I’ve been meaning to post about the Australian Energy Market Operator’s report on the feasibility of a 100 per cent renewable electricity supply system for Australia (H/T commenter Ben). In the meantime, Brian Bahnisch at LP has done a detailed summary, so I’ll refer you there and make a few points of my own.
First, this study should kill off, once and for all, claims made here and in many other places (notably, at Brave New Climate) that the intermittency of renewable electricity is an insuperable problem.[1] The AEMO is the body that manages the electricity market on a minute-to-minute basis, so it has the expertise to assess this claim, unlike the many amateurs who have tried their hands. And, since it might have to do the job, it has no reason to understate the difficulties of a renewables-based system.
Second, the estimate cost of $111 to $133 per megawatt-hour represents an increase of $60-80/MwH on current wholesale prices, or 6-8c/Kwh on retail prices. That’s much less than the increase we’ve seen thanks to the mishandling of electricity market reform. If we wound back those costs, we could actually end up with both 100 per cent renewables and cheaper electricity.
Third, although the study envisages a role for electric vehicles, it doesn’t present a full-scale program for decarbonization. But once you have a scalable, fully renewable electricity supply, everything else is comparatively easy.
Finally, if we take Tony Abbott at his word in wanting direct action to deal with climate change, this report provides him with a blueprint. If we want to, we can eliminate the great majority of domestic CO2 emissions simply by mandating renewable technology and electric vehicles. The cost would be substantial in dollar terms ($250 billion for the electricity component). But, over a couple of decades, it would be a barely detectable deduction from growth in national income.
Update As it turns out, there’s a response at Brave New Climate from Martin Nicholson. Nicholson reports on a study of his own, in which nuclear is included in the mix. On Nicholson’s estimates, this substantially reduces capital costs, a point of which he makes a big deal. But obviously, renewables have much lower operating costs and Nicholson estimates the levelised cost for his system at $124/MWh to $126/MWh. As he says:
As this is in the middle of the AEMO range, wholesale prices are likely to be similar with or without nuclear
Given that very few current-generation nuclear plants have been built, cost estimates for nuclear are speculative. The obvious inference for Australia is that we should push along with renewables, and take a “wait and see” position on nuclear, observing developments in the UK, US, France and China. If they can deliver nuclear safely and at low cost, we can add it to the mix (say, after 2030).
Sadly, I think most of the BNC readership are locked into a position that nuclear must be the answer, which requires them to believe that renewables won’t work. Even a comprehensive demonstration that renewables can deliver a 100 per cent solution at a cost comparable with optimistic estimates for nuclear isn’t going to shift them.end update
fn1. This is part of a rhetorical manoeuvre aimed at pushing the conclusion that nuclear is the only feasible zero-carbon option. Once it’s admitted that 100 per cent renewable electricity is feasible, nuclear advocates need to present a case based on comparative costs. In the Australian context, it will be very hard to make that case, given the need to set up a complete nuclear infrastructure from scratch.
John Quiggin 
@Ikonoclast
Thanks, I didn’t see that article before. I’ll certainly read it, but to be frank I’m not really interested in whether it’s practically a good idea or not. I was wondering if it’s theoretically possible to do with a net energy gain.
@Ikonoclast
I can’t begin to imagine why those seeking to extract uranium from seawater would do that. You’d simply create floating booms or platforms with their own GPS devices and monitoring systems in the vast tracts of ocean not far from the major processing centres. The booms could be programmed to come into shore when approaching capacity, like those intelligent vacuum cleaners one can now buy. The motors could be electric, drawing power from batteries charged by either solar or hydraulically driven rotors. They could be configured to track and use currents and travel quite slowly (since speed would not be a key criterion) so as to minimise demands on engine capacity and therefore weight.
@Ikonoclast
To reiterate in case you didn’t know, I’m completely with you on wanting to go renewables only, and not even give nuclear a look-in. That’s why the question of uranium from seawater is for me just an academic question.
I quite like the idea of using a similar system to track and collect piles of floating debris near sea lanes and bring it into shore for disposal.
