crap? Beats me.

    BTW here’s the OWI DATA version of countries co2 emissions and I’ve selected Australia, Canada, the EU, USA and China. I hope this link works.
    But why do Aussies always cop a belting, when Canada always gets off scot free?
    BTW the USA today has the same emissions as 1973 and the EU the same emissions as 1964 and China co2 emissions are SOARING into the stratosphere.

    https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?country=AUS~CHN~European+Union+%2828%29~USA~CAN

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  • #

    Sometimes I just h@te mathematics, because the answers are just so ridiculous.

    Let’s do a comparison then shall we, and to make it realistic, let’s us some actual data.

    Yesterday 12 July 2022, was a reasonable Winter’s day for ALL the Commercial Solar Power Plants across Australia, supplying power to the grid. (and here, this is NOT rooftop solar power)

    There are 86 of these solar power plants, yep, that many of them now, and they have a total Nameplate of 8506MW.

    Across the whole of yesterday, ALL of these plants delivered power from 7AM till 6PM, just the first tiny amount early, to the last tiny amount at the same time the Overall main evening Peak of maximum power consumption kicked in, when those 86 power plants (at that Peak) delivered 37MW to supply that Peak of 31,410MW, so just one tenth of one percent of what was required absolutely at that time. (Don’t you just h@te Maths)

    Overall, those 86 power plants across the whole day delivered an astonishingly huge 18GWH of power ….. 18,000MWH.

    Umm, that was at a Capacity Factor for the day of 8.8%.

    Yeah, okay, I hear you say, there’s Tony, cherry picking again, one Winter’s day ….. BUT but but, what are we supposed to do when this is all we are going to have along with wind plants, and thousands of batteries, and then there are days like this, I mean every day in MidWinter in fact, and not out of this World higher in Summer.

    Okay, the comparison.

    Build ONE (just one of them) new tech UltraSuperCritical coal fired power plant. It has two Units, so two generators, each of them 1200MW, and hey, that’s not even big, as they are running almost 1500MW generators now.

    That ONE USC power plant at ONE site with ONE existing run of Transmission lines connected to the grid will deliver the same power delivered by 86 Solar Plants with a Nameplate of 8506MW, and it will deliver that same power in ….. EIGHT HOURS and eleven minutes.

    Those 86 Solar Plants have a Nameplate 3.5 times higher that the 2 coal fired Units.

    Don’t you just h@ate Maths?

    Tony.

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      Ross

      The maths will start to resonate with a lot of the public very soon when they receive their next electricity or gas bill.

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      Lawrie

      Tony. Two days ago I responded to John Sheldrick who posted a link to the CSIRO website where they were extolling the cheapness of renewables. I asked their Communication fellow a series of questions relating to their findings as follows and his reply. From the latter you will see that they do not compare apples to apples. First my query:

      John. I wrote to Mr Kachel, the communications guy. Strangely you cannot copy what you wrote so I took photos instead.

      The query is as follows:Dear Nick. If wind and solar are so cheap why is my electricity getting dearer as more wind and solar is added to the grid? I also wonder why subsidies are still being paid to largely foreign owned wind farm and major solar owner/operators if wind and sun are both free. I note this morning at 0900 wind and solar were producing next to nothing and the major share of the supply was from black coal, brown coal and gas.

      Did the CSIRO take into account the cost of transmission lines connecting dispersed intermittent suppliers? Did it include the cost of subsidies to the consumer? Did it include the cost to the environment of obtaining the rare earths used in the manufacture of renewable equipment? Did the CSIRO include the cost to the environment of loss of bats and birds, including raptors being killed by turbine blades? Does the calculation include the cost of demolition and recycling of wind turbines, batteries and panels at the end of their ten to fifteen year life? Did the research include the fact that the current coal generators last four times longer and contain a fraction of material compared to renewable installations
      producing an equivalent amount of 24/7 power?

      I will let you know if and when he replies.

      The answer is as follows:I can see your perspective. We’re transparent about what our analysis includes. It is consistent with the approach taken by other reputable organisations.

      However, it would be possible to expand the scope, at some very considerable additional cost. If you wanted to add the cost of all the environmental issues associated with renewables, to make a fair comparison, you would also have to add in the all the environmental issues associated with the alternatives (including climate change itself). On that basis, I’m not sure you’d get a different answer.

      Paul

      From: Lawrence Ayres
      Sent: Wednesday, 13 July 2022 1:50 PM
      To: Graham, Paul (Energy, Newcastle)
      Subject: Re: Response from CSIRO re: I would like to contact Mr Nick Kachel CRM:0651483

      I thank you for your prompt response. There are many factors which add substantial costs left out of the calculations. This would give the average reader an erroneous impression of the comparable costs which could be taken as a means to deceive. Only frank and complete comparisons should be used when informing the public. Anything else is just advocacy and diminishes the reputation of the CSIRO which used to be held in high regard.

      Warm regards

      Lawrence Ayres

      On Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 11:40 Graham, Paul (Energy, Newcastle) wrote:
      Hi Lawrie
      Please see my response below.

      Did the CSIRO take into account the cost of transmission lines connecting dispersed intermittent suppliers?
      Yes, please read section 5 of the report to get a full understanding of the integration costs included. Downloadable here: https://doi.org/10.25919/mb22-c107

      Did it include the cost of subsidies to the consumer?
      No. Any existing government policies are taken as given.

      Did it include the cost to the environment of obtaining the rare earths used in the manufacture of renewable equipment?
      No. Our goal is to compare technologies on a common costing basis. Therefore we do not include technology specific issues such as this. The cost of integrating renewables is the only exception to this rule, otherwise all technologies are treated the same – no upstream or downstream environmental issues are addressed.

