That’s the title of my piece on the passing of the carbon price/tax legislation, in Thursday’s Fin. It’s over the fold
Crunch time for carbon sceptics
Australia finally has the price on carbon first proposed by John Howard in 2007. Although passage of the Clean Energy Act by the Senate was little more than a formality, it has already changed the terms of debate.
Every day that passes from now on will put the advocates of denial, delusion and delay in a less and less tenable position. While denouncing mainstream science as ‘alarmist’, this group, has long predicted that a carbon price will bring about an economic disaster. As recently as this July, NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell predicted a ‘carbon catastrophe’, a prediction echoed by rightwing think tanks and commentators.
But now that the carbon price is in place, these predictions will be put to the test. With less than eight months to go before the policy is implemented, anyone who seriously believed these claims should be predicting an immediate collapse in investment, and acting accordingly. But among the postmodernists who pass for conservative thinkers in Australia today, any such notion of intellectual consistency is obsolete and old-fashioned.
Already, those who once predicted economic disaster are walking those predictions back. Tony Abbott’s website, for example, states that ‘On the Government’s own figures, three million Australian households will be worse off under the carbon tax.’ Since Abbott doesn’t challenge those figures, he presumably accepts the corollary that the other 5 million households will be better off. Abbott has to fall back on the rather desperate claim that ‘while the tax will increase in the future, the compensation won’t’, a claim that does not suggest much confidence in his own electoral prospects.
Meanwhile, the scientific evidence continues to mount up. A striking recent example was the publication of a report by a team led by one of the few serious scientists sceptical of the mainstream view, Richard Muller. With strong support from other self-described ‘sceptics’, Muller and his team undertook a reanalysis of climate data using 1.6 billion measurements from more than 39,000 temperature stations. Somewhat to his surprise, his results were an almost perfect match for those already reported by climate scientists.
The reaction of the ‘sceptics’ was revealing. Without exception, they rushed to denounce Muller. Clearly the term ‘sceptic’ is inappropriate here. These are ‘true disbelievers’, who will never be convinced by evidence of any kind.
Of course, as those who urged a do-nothing stance on Australia never ceased to point out, we are a small country, accounting around 2 per cent of total emissions. Our efforts will make only a modest difference. The big emitters like the US, China and India are far more important.
None of these countries is likely to introduce an explicit carbon price any time soon. That’s unfortunate, since an economy-wide carbon price is a much more cost-effective way of reducing than the direct action to which Tony Abbott is supposedly committed.
Nevertheless, there are some encouraging developments. In October, without much fanfare, China introduced a nationwide feed-in tariff for solar photovoltaic electric power. China has apparently learned the lesson of many other governments, including that of India, which offered high feed-in tariffs on a limited basis, only to see their schemes massively oversubscribed. The tariff has been set at 1 RMB (about 15 cents) per kilowatt hour. If solar PV can be delivered to the grid at that price, the economic cost of transition to a low carbon economy will be far below current estimates.
Meanwhile the US is taking the direct action route. New fuel efficiency standards announced by President Obama in July will require that fuel consumption of new cars is reduced to an average 54.5 miles per gallon (4.3 l/100km) by 2025. And in the next few weeks, the Environmental Protection Authority will announced regulations limiting CO2 emissions from power stations. These measures should ensure that the recent decline in US emissions continues into the future.
As in Australia, a change in government may see these steps reversed. But, also as in Australia, the intellectual collapse of the right is reflected in political confusion. The disarray in the Republican Presidential field reflects the fact that any candidate who is even minimally serious about the issues is unacceptable to the Republican base. Obama now beats all the Republican contenders in ‘match-up’ polls, though he would lose to a ‘generic Republican’ if only one could be found.
If the world had moved a decade ago, we would now be well on the way to stabilising the global climate. There is still time to achieve that goal at moderate economic cost. Australia, at last, has taken its first big step along that path.
John Quiggin 
Most of those opposed to the Carbon Tax deny that humanity faces grave ecological peril of which global warming is only one aspect.
My own objection to the Carbon Tax is that it is only a token compared to what is needed if we are to stand any chance of preventing calamity.
Werner Herzog’s recent film “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” shows that humankind 35,000 years ago was probably as intelligent as we are today. Had they discovered earth’s reserve of fossil fuels back then, they could have consumed it all within only about 400-500 years as humankind seems set to do in this modern era.