      Did the CSIRO include the cost to the environment of loss of bats and birds including raptors?
      See previous response.

      Does the calculation include the cost of demolition and recycling of the wind turbines, batteries and panels at the end of their ten to fifteen year life?
      See previous response.

      Did the research include the fact that the current coal generators last 4 times longer and contain a small fraction of material compared to renewable installations producing an equivalent amount of 24/7 power?
      The differences in the asset lives and financing periods of each technology are fully accounted for in the analysis. There operational capabilities in terms of maximum and minimum generation or intermittency (as the case may be) are also included.

      Regards
      I will let others be the judge as to the honesty of the comparisons. Note that they factor in the cost of climate change. I will ask them to provide their calculations.

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        Lawrie

        Here is the follow up question to the CSIRO.

        Hello again Paul,

        You referred to environmental issues including climate change itself. That statement intrigues me. I am old enough,77, to have lived as a farmer through the sixties and seventies. I recall the numerous frosts and bitterly cold days including the day Armstrong stepped onto the moon. My irrigation pipes were often half full of ice and I would have to wait until the sun thawed them enough to empty them. Then we headed into the eighties and the frosts became rarer until in some years there were only one or two. Now to me that was climate changing from a period when scientists were concerned we were heading for the next ice age to global warming. My father had told me of the hot dry conditions of the 1930s when he was a young man so I saw the continuation of a natural cycle. As you know global warming gave away to climate change because the world refused to warm. The June UAH temperature shows .06 degrees Celsius above the 1979 -2022 average, basically negligible. Yet in that time billions of tonnes of CO2 attributable to human emissions have been added to the atmosphere so one has to question whether CO2 actually causes runaway heating. So my question is can you provide a CSIRO definition of climate change and if so why is it a threat? My understanding is that many of the dangers we are supposed to face are also rather insignificant. For example; the Pacific Islands are sinking yet satellite measurements show 86% are either stable or growing. We were told that snow and rain would be less and even non- existent yet we have had an early start to the ski season and several floods over the past two years. That is very similar to happenings in the past so no real danger there. The increased CO2 in the atmosphere has been credited with a 13% increase in crop production which is pretty handy when we should hit a world population of 8 billion in a few months. We have had less cyclones not more and the Accumulated Cyclonic Energy is at the lowest level for 30 years. Desertification in many areas has been reversed as a CO2 enriched atmosphere enables plants to survive on less water. These few examples point toward a net positive result for the additional CO2 hardly a reason to panic and certainly not a reason to destroy our electricity grid and cripple the remnants of our manufacturing sector. So what does the CSIRO define climate change as?

        Warm regards

        Lawrie Ayres

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          RickWill

          Lawrie
          This linked chart has some interesting measurements of temperatures at locations across the globe. All can be explained by orbital changes shifting earth’s relationship to the sun. CO2 induced warming cannot explain the cooling in the Southern Ocean. Cannot explain the steady temperature in the Nino34 region but happens to correlate with the warming in the Northern Hemisphere:
          https://149366104.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/NCEP_Three_Trends-3-1657607161.2964.png

          The question to CSIRO is – Why is CO2 so selective in what it warms, cools and leave unchanged.

          All those plots are based on NOAA/NCEP/Reynolds Optimally Interpolated satellite measurements calibrated agains the moodier buoys. It is very reliable and the, to my mind, the best available ocean surface temperature measurement.

          I challenged CSIRO on the model output for the Nino34 region because it gets above 30C ocean surface temperature. They replied that their model produces middle of the road of all models. It is clear they do not consider observation worthy of their attention. They are cheer leaders – not scientist.

          Best of luck with your correspondence. We should be taking out full page advertisement of their response to show how silly these people are.

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            Lawrie

            My contact informed me he was an economist and could not answer referring me to a CSIRO blurb on the Conversation. AS usual it contained only negative examples so I queried it with the following:

            took note of the article concerning the Franz Joseph glacier in NZ. I was fortunate enough to visit it in 2019 and took particular notice of the amount it has retreated since the 1800s. What caught my attention was that most of the retreat occurred before 1960 and we know that in the next 20 years scientists were warning of a new ice age. So the glacier is smaller but the retreat began just after the Little Ice Age as the world returned to a more normal temperature as one would expect. In that time world temperature , if there can be such a thing, has increased by over 1 degree Celsius and much of that before the new industrial age beginning in the 1950s.

            The CSIRO appears to be an agent for global warming and publishes much about the negative impacts but studiously avoids the positive effects such as increased food production, fewer cyclones and greening deserts. I would think that reducing the number of people going hungry would be something to celebrate yet you would rather talk about a heatwave in India. They have heatwaves every year much as we do.

            Climate change The Conversation

            Look at the climate indicators with more ‘memory’
            Looking at the weather day to day is a bit like watching the live share market updates from one stock exchange. To understand the trends and the bigger picture, you need to track it over time and space.

            Given instrumental records only go back so far, scientists can use climate indicators found in nature. Glaciers, for example, respond to temperature over time, with almost all glaciers around the world receding in response to a warmer climate.

            [SNIP]
            The oceans have longer memories than the atmosphere. Ocean warming is clear in, for instance, the East Australian Current, which now extends further south, bringing warmer water down the southeast coast. This, in turn, is driving fish species further south and devastating kelp forests.

            Perhaps the most reliable indicator of warming planet is the total “ocean heat content” – the total amount of extra energy stored in our oceans, which can store a lot more than the atmosphere. There has been a rock-steady increase of ocean heat content in recent decades.

            4. Consider the concept of attribution
            Determining whether climate change helped make a particular weather event more likely or more severe than it would have been – whether a cold snap, a heatwave or flooding rains – requires a formal attribution study, which looks for a climate change “fingerprint”.

            Overall, the planet has warmed 1.09℃ since pre-industrial times. And since 2012, the human caused climate change fingerprint has been clear in any single day of global weather.

            Thanks to event attribution studies, we can confidently state that cold extremes are now less likely than they would be in a world without climate change, while heatwaves and extreme heat events are far more likely.

            For example, climate change made the recent devastating heatwave in India and Pakistan 30 times more likely.

            Our weather intuitions
            Our intuitions and common sense are great tools for navigating our day-to-day life and making decisions. But our first-hand experience is rooted at the scale of centimetres to kilometres, seconds to days.

            Our brains are not perfect data loggers over decades, and our memories are subjective. Vivid childhood memories of hot asphalt on our young feet, cars with hot vinyl seats and houses with no air conditioners affect how we compare the past to today. And we aren’t exposed to all weather, especially us city dwellers who spend a lot of time indoors.

            Pulling at our intuitions about cold weather to comment about climate change can be compelling. United States senator James Inhofe famously brought a snowball into the senate in 2015 to claim that if there’s cold weather then the climate can’t be warming.

            While this was widely mocked at the time, these appeals do tug at our instincts to turn to our experiences to understand the world.

            To get out of these local scales, we need to feed our intuitions some more input. So, data are important.

            With data, we can inform and guide our intuitions and overcome our natural focus on the local scale. To be convinced the climate is warming, we need to watch the long-term trends and expect the wiggles.

            And just like in places such as southern Australia where the climate is drying, we still expect some wet years, we still expect cold spells in a warming climate.

            It is instinctual to downplay or doubt the idea the climate is getting warmer when you’re feeling cold right now. But next time, consider these four points.

            Michael Grose, Climate projections scientist, CSIRO

            [snip]
            [Best to use links and shorter quotes. – Link added. – Jo]

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    b.nice

    Wind in SA is currently producing a pitiful 87MW !

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      Dennis

      Well, as Minister Chris Bowen commented, wind turbines are subject to the wind blowing, but there will always be wind blowing somewhere.

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        Lawrie

        True but if it is not blowing in the Eastern states it is of no use what so ever. There are wind farms scattered in all the best spots up and down the coast now and yet they frequently deliver next to no power. Multiply zero by any number and the answer is still zero.

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        Graeme No.3

        No doubt Chris Bowen has Macquarrie And Heard islands in mind. Both down in the “Fearful Fifties” with lots of wind.
        Not sure how much electricity would get ashore as Heard Island is over 4,000 km. from Perth, which doesn’t need it so it would have to be transmitted to SA.

        For those not familiar with the moniker it goes (as you go south)
        Roaring Forties
        Fearful Fifties
        Screaming Sixties

        Cape Horn is 58 degrees South. My grandfather (as a youngster) went round Cape Horn on a clipper ONCE. After that he got very interested in steam engines and arrived in Fremantle in charge of the steam engines on a boat via the Suez Canal. He was just in time for the gold rush and the whole crew deserted, so he decided to stay in Australia.

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  • #
    LG

    Is there any technical reason why they can’t keep those old coal plants around forever? It looks like that is what will happen, since we aren’t allowed to build any new ones and there’s not scalable storage solution. Either that or install a lot more open cycle gas generators to fill in the wind/solar gaps.

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    • #
      RickWill

      Not a lot of technical reason but there are industrial (unions) and possibly real safety concerns. An existing power station site has value because it has exiting licences to operate. That speeds environmental planning (although a new coal plant on an existing site in Australia will face serious legal hurdles). Foundations of existing equipment will have deteriorated so these need to be removed to build anew. In all probability the footings of new plant will be different anyhow.

      Generally it is lower cost to build fresh from scratch in a new area of a site than trying to build around an old plant. The old plant eventually has to be demolished so it needs reasonable separation from any new plant on the site to avoid accidental damage.

      Just replacing existing plant with like plant eliminates advantages of technology development. Coal power plants are still being refined. There is usually economic benefit in using proven, more recent technology then sticking with 50 year old technology.

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    • #
      Geoff Sherrington

      Dennis,
      Greatly doubt that Thredbo slip is relevant to large Snowy engineering. Soil versus rock properties. The likely liquefaction/colloidal event at Thredbo is not really applicable to deep in unweathered rock tunnelling and can happen in soils anywhere, not just in the Snowy. Geoff S

      10

  • #

    Some good stuff from James Morrow in today’s Sydney Daily Telegraph.

    From Germany to the Netherlands to Sri Lanka, we are seeing the consequences of rushing into elite Green schemes. So why do we think we are immune here in Australia?

    “Are there any more dangerous words in the English Language than “it can’t happen here”?”.

    “The argument of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen is that the reality of Climate Change is even more urgent”. But the problem is that when Mr Albanese connects floods and bushfires to what he calls ‘the Climate Wars’ he is asking Australians to engage in a bit of magical thinking”.

    There is then a bit of talk about the magical Carbon Tax stuff from Rudd & Co. which was supposed to save Australia and the World……..LOL.