Any serious attempt to make human civilisation truly sustainable would have a goal of perpetuating human civilisation for at least the additional length of time that has elapsed since the times portayed in Herzog’s film.
Compared to what is needed, Gillard’s Carbon Tax, which is supposed to give the ‘market’ signals to less wastefully burn carbon, and doesn’t even pretend to attempt to reduce industry’s scandalously wasteful consumption of other non-renewable natural resources, is a cruel joke.
Global financial and economic problems are imposing a constraint on addressing global environmental problems. The big environmental externality of climate change is not being as seriously addressed as it should because of fears of a medium term – perhaps decade long- global economic slowdown.
Some have suggested a restructuring of global secondary energy sources might be an environmentally sensible infrastructure investment that will simultaneously get the global economy moving again. Much the same observation might be made about global water shortages.
If Australia had not been imprisoned by the extreme dogma of the globalised “free market”, thanks to Paul Keating, Bob Hawke and their successors, there is a great deal that could be done by sovereign communities (aka “government”) at all levels to fight global warming and other environmental perils without having to resort to methods such as the Carbon Tax that will most likely only end up only harming the poorest in our community.
Governments which are serious about making Australia sustainable would:
1. Introduce more comprehensive and more innovative forms of transport (public and private) including: (a) taxi services which could be more affordable and which would allow taxi drivers to be paid decently (which could be done if the taxi license plate scam were abolished); (b) mini-buses which could take many commuters from their doors to work and be driven on a rostered part-time basis by some of the commuters themselves; (c) more conventional bus, train and ferry services
2. Proper town planning so that most people wouldn’t have to travel long distances in the first place to get to wrk, shops, entertainment and other amenities. If communities were properly planned it should be possible for most people to reach nearly all places they need to go regularly on foot or on a bicycle at worst.
3. Re-use of beverage and food containers instead of throwing them into the tip or phony recycling schemes for which councils are forced to pay private ‘recyclers’. Why can’t food and beverage manufactures be made to store their products into standardised re-usable containers for which serious deposits in the order of at least $1 each should be payable.
4. etc., etc.
I agree that it is a hopeful start to get a carbon price even if it is a low one at this point. The fact that it is a pigovian tax is even better. I have made the point before that it is theoretically, empirically and morally nonsensical to have an artificially engineered market mechanism to deal with any negative externality. Nobody wants to buy climate change therefore they were to be forced to buy protection against it via an engineered market mechanism. This would have been nothing more than a protection racket with many loopholes and much scope for gaming the system. A pigovian tax is straightforward and sensible policy.
The carbon tax is necessary. Additional dirgisme (government direction) policies of the kind suggested by Malthusista are also necessary. The notion that the “magical guiding hand” of the free market can successfully decide everything for us is a nonsense. Market failure, especially in the area of negative externalities in this case, is the first strike against that notion. The anti-democratic nature of leaving everything to the main market players (i.e rich corporates) is the second strike against that notion. The clearly artificial and complex nature of “enabling rules” which attempt to engineer a market method to deal with negative externalities, but can be gamed, is the third strike against that notion.
Certainly rules are also gamed in the democratic arena. Vested interest groups will always attempt to gain rents and priveleges. However, as Churchill said, democracy is the worst system of government… except for every other system. Any notion of “governing” our society via the market mechanism is absurd, counter-productive and undemocratic because the only thing that votes in the marketplace is money and it votes out of purblind, short term self-interest. That is not the one-vote to one-person method appropriate for national decision making.
“In October, without much fanfare, China introduced a nationwide feed-in tariff for solar photovoltaic electric power”
This is extremely good policy for China as it has a huge need to add additional capacity urgently as there is nationwide rationing of electricity. Solar in this case is offsetting the construction of new coal plants rather than preparing to shut down existing.
The generous freebies and exemptions weaken the impact and moral authority of the carbon tax. Thus we have households paying more for electricity, you’d think a handicap to the coal industry, yet the coal export industry is going gangbusters. Somebody else gets to burn the carbon for us. Allegedly trade vulnerable industries go on what looks like permanent welfare. I suggest the better approach is carbon tariffs that increase the price of steel, aluminium and fabricated goods from China and India. After all a lot of the embodied carbon comes from our coal and gas.