    “The fact is there is not much in the way of a ‘Plan B’ to keep the lights on if old power generators come offline before so-called renewable energy is ready to be plugged into the Grid. And the near religious refusal to even entertain the nuclear debate because it is supposedly too expensive even as the Government prepares to tip even more billions into green energy sources suggests a lack of seriousness”

    Nuclear SMRs any one? And you can have chips with that if you like too.

    “A continent with all the conditions for wide spread prosperity and a healthy environment will impoverish itself for ideological reasons?”

    “But hey, surely it can’t happen here. Right”?

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  • #
    Ronin

    “People are ‘out of touch’ with the real world and ‘Albanese is their leader'”

    He sure proved that with his ‘we need more S&W antics’.

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  • #
    Mike+of+NQ

    If Australia built a couple of Coal Fired power stations, global carbon emissions would reduce. The coal will be consumed anyway, just not in Australia. And than there are the carbon emissions to transport the coal thousands of Km’s, like the 16,000km round trip to transport coal from Victoria to Japan. If you own a boat you can understand the cost of this trip.

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    • #
      RickWill

      If Australia built a couple of Coal Fired power stations, global carbon emissions would reduce.

      For sure.

      I worked out that 1kW of solar panels consumed about 10t (300GJ) of coal equivalent energy getting the coal and bauxite out of the ground in Australia, sending it to China; manufacturing panels; shipping them to Australia and then mounting them on a roof. They will produce 4GJ of energy each year when mounted on a roof in southern mainland Australia. So 75 years to recover the embedded energy.

      That excludes realities such as storage costs and reduced capacity factors due to curtailment and many others to get intermittent generators to actually work without shutting down the grid. Add those and it gets to about 400 years to break even on the coal that goes into the manufacture of all that extra stuff. If the solar panels had a life of 400 years it might make sense to have them replace coal fired power stations providing there was a battery using readily available materials.

      There is an illusion that this stuff is sustainable because it is made with coal mostly mined in China last year with some exposure to international coal price last year. But Chinese coal is getting harder to mine and will inevitably get more expensive so the cost of panels will rise.

      German heavy manufacturing is basically kaputt now because their energy costs are so high. The illusion would die very quickly if they were not using Chinese manufactured stuff to keep the illusion going. Once energy rationing is implemented, a significant amount of German heavy industry will close down for good.

      If Australia had to use its own energy and manpower to make solar panels, they would cost 5X what the Chinese panels cost; reflecting the higher cost of energy and labor. That is with just 25% of electricity from intermittent generators. It will get increasingly expensive as more intermittent generators are added. The next legal theft is going to dispatchable generators so they can be available but not producing. Speak up now if you think that is going to lower electricity bills?

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      • #
        Graeme No.3

        RickWill:
        already BASF have ‘floated’ the idea of closing down Ludwigshafen (a line of many separate factories about 8 kilometres along the bank of the Rhine). They use 4% of all the gas used in Germany.
        But they supply base chemicals to a 100 or more firms supplying all sorts of industries. If they shut down, the entire German automotive business would follow within a month, if not sooner, and along with other essential concerns.
        That loud thud you might hear at that time is the German economy hitting the floor of the coal pit. Recession? H*ll No, depression,followed by massive unrest.

        20

        • #
          RickWill

          A disaster in waiting.

          The German authorities will be desperately trying to deflect the anger toward Russia.

          On the other hand, Germans will be able to hold heads high when they walk into COP 27 in Egypt. They will have made a big hole in their CO2 emissions and show how effective the Energiewande has been. UK will likely be in the same situation. There will be immense applause as Germany shows how much CO2 it has reduced in the last half of 2022.

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      • #
        Kalm Keith

        Thanks for that outline Rick.

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  • #
    Zane

    The average person on the street is completely clueless about anything. Most are of a working class persuasion and will tend to vote for anything Labor. Youngsters think the greens have all the answers. Ditto inner city types. With preferential voting the leftists get in. Victoria is pretty much a one-party state and with millions of immigrants pouring in – who all vote Labor – nothing will change.

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    • #
      David Maddison

      I would say there is zero possibility of Comrade Dictator Dan losing the next election.

      And frankly, I don’t even think the Liberals (pretend conservative party) want to win. Why would they? It’s hard work and the few Libs currently in power have safe seats.

      And unbelievably, David Southwick, Deputy Liberal Leader thinks Comrade Dan is not doing enough about “climate change”. The state is nearly bankrupt and destroyed due to “climate change” policies, what more would Southwick want? At least for now the lights are on. Will Southwick want to turn them off?

      The lack of leadership and the extreme cluelessness of the Liberals is just staggering.

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      • #
        Old Goat

        No politician wants to win the next election in Victoria . Dan has set in motion the biggest disaster we have ever created and whoever inherits it will be blamed for it . There is little difference in policies between both parties anyway – they both subscribe to wokeism , climate CO2 policy , unlimited spending and the racism/sexism blamefest. Whoever wins will have a target painted on their back.

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      • #
        LG

        It’s going to be like the 90s again soon where Victoria goes bankrupt and we need a conservative government to pay back the debt and balance the budget.

        30

    • #
      Ross

      Can I add to those comments and agree that if you are the Victorian LNP why the hell would you want to go back into government? Ted Baillieu tried it last time and spent most of his time undoing all the mess left by the previous Labor government. Then was accused of being the “do nothing” Premier , when in fact he and his LNP colleagues had achieve a lot in the 4 years they were in power. Antagonistic public service and a media mostly pro Labor. Matthew Guy would be better just to wait and let the ALP implode.