Despite Garnaut and the Productivity Commission saying assistance to renewables begins and ends with carbon tax those industries get continued help through Renewable Energy Certificates and State feed-in tariffs. However the bombshell comes in 2015 when we move to a CO2 cap. If we haven’t saved 160 Mt of CO2, a virtual impossibility barring recession, then we are to buy foreign carbon credits. Thus when some of our hospital emergency patients sleep on stretchers billions will be spent on saving orangutan habitat. We might wonder why this is not the responsibility of others and whether saving it makes any difference to global CO2.
While I agree with carbon pricing I think the giveaways and inconsistencies should be removed. I think it will disappoint but hopefully set the scene for real changes.
It’s a great move in my opinion. Now if we can only get the government to include population offsets as part of the scheme, we’ll be well on our way to fixing the problem at minimal cost.
I think the Green subsidies like MRET and solar rebates are far worse than the carbon tax in terms of economic waste and inefficiency. I don’t think a carbon tax will cause economic catastrophe (at least no more than a straw might break a camels back) however nor do I think it is worth the harm it will do. The difference in temperature that it will deliver is not worth the cost in wage reduction it delivers. Both are marginal but the temperature difference is so marginal as to be next to zero. It is a pointless symbolic policy and a wasted political opportunity for tax reform.
@Hermit
Hermit is right that many concessions do weaken the usefulness of the carbon tax. However, having at least a low carbon tax on the books is a first step, a baby step. Possibly, it is too little, too late but we still have to make the attempt. When climate change begins to bite and the deniers lose all credibility, we will at least be positioned to move from a token carbon tax to one with real impact.
China has much to lose from climate change. Seaboard damage from rising sea levels and widespread desertification with attendent water and food shortages are the main risks. China will be forced to take it seriously. Therefore the argument that China won’t do anything about it won’t wash.
What TerjeP and his cohort don’t understand is that if we wreck the climate (disturb the holocene benignity of climate which we currently have) then we will have no economy at all. Most of the political and financial right-wing have absolutely no conception that an economy exists within the environment and is 100% dependent on the environment. This lack of understanding comes from their general ignorance of the sciences, particularly physics, chemistry, biology and ecology.
@Ikonoclast
China’s main problem with climate change tax is their dependance on “imported manufacturing plants” that is used to support the majority of their population. If they do implement a radical reform that cost too much for the foreign firms to move their plants to other country it would cause huge impact on their own economy. I knew about their carbon scheme as I was back GuangZhou visiting relatives; to say the truth ANYONE that have been to GuangZhou, Shanghai, Beijing or HongKong will know what environmental pollution really means. At least 1-2 out of 10 people walking on the street of GuangZhou wears a mask (some people refuse to wear one because it looks ridiculous, but they are well aware of the damage of poor air quality to their lungs), non-smokers gets lung cancer because their lung is literally black, more and more young people getting asthma, stars don’t exist in the night sky and I only have seen 1 week worth of sun in my 3 months in GuangZhou (no, it’s not rainny).
What’s worse? A lot of industrialised countries include US and Australia are pointing fingers at China and India when we benefit so much from their low labour cost that gave our big firms competitive price in the international market. They are wanting to do something about climate change but they just can’t because too much of the economy relies on jobs that isn’t domestic created but are free to move; that’s why the China suppress their wage to make up productivity via the amount of labour instead of good capitals such as high tech machines.
If I was Gillard I’d invite our biggest coal and LNG export customers to pay carbon tax on a voluntary basis as a gesture of support. Being revenue neutral the host country could ask for a refund for domestic green programs. If it goes on presidential palaces at least we tried.
If some time later that country that declined to pay carbon tax on coal were to ask to buy uranium yellowcake I’d tell them ‘you must eat your greens before you can have cake’.
That much is obvious. What you don’t understand is that the carbon tax will make no difference either way. It is a gesture, nothing more.
@TerjeP
From what you’ve said previously, I don’t think you are actually against the tax. You just don’t like what the revenue is spent on. If 100% of the extra money collected was spent on reducing other taxes, you’d be for it. Am I right?
Your claim TergeP is equivalent to the views that (1) the price elasticity of demand for fuels (especially electricity) is zero and that (2) power stations have zero elasticities of substitution between inputs. I think the evidence contradicts both of these views.
The elasticity of demand for fuels such as electricity is not that high but it certainly significantly negative. Power stations in Australia are already calibrating the possibilities of switching to natural gas – the move is a big lumpy investment and will take some time. Many firms I interact with are already preparing for a less energy intensive future and that move will be sustained I think even in the face of opposition to carbon charging.
Government should massively increase taxation and use the revenue to finance a quick switch to CO2 zero energy sources and otherwise, during the interim, subsidize goods, services and activities that have a lower per dollar energy component in their production.
Meant Governments.
@TerjeP
Ok TerjeP, I’ll bite. I have two questions for you.
1. In your view are current and projected CO2 emissions likely to damage the climate?
2. If your answer to (1) is yes, what policy and actions would you advocate?
@Ikonoclast
1. Damage is a loaded word. If you used the word “change” I would say yes we are likely to change the climate. Will this harm biological diversity and systems humans depend on? Over the next century I would say yes to the former and a little to the latter.
2. I think the major policy response should be to maximize economic growth, minimise harm through prudent adaptation and remove unreasonable barriers to zero emission technologies such as nuclear power.
Close but not quite correct. We should be reducing taxes like income tax and payroll tax and company tax. We should be doing this through spending cuts not new taxes. However if you did it using revenue from a carbon tax instead of through spending cuts it would still be a positive reform because a carbon tax is likely to have fewer dead weight costs and fewer negative social implications.
@hc
No it isn’t. I don’t deny that a carbon tax will lead to changes in energy consumption and energy supply patterns. A carbon tax is the most efficient way to change such behaviour. However when you do the math to find out the projected impact on global temperature the benefits are very close to zero. The economic pain does not warrant the climatic gain. The projected benefit in terms of avoided warming is so small in fact that it is beyond our capacity to even measure. It’s like spending your entire life on an exotic diet because it will lead you to live 2 minutes longer than you would have done otherwise. It’s a symbolic delusion. A feel good initative dressed up as serious policy.
Terje, I’ve pointed out previously that your “math” on this was out by several orders of magnitude. You can’t do math, so saying “when you do the math” is effectively a lie.
Why do you persist with this nonsense? Why not just say “My tribe has decided that it is against our religion”, which would at least be truthful?
@TerjeP
You are right that the carbon tax in present form will not make any difference in climate change in the future. Where it is making the difference is in fearmongering that you and your cohort has created onto the public. It has to start somewhere to address your lies about government and its purpose. Another reason it is ineffective is not to cause a radical disturbance to economy which you cry about that will bring. The carbon tax can be raised slowly to become effective along the road as soon as public at large become ready and aware of the purpose and gets away from under your kind of lies. You dream of “minimise harm through prudent adaptation” (@#18) but have no recommendations of how practically to do it. When practical solution is proposed you say that it will do damage to economy and not be effective. DO you want everything for free?
Danger of such low effectiveness as presently carbon tax is is that next time your cohort comes into power it will bring excuse to scrap it as it is ineffective without replacing it with anything else that would be effective. Even tough it started as ineffective because of your whining that would be too effective (on carbon outputs as on economy).
One point that has not been emphasised enough in the debate about a small country like Australia starting the switch to a low carbon economy now rather than later is the incredible costs that would be incurred if a switch was ultimately forced on the country to comply with a very tight schedule. Eventually, with the dire situation we are heading toward, global action will happen. And even if not a collectively agreed global action, the big powers, like China and even the US, will find the direct consequences of climate change to their countries so dire that they will force reductions in emissions on others. Emissions will eventually become an “act of war”. When this happens Australia will have no option but to change, and forced rapid change would be calamitous. Australia’s task in making the transition is proportionately larger than most. The sooner we start the better for us.
I understand your point now TerjeP. Australia should not bother to do anything to deal with its carbon emissions since its population of 23 million is a small part of 7 billion. Indeed dividing the world up into 330 geographic-political regions each of about 23 million it is clear than no individual region – e.g. California – should do anything about their carbon emissions because no individual region delivers a significant part of the world’s emissions. And I guess the consequence of that is that the world should do nothing about its emissions because none of its component parts should do anything.