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  • #
    Robber

    CSIRO report confirms wind and solar are the cheapest source of electricity generation and storage in Australia, even when considering additional integration costs arising due to the variable output of renewables, such as energy storage and transmission.
    “Solar and wind begin to require additional investments in storage and transmission once variable renewables reach ~50% share of generation.”
    What is not clear is how robust their assumptions are to ensure dispatchable electricity is always available to meet demand, and what the total delivered cost of electricity will be.

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    • #
      TdeF

      And their assessment of the lifespan of photovoltaic and windmills farms is? Can I suggest half dead at 20 and cactus at 30? A coal power station has an infinite lifespan or as long as the coal lasts. In Victoria likely 300 years, so they are being closed as too old. Which is utter deceit.

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      • #
        Dennis

        I have never read an admission that wind turbines (and solar panels) have a very short working life on average than a power stations working life, and therefore that the real cost of “renewable energy” is removal and replacement of equipment including “firming” twice to achieve slightly longer than the accountable written down power station asset.

        And when well maintained power stations can operate for many more decades after being written off for accounting purposes.

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        • #
          TdeF

          Hazelwood in Victoria was shut down when running at 98% design capacity 50 years after it was commissioned. That was criminal. We paid for it and Daniel Andrews forced it to close, tripling the price of coal when it was hard to turn a profit with the RET scheme. So we sold it for $2.5Bn and screwed the new owners, Labor’s enemies of the people. And destroyed the jobs of whole towns. To save the planet.

          I doubt a windfarm would be at 50% after 20 years. The blades will not even bother turning. The billions per year of our money being poured into these cash registers is a National disgrace. Imagine if a dam or a bridge or a multistorey building had a half life of 20 years, half useless after 20 years and utterly useless after 40. There would be a criminal investigation. And no major dam has been built in Australia for 50 years, so we are all living on the hard work and common sense of our grandfathers. And critical bridges like the Westgate in Melbourne and the Sydney Harbour bridge are being maintained far beyond their design life of 40 years.

          You cannot maintain a windmill or solar farm. They are disposable. So are all those roof top solar panels, even if half the cost was paid by the electricity bills of everyone else. The whole solar scheme is a rort on top of a science fraud.

          And who is going to remove the windmills and solar panels and dispose of all that fibreglass, rusted steel and noxious chemicals them and rehabilitate the land, as demanded from coal operators? The owners will be long gone, with our cash stolen from our electricity bills with their compulsory Green certificates for doing nothing.

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          • #
            David Maddison

            The Sydney Harbor Bridge has an infinite life as long as corrosion is kept under control because it is designed with all loadings below the endurance stress limit so components will not fail due to fatigue crack growth. They will endure an infinite number of cyclic loads without crack propagation.

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            Dennis

            The manufacturing business I managed had some machinery designed and built in the UK during the late 1800s and with some modifications were reliably and profitably producing products having been written off a long time ago. Of course they were well maintained. During a visit to France I spotted two machines from a production run built in the UK early 1900s that matched four we had in Australia that were no longer being operated. I purchased them for very little money and shipped them home where they were stripped and reconditioned and modernised to increase output and materials handling.

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            • #
              David Maddison

              Here is a lathe built in 1886 which was in productive use in Melbourne until recently and is now at the Lake Goldsmith Steam Preservation Society. It wasn’t required any more by the company that used it, there was nothing wrong with it.

              https://youtu.be/0tejVm-0uYc

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          • #

            Hazelwood would have to be almost the perfect response to wind generation even attempting to …… ‘replace’ coal fired power, something it can NEVER even get close to doing.

            It’s hard to think that all this was five years ago now, in March of 2017.

            This was an absolutely ancient plant.

            In the 31 days immediately prior to the whole plant closing, they ‘staged’ the closure one Unit at a time, so that on the last of those 31 days, they finally shut down the last of the EIGHT units at the plant.

            Those eight Units were piddling little generators of 200MW each, and at the time the plant was opened, that was pretty big for Units being operated.

            So here we have a total Nameplate of 1600MW.

            Each day I detailed the data for the plant, and here, keep in mind, that any and every wind plant in Australia has a life span hopefully, of 15 years average, and maybe 20 years at absolute best case scenario.

            53 Year old Hazelwood power plant generated and delivered almost 15% MORE power than EVERY wind plant in Australia in the 31 days leading up to its closure on Friday 31st March 2017, with the last of the plant’s Units shutting down on Wednesday 29th March.

            People can speculate on how something like this might have happened, and in the mists of time, someone might say it, and everyone else will scoff and say ….. yeah, mate, that never happened, it’s just a beat up.

            Thankfully, I actually did the exercise, so it’s there now for all time.

            Hazelwood Power Plant Closing 31st March

            Tony.

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            • #
              David Maddison

              I went to YouTube to look at some of my videos of Hazelwood but I found these sickening propaganda videos:

              https://youtu.be/mjUCDcvSIVc Blowing up chimneys

              https://youtu.be/5zUK5HSWDv8 Blowing up mining equipment

              The barbarians are actually proud of what they have done.

              This (Australia) is definitely a society in the process of collapse.

              It’s not clear whether we or the West will survive this existential crisis bought about the war against energy, health and now agriculture.

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          • #
            Chad

            #
            TdeF
            July 13, 2022 at 2:59 pm · Reply
            Hazelwood in Victoria was shut down when running at 98% design capacity 50 years after it was commissioned. That was criminal. We paid for it and Daniel Andrews forced it to close, tripling the price of coal when.

            Much as i respect your input Rick, ..i will have to correct you in that the price of coal in Vic was NOT trippled. !
            The ROYALTY was trippled, which only brought it up to the same level as NSW and QLD.
            I believe Hazelwood was closed because it enabled GREATER PROFITS to be realised by supplying more power from RE facilities with subsidies and LGCs.