I feel relieved that for practical reasons we should continue to avoid the most efficient way of reducing our carbon emissions by setting a charge on them. I guess that means we should not employ any of the inefficient means of control either.
Pulling the blanket up to my chin I think I’ll just sleep this one out.
But Tony Abbott has a magic pudding that will fund all his policies, no matter how inane, so I am going to vote for him next election. His slogan will be “There may not be any benefits. But at least there won’t be any costs.”
Freelander is smart.
Hmmm… Some people might actually going to think that’s an insult, so I will elaborate: Freelander clearly made a simple point that I wanted to try to make, but the greasy meat in my head couldn’t come up with a simple way to make that point, but Freelander made it clearly and succinctly, so I think Freelander is smart. And even if he didn’t come up with the point himself he was smart enough to use it at this juncture.
Someone at Deltoid referred to the ‘our efforts are so small it’s pointless’ argument as the litterbug defence. (No point going to the inconvenience of disposal of rubbish in bins until and unless all the bigger litterbugs do so first, right?) It’s not a good reason to abandon efforts to reduce emissions, just a good (ie marketable) excuse.
Can I suggest Terje abandon voting at elections – his vote being so tiny compared to the voter base that it has to be pointless.
Critique of measures to restrain emissions come in two primary forms – criticism in order to make those measures more effective and criticism in order to make them less effective. The litterbug argument has clearly been taken up by those who want no effective restrictions on emissions. And don’t want the external costs of doing so to ever, oh, so inconveniently, be part of the commercial energy cost equation.
In any event, it’s not like the money is just blasted off into space.
Anyone who knows the economic history of Japan, Germany and South Korea knows that Ricardo’s comparative advantage stuff is a cute theory.
I for one am happy (even excited) to have my tax dollars spent getting Australia good at producing renewable energy technologies. By the time we’re seriously there, the demand will be there too, and we’ll make a killing.
This is assuming those great economic thinkers to the right don’t manage to scuttle the thing.
HC – my argument is not that our part is small in the scheme of things. My argument is that the cost of our effort is higher than our benefit. And if everybody in the world was subject to the same sort of tax the overall cost would still outweigh the overall benefit. My argument is not a litterbug argument but a cost benefit argument applicable both to the components of the worlds population and also to the whole.
JQ – the only mathematical argument I recall you making in regards to what we should be willing to pay per tonne was one that entailed a first order approximation of costs based on a parabola. In essence you seemed to be saying that each extra unit of CO2 in the atmosphere ought to increase what we are willing to pay to stop the next unit. That was interesting but not compelling.
A compelling argument in the current context would look at the reduction in warming due to the current Australian carbon tax policy if held constant to say 2050, and the NPV economic cost of the policy between now and then on a per capita basis. I don’t expect all calculations of this to be the same as there are various assumptions necessary. However the basics ought to be similar. I don’t recall you offering anything in this space but perhaps you did.
I’d liken unqualified support for renewables to expecting skinny people who look good in swimsuits to help sail a large boat. The good lookers are fed cordon bleu while the less attractive real sailors kept largely below decks get bully beef. So far solar power can’t help for more than a few hours at night or after cloudy days yet it gets generous subsidies. Wind power particularly disappoints in heat waves when millions of air conditioners are switched on yet it too gets subsidies and quotas. Oh yes solar helps in hot weather but the aircon usually draws several as much power as the panels and still does as the sun goes down.
I question whether we should pay a premium price for non-premium power. Garnaut advised ditching the MRET and REC subsidy (currently about 4c per kwh) yet they continue. In contrast Bob Brown wants the exact opposite… a national feed-in tariff. We need a very low carbon all weather round the clock energy source if only somebody could think of one.
Hermit: isn’t geothermal already operating commercially in New Zealand?
Come on, Hermit. CSP has already a couple of large installations that store power for 15+ hours. Which all by itself indicates that the engineers are already considering the issue.
Personally, I’m waiting for domestic sized flow batteries (or something similar if if comes along first, cheaper and easier) to maximise my personal benefit from our solar installation. Such entirely predictable improvements and additions to the technology already available are being developed in country after country.
Might I add, with South Australia already getting 15 % of its power from wind, we are still a mighty long way from such intermittency problems causing major problems for power infrastructure. The only such issue I’m aware of is a few areas in other countries having to devise power dumping strategies when wind power exceeds demand. This alone is driving the engineering technologies to be able to store such surplus power and feed into the grid at a more manageable pace.
Add in an increasing fleet of electric cars being available to absorb or release when the grid requires it and supply and demand issues become a lot less scary.
And by the by. Your remark about solar and air-conditioning overlooks the benefits already evident in many areas of high temperatures. The great saving is that solar has maximum input at the very time that airconditioners start maximum draw from the grid. This is a huge saving for power supply _systems_ because it reduces the requirement for seriously expensive peak demand power supply. This may well offset some (all would be nice, but probably not before peak power prices increase even more) of the expense you were talking about.
Wind power has the disadvantage of only working when the wind blows. Solar PV has the disadvantage of only working during the day. At first I was surprised to learn about these disadvantages, but after thinking about their names for a few days I realised that it sort of made sense. Unfortunately our two main sources of electrical power also have disadvantages. Coal power only works when coal is burned and natural gas only works when natural gas is burned. I’ve read a little bit about this topic and apparently the disadvantages from burning coal and natural gas are what economists call very, very big. (I am paraphrasing here somewhat.) So it seems to me that it is worthwhile to put up with the disadvantages of wind and solar PV to avoid some of the very, very big disadvantages that come from burning coal and natural gas. Just how much wind, solar PV, or other low emission capacity should be built should depend on their price because that way we’ll have more money left over for ice-cream or anything else we might want.
TerjeP wrote:
Well, given that Australia’s population is six tenths of one percent of the worlds, and given that our GHG contribution is about 1.5%, if by 2050 we’re at 0.6% (ie: parity with out percentage of the worlds population) that would be good… will that fix it? Maybe, maybe not… I don’t have another couple of hundred years left to let me keep watch (ie: it may take as many years to “undo” as it took to “do”)
The compelling reasons for Australia to “do our bit” is effectively about politics – we are reasonably influential with India, China and the United States. We need to make sure China stays the course, that India develops along the same lines and that the United States conservative side of politics gets it’s head out of it’s collective arse because there industry and technology will be invaluable in the mitigation effort.
If our “great and powerful friend” decides to do nothing for another few presidential terms, then we are effectively screwed; mitigation effort (therefore cost) substantially increases over time.
@Dan
That’s volcanic geothermal where groundwater percolates through recent lava plumes and emerges as natural steam which humans are able to divert to power turbines. What is most talked about in Australia is HDR hot dry rock geothermal where heat emanating from uranium bearing granite is trapped by overlying sediments. The theory is to tap below the top layer with vertical boreholes, fracture the intermediate granite then pass exotic water between the down injection well and the exit well. The escaping froth evaporates an ammonia mixture at the surface to run turbine generators and the water is condensed then pumped back underground. Water re-use is necessary to conserve the resource and prevent radon leakage. After a couple of years the granite cools and new wells are required. It is based on radioactive decay and is not strictly sustainable. Efficiency is low due to small temperature differentials; see Carnot’s Law.
@adelady
The claimed ability of CSP to scale up to base load capacity took a battering when the world’s biggest plant at Ivanpah California opted for a swag of PV instead. That’s without storage. Adelaide’s wind power is admirable but depends on gas balancing. As of 2009 the Cooper Basin had reserves to production of 12 years. Perhaps ‘fracking’ will improve things.
Hermit, what do you think would happen to the electricity produced by South Australia’s wind turbines if the states gas supply was cut off today?
Terje,
The premise for your anti carbon price arguments is “why us, why now, what difference will it make?”.
If 60% of the world’s most polluting nations within the next 5 years introduce significant carbon reduction programmes improving on Australia’s targets, siting Australia’s boldness as an inspiration, would you then consider Australia’s contribution to the global emissions abatement effort as being above 1.5% or below it?
Being costly and difficult to isn’t a good reason to embrace failure on something as irrevocably world changing as climate change.
Currently the Coalition’s ‘sceptics’ favour any published assertions and outspoken opinion that the full impacts and even the existence of anthropogenic climate change are overstated and/or the costs of action are understated in a post-modernist, ‘my truth is just as valid as your truth’ kind of way. They certainly appear unswayed by the advice of CSIRO, BoM, Australian Academy of Sciences (in agreement with equivalents all around the world).