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            • #
            • #
              TdeF

              It was tripled.

              It was what the owners paid the Victorian government for the coal. There are no other costs other than sunk costs. Otherwise the coal is free. It’s all on site. This was the deal when the owners paid $2.5Bn for the place and all the operating equipment. And they have their own power, so no cost there either.

              Besides whatever you think it was, why was it tripled? Was that a coincidence? Arguing that it was long overdue or coal cost more somewhere else is not good enough.

              And what was the point of tripling the Royalty at that time when the predictable end result was that we, the owners, received nothing. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Triple zero is zero. Clever.

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              • #
                Chad

                From our previous discussions on this point, i will simply repeat what i stated then.
                The Royalty did tripple, ..from $0.08/GJ to $0.25/GJ, but that only results in an additional cost of coal at $2.5 /Tonne…and anyone who thinks AGL were only paying $0.80/Tonne before as a fuel cost component in their budget, …seriously needs to take a holiday !
                The “Cost” of coal to Hazelwood generators would have been in the $30-$40 /tonne range,…from their own onsite mining operations.
                Hazelwood closed for several reasons, but the increase in the Royalty cost.was not a primary cause
                . (AGL estimated it would cost them $20m /yr …they would likely have paid more than that for annual OHS compliance audits !)
                …But it was a convienient excuse to shift supply over to their “more profitable”. RE generation sources
                Tripling the Royalty was little more than a political gesture with the added advantage of some revenue gain ( bur, $20m from Hazelwood was never going to be much use to Vic’s financials !)
                If the increase in Royalty was such a crippling impost on Hazelwood, why have not Yallourn or Loy Yang coal fired plants also shut up shop ?

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            • #
              yarpos

              same level for brown coal as black coal, sounds reasonable

              00

        • #
          Graeme No.3

          Dennis:
          Wind turbine blades are eroded away (slightly) by rain, hail and the occasional bird. The slight damage to the leading edge gets worse as the years go by. Output goes down about 1.6% of nominal capacity per annum after a few years (asuming the blade doesn’t break – about 1% per annum – although this was from older turbines).
          The bigger the blade the more it can be damaged. The manufacturers are switching to epoxy resin and mixed reinforcements, but stiffening the blade also makes it prone to stresses.
          The solar panels are increasingly the thin film type (cheaper but lower durability). They are lucky to make 10 years old.

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          • #
            TdeF

            And the blades are huge and not biodegradable, so if they are taken down, they have to be buried. So not Green.

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  • #
    TdeF

    Why has the world resolved that there are only three types of energy harvesting? Hydro, photoelectric and windmills?
    What happened to all the others?
    And the answer is that politicians have no idea about science, so they go to those animist religions which worship earth, wind and fire, water and sky. Your typical politician was the one down the back of the class.

    A major logical problem is that the ecological damage from photoelectric and windmills, replaceables, is vast, far more than perfectly natural coal, oil and gas. So knocking down forests and leveling desert ecosystems is now a Green activity.

    If Greens are religious fanatics, Teals are richer and get their pretend science from newspapers then the utter waste of the spoiled Western generations is without precedent in human history. But that level of rich ignorance would be white privilege? The rest of the world can only marvel and in the case of China, help it along.

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    • #
      TdeF

      And could someone please explain how the Americans can chop down forests, turn them into wood chips, sell that to the UK where they are burnt as fuel and this doesn’t count? If you did it, you would be criminal polluter, but on a National scale it is ‘carbon neutral’. Must be special ultra low carbon trees.

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      • #
        TdeF

        And weren’t the Greens protesting the wholesale destruction by wood chippers in the 1970s and 1980s, as along the Tamar river in Tasmania? Now it’s approved?

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        • #
          David Maddison

          Among the Left there is no such thing as objective reality. It is whatever you think it is. Postmodernism.

          They can easily think wood chips were once bad and now they’re good.

          They can even think both are simultaneously true.

          doublethink
          /ˈdʌb(ə)lθɪŋk/
          noun
          the acceptance of contrary opinions or beliefs at the same time, especially as a result of political indoctrination.

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        • #
          Honk R Smith

          Why is it ‘save the trees’ one minute, and burn ‘biofuel’ the next?
          Easy.
          Green/Rainbow ideology is just Hipsterism.
          Hot button political issues are product creations, like a new Boy Band.
          DC is a factory town producing these products.
          The Jan 6 committee is a sales campaign attempting to create brand loyalty.
          COVID was a marketing campaign.
          A rebranding of seasonal soap.
          An hysterical example of this is when Biden read the term ‘Ultra MMAGA’ from his teleprompter.
          They actually spent ultra mega $ dollars developing and market testing ‘Ultra MAGA’.
          Win, win … the Democrats get their customers to cower in fear, and the other side sells T-shirts and hats.
          (Then the Democrats get hysterical when they see a monster in a ‘Ultra MAGA’ T-shirt or hat, You almost can’t make this stuff up.)

          But that’s the problem with us climate nerds.
          We are hip challenged.
          We think it’s about science and engineering.
          We’re gonna still be arguing about mega-watt hours when the lights go out.
          Which reminds me, I’ve got to rearrange my pocket protector today.

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      • #
        Graeme No.3

        A decision of the EU bureaucrats, along with burning household rubbish for district areas hot water circulating schemes. And “biofuel” from plants (and animal waste) grown on what were productive food producing farms.
        Lately they’ve decided to make burning natural gas as non CO2 emitting. The current German coalition still wants to close the remaining nuclear plants down, while restarting coal-fired plants to overcome the high price of natural gas. If they could classify coal as “non polluting” then they would be well on the road to NET ZERO without reducing their CO2 emissions at all.

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    • #
      LG

      If only there was a way to harness the power of the sun in a concentrated form…

      40

    • #
      David Maddison

      In Kaliforniastan they are even dismantling hydroelectric dams in the middle of an electricity and water shortage. I wonder how long before the trend will spread? I bet Greens will soon start demanding Snowy Hydro 1 be dismantled. Not SH2. That’s a disaster so it qualifies for “green” energy even though it’s only a battery.

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  • #
    Scernus

    Australia is blessed with the greatest battery ever.
    The energy of masses of foliage have been condensed into a nice black rock buried all up the eastern side of our country.

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    • #
      Dennis

      And in many areas seams way out to sea below the bottom.

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    • #
      Ross

      Nature solved our battery problem a very long time ago. It developed a system to capture solar energy and store it underground for future use in gas, liquid or solid form — to be used any time or anywhere we want, in rain or shine or in windy or calm conditions.
      We call this energy capture system, “photosynthesis”, and this battery, “fossil fuels”. It’s not perfect but it’s superior to solar and/or wind, given today’s technology and economics.


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    • #
      TdeF

      Plus the Australian soil is very hot. Other countries are harvesting the low grade heat from the property, but Australians do not bother. And the public subsidized solar panels in dormitory suburbs are used to heat swimming pools. At the expense of everyone else.

      In cold Melbourne “The measured annual temperatures of ground at 2 m depth were between 14.7 °C and 19.8 °C. Up at Cowra it’s 18C to 20C. No need to freeze in winter! There is infinite self replenishing heat in the ground.

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      • #
        TdeF

        The problem is electricity. Electricity should not be used for heating.

        If the problem was just heat for houses in a cold winter, say 0C, it is insanity to not tap the infinite heat under every property in Australia.

        The planet is 13,000 km thick and most of it is very hot. But people want super temperatures to drive steam turbines and generate electricity. In really cold countries you only have to move to the basement, except Australians do not have basements which are standard in the US. And the basements in the US are always 10C minimum and it gets very cold in most of the US, well below zero. -40C in places like Colorado. Extracting heat from your property is becoming common in the UK. But in temperate Australia we do not bother.

        But who cares? It is all about shutting down Western Democracies in a ceaseless UN driven attack which includes Climate Change/Global Warming and many other Marxist/Fascist fantasies such as the only slaves in history were black and in the US.

        In fact no society existed without a slave class or slaves or serfs or prisoners prior to the decision by the British to end the evil slave trade in 1807 and gradually phase it out entirely. This was also possible by 1840 because the newly discovered coal driven steam engine ended the universal need for manual labour. Machines harvested the cotton and operated the lathes and mills. And while the black slaves in the US in 1865 were freed, they were also out of a job. Worse, in the Northern States destitute Irish migrants fleeing the potato famines which kille millions would work harder for less. Now unbelievably the poor Irish like Joe Biden and John Kennedy had ‘white privilege’. It’s a rewriting of history to justify violence and an attack on democracy in counties where all people of all races are to be treated equally under the law.

        For keeping people warm in winter, most countries have to start extracting low grade heat from the planet, not complaining they are freezing to death because the windmills stopped.

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      • #
        TdeF

        By the way, 20 metres down there is no winter anywhere. Pretty much the same in the oceans. Or on the glaciers. Just because we humans are very exposed to the elements means nothing to the planet. It is our very subjective short term view of today’s weather or even a year’s weather. At 20 metres down you see only changes averaged over hundreds of years. The same with ice cores which do not show rapid fluctuations in temperature or CO2. But the Chicken Little types get hit on the head by an acorn and the sky is falling and we will all die in ten years. Again.

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  • #
    Macdee

    We need more posts regarding the cost of nuclear, both capital and running costs. I am tired of hearing that nuclear is so expensive etc. Surely the longevity of its lifespan together with zero emissions more than offsets the costs of renewables and the costs of replacing same over their limited lifespans. Not to mention all the additional costs in mining, producing, installing, disposing of renewables and their associated infrastructure costs. With nuclear we simply use the existing infrastructure for electricity distribution. If nuclear is the real deal we need to hear a lot more about it and its related costs.

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    • #
      Kalm Keith

      Nuclear is far cheaper than Renewables.

      And coal is significantly cheaper than nuclear.

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    • #
      Chad

      #
      Macdee
      July 13, 2022 at 4:47 pm · Reply
      We need more posts regarding the cost of nuclear, both capital and running costs.….

      The cost is a minor issue, it will be far more difficult to sway the “non Nuclear” movement .
      Hopefully, both issues can be avoided, when the new , low cost, deep drilling techniques are established, enabeling high temp geothermal steam generation, practically anywhere it is required.!
      Cheap, continuous, reliable, steam supply for use with established turbine generators ( + repower existing coal & gas generators ?)
      https://newatlas.com/energy/quaise-deep-geothermal-drilling-questions/
      If proven ( the drilling) , i believe this would be the optimum solution for cheap, disparchable power generation

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  • #
    David Maddison

    I suspect most of the Australian Sheeple think Snowy Hydro 2 is a net generator and not a battery.

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    • #
      Mike Jonas

      Wrong! Most of the Australian Sheeple think Snowy Hydro 2 is a net generator just like a battery.