Where are the Coalition’s outspoken advocates for science based policy? I look forward to the day when the Right in Australia gives up the BS debate and begin treating the issue with some semblance of seriousness, but I’m not holding my breath. What will it take for an Abbott or a Minchen to have a change of mind on this or will they go to their graves in an Australia vastly changed insisting those changes must have been natural all along?
Hermit wrote:
Which is why their website (www.brightsourceenergy.com) has a lovely front page pic full of solar thermal towers instead?
I don’t think anyone except the “back to the trees” crowd is claiming that it will be easy to phase out and replace our current base load generation with alternatives… but certainly many places in Australia could support solar thermal generation quite handily… it’s not exactly rocket science either and many regional cities have engineering fabrication houses that could easily produce them – unlike wind turbines where we have to buy back our rare earth via China or Malaysia.
Hermit @ 35, The expected lifespan of the Cooper Basin HDR reservoir created by Geodynamics is 50 years with plenty of opportunity to create many more reservoirs in the area to prolong the life of the generating plant.
Heat is generated by decay of uranium as you said as well as thorium and potassium.
It turned out the the rocks below were not Dry at all by are an aquifer.
I would argue that there is no “escaping froth” as the reservoir fluid will be a closed loop under very high pressure with no opportunity to froth.
The Kalina cycle is a high efficiency cycle and the temperatures are around 250C which is hot enough to melt Tin. While not as efficient as the temperatures over 300C of Nuclear and fossil fuel plants, I believe it is pessimistic spin to call it “inefficient’.
@Ronald Brak
Since the summer firm wind capacity is just 5% of so of nameplate Adelaide would have to rely as much as possible on interstate electricity imports. If I recall correctly Adelaide/Melbourne summer demand once (2007?) blew the NEM spot price to its cap of 1,000c or $10 per kwh. It also blew the ac/dc converter on the Tasmanian end of the Basslink cable. This is why I understand ETSA wants to put radio switches on air conditioners to play odds and evens on hot days.
Hermit, thanks for your reply. My question was – what do you think will happen to the electricity produced by South Australia’s wind turbines if the state’s gas supply was cut off today? Do you see that if the gas supply was cut off, none of the electricity produced by wind turbines would go to waste? That it would all be used and that the wind tubines would still be usefull even without gas?
@BilB
You have the premise of my position wrong. I specifically explained this to HC earlier in this thread.
TerjeP, Your cost-benefit analysis is idiosyncratic. The Stern Review, the Garnaut Review and even climate conservatives such as William Nordhaus find that, at the global level, the benefits from addressing climate change exceed the costs by a vast margin.
The Treasury studies, the Grattan Institute studies (and my own efforts to examine the case for unilateral policies) confirm that the costs to Australia of mitigation are low outside one or two sectors. Once free quotas are provided to these sectors – in our case aluminium – the costs are very low.
A difficulty in Australia today is that commentators often confuse interest group viewpoints for scientific analysis of costs and benefits. You can come up with plausible sounding a priori stories for huge costs and low benefits but the evidence does not stack up.
You are making claims that are inconsistent with the literature on the economics of climate change. I am unsure if John is right in saying you are thinking ‘tribally’ about these issues but if you are going to make claims on the economics that differ from the accumulated work done then – as with those who deny climate change is occurring – you need to have very strong and clearly thought out grounds for having this position.
The cost benefit of action on climate hangs has been done to death, Stern, CSIRO et al. One thing that is agreed on – the CST of action nw is less tan the cost of action in the future.
But Terje demands to “see the evidence”.
We ought to gather up all the climate change sceptics. Put them in a giant cast iron pot and then slowly bring it to the boil. If any of them make the claim that they are slowly being cooked to death. We should ask “Where’s the evidence?”
Terje,
I take it that you are referring to your comment at 29 where you declare that the cost of Climate Change Abatement is greater than the benefits.
I have to ask how you can make that claim, Terje? Where is your proof.
@hc
HC – I would agree that the costs of a pure carbon tax is modest. I’m more concerned about the institutional effects of an ETS. However even if we were simply getting a modest cost carbon tax with appropriate offsets for trade exposed industry I don’t see this cost as being worth incurring given the minuscule benefits.
In terms of determining the benefits my assumption is based on the approach indicated in the following:-
Click to access aust-carbon-temps.pdf