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  • #
    Zane

    Notified of my new electricity rates from Energy Australia today. To apply from 1 August. Daily supply charge goes up to $1.31 from previous $1.29. Per kWh usage goes up from $0.2239996 to $0.2332990.

    It could be worse.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    When the time comes, I wonder how power will be rationed in Australia?

    I think firstly, industry will be shut down or restricted. It won’t be a huge problem because we don’t have much left.

    Probably essential services like hospitals and maybe supermarkets will be allowed to keep running.

    Households might be told not to exceed a certain number of kW and/or kWh over a ration period or they will be shut down via the smart meter.

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    • #
      el+gordo

      You paint a grim picture and give no credit to human ingenuity.

      Gas will become the way out of our dilemma. The electorate has to be convinced that government built gas fired power stations are the only solution.

      The market won’t touch them because the plant might be under utilised. The socialists will love it.

      NSW will require two at $600,000 a pop and constructed in two years, our gas coming from the Pilliga forrest.

      Victorians may have to change their government.

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    • #
      ozfred

      Home owners who had the $$ and the foresight to install PV panels and batteries may fare better than average when the grid is in trouble. Sometimes micro solutions do not translate well to the macro level?
      I suspect the aluminium smelters might agree.

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  • #

    Things must be a bit strained on the east coast with demand approaching 32 GW, and virtually every generator using a flame running > 90%.

    With the continual demonising of natural gas for domestic heating to be replaced by electrical means, the AEMO will have to get used to peak grid load shifting from summer to winter, and in a big way. This image shows what will happen in the ACT once natural gas is removed, and the rest of southern Australia will be the same if the irrational dumping of this most effective heating system happens.

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    • #
      TdeF

      The CCP would rather we left the gas and coal in the ground too, so we are just being considerate.

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  • #
    Joe Public

    “How much is 1TWh? Well, the South Australian big battery can produce 130 megawatt hours”

    Batteries don’t produce anything; they’re loaned some MWh produced by generation capacity elsewhere, then make 80% to 90% of that available for use at another time.

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  • #
    Geoffrey Williams

    Excellent article Matt, honest and straight to the point ..
    Heavens knows we need more like you.

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  • #
    TdeF

    It’s amazing. The Greens demanding that 43% reduction in ‘greenhouse’ gases is not enough but others saying it would enshrine the idea in legislation.

    No one is actually measuring any result of our actions or cares. Normally when you pay fortunes to get a result, you measure something. Like total CO2. Something. But there are all these people fighting to shut down mining, farming, manufacture, eating meat and more who do not care about CO2 at all. Or they would be looking for a result and measuring their performance from $100Bn cost in absurd windmills and solar panels, cheaper reliable energy we are told. What effect has this had on CO2?

    Why doesn’t anyone care about actual CO2? Why are they only concerned about ’emissions’, a phrase meaning toxic emissions? And ignoring the greening of the planet from extra CO2? CO2 is clearly not in some sort of inverse balance with the plants, plants go up, CO2 goes down. Rather CO2 goes up and plants go up. The very basis of nett zero is obviously wrong. More CO2 means more plants, more food. It was supposed to mean failed crops not booming crops.

    Every single observation of the planet shows that there is no reason to try to reduce CO2. And there is no more warming because it is now cooling rapidly, plungin the world into far colder winters and a world crisis in energy supply. Whatever produced the Little Ice age reversed in 1860 and it has reversed again. A rapid drop in temperature is underway. Nothing therefore to do with CO2.

    If you were fighting a disease, you would measure infections. If you were fighting a flood, you would measure water level. But no one cares that nothing humans do, not even major bushfires or volcanoes or shutting cars and planes and cruise ships for two whole years of a pandemic has had any effect on CO2.

    So let’s starve the world, kill industries, ride bicycles, shut what keeps us alive and pass legislation crippling everyone. Why? It’s certainly not to reduce CO2. I cannot believe it is just idiocy.

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      TdeF

      What are we Australians getting for the huge and growing price we are paying? After 22 years of this, someone needs to ask. Because if we are achieving nothing, changing nothing and wrecking the joint, perhaps it would be wise to stop? Why aren’t the promoters of these massive schemes of self flagellation and misery asked to show what we have achieved, justify it all. Are we half way there? And how are we measuring our performance and what do we expect to have achieved? It’s all a mystery so just keep sacrificing.

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        TdeF

        And if Australia was “net zero” today, what difference would that make to anything other than self harm? Our total CO2 output is 2% of the world which is 2% of the natural, so irrelevant. If this is virtue signalling, to whom? Who cares? Or is it just a hair shirt to be worn at the UN a sign on public penitence in the Green religion.

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    Robber

    Any data on the life of wind farms?
    Challicum Hills Wind Farm is a wind farm encompassed by 35 NEG NM 64 wind turbines, with a total generating capacity of 52.5 MW of electricity. The wind farm is near Ararat in western Victoria, Australia. The power station was commissioned in August 2003. Still running.
    But windmills only really started to play a role in the AEMO network around 2008 – 775 GWh, last year 22,955 GWh.

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    CHRIS

    In the Climate Change debate, Science has long gone out the window. It is all political. Over the past few years, I have asked people (family, friends etc) what they know about Climate Change, and most of them have no idea. For example, I asked my brother, who is a green zealot, just how much CO2 is currently in the atmosphere…he said 4%!! He would not believe me when I said he was wrong by a factor of 100, and told him do some proper research, rather than be brainwashed by the likes of the UN. This is what we are up against…ignorance.

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    TEB

    As a UK politician said, Anybody can stuff up the UK but it takes a real expert to stuff Australia.

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