Nuclear’s only feasible role in Australia’s future energy now is as some kind of last ditch backup energy plan for the pro-nuker’s predictions of failure of renewables. Conservatives ensured that when they chose to go in to bat for the fossil fuel sector two decades ago and put obstruction of climate/emissions/clean energy ahead of rational policy. That killed nuclear by depriving it of the backing of the one party that had no outright objections. Ever since, any pro-nuclear noises from the LNP are not worth the hot air used to make them.
Any political party willing to embrace and promote misinformation and lies for fossil fuels is clearly incapable of responding to the ‘truths’ about nuclear vs renewables that are bandied about at BNC. Do the posters over there really think that unfortunate decision was forced on the LNP by the popular successes of a loud, committed vocal minority they firmly believe are irrational ratbags? Nonsense – if the truth about climate has not been sufficient to move conservatives to push for nuclear, why would anyone think a change of mind by greens would do it? If anti-nuclear activism didn’t conveniently already exist – and conveniently with no inconvenient links to big mining and fossil fuel interests, those interests would be forced to invent and fund it. Because the energy sector in Australia doesn’t want nuclear, they want to go on using coal.
The same kinds of voices, that said wind and solar could never do enough to even notice let alone provide a significant percentage of power, are sticking to that line even after wind and peak solar got cheaper than peak coal and has provided significant amounts of power. The storage problem is significant but utility scale storage is not rocket science; the industry that should be investing in developing and deploying it has too much vested in the argument (to the goal of avoiding fundamental change to how they do business) that it’s not worth investing in. Yet solutions, using techologies that were around a century ago, are emerging – like Isentropic Ltd’s Utility Scale Pumped Heat Storage system that claims lower storage costs than pumped hydro – without the geographic or climatic constraints.
It’s not a case of can’t be done but of don’t want to. (fingers in ears “won’t, won’t, won’t)
@Fran Barlow
Thanks Fran ; Alfreds point is god too.
If some suicide type volunteers flew over a city (or just drove a truck thru) and emptied drums of waste would that make the city uninhabitable for generations ? Does waste have to be protected from this risk for 1000’s of years ?
Could future technology use and reuse the waste until it is not dangerous?
Creating something that remains so dangerous for so long is a hard hurdle for me to get over .
@Fran Barlow
Fran, I don’t want too sound snarky or sarcastic but are you a marine engineer? Do you really think what you propose would be realistic and workable?
The extensive membranes when lowered into the sea create high drag when the current flows through them. These devices will only be viable at the highest natural current points (a strait perhaps like the Strait of Gibraltar). Thus they would have to lowered into the sea and attached to anchored structures. Then they would be winched back up later by vessels that looked a bit like very large trawlers and then transported to a shore facility for processing. This is where the large fleet comes in.
What you propose, it appears, is to drag them through the ocean on huge floating booms via self-propulsion with solar power and electric motors. I don’t see this as feasible. Wind drag on the booms and water drag on the membranes lowered into the sea would be enormous. I don’t see the propulsion system you propose as being adequate. Ships go through the sea bow first with sleek hulls and still need huge diesel engines. You propose pushing a wide boom dragging membranes sideways through the sea wit solar pv powered engines. I am sorry, it would not work, And then there are gales, storms and waves to consider. The ocean can be a very wild environment at times.
@Ken Fabian
Ken, you are quite right. There are many feasible solutions in that area and others related to renewables. The established power of the fossil fuels industry and their fear of being left with stranded assets is acting to combat renewable solutions.
Certain peak-oiler doomsters are also blindly dismissive of all renewable solutions. I used to be one of those types myself until arguing with Prof. J.Q, and others caused me to research widely and re-evaluate my position based on the empirical facts. That style of peak-oil doomster-ism is very dangerous. It actually plays into the hand of the fossil fuels lobby. It says categorically that we will crash and collapse totally when fossils run out and thus by implication that we might as well use the fossils anyway, have a good life and damn our descendents to a +6 C global warming hell.
I am still a doomster (sadly) but only because I believe this system (late stage corporate capitalism) is too greedy and stupid to act in time to save the situation. And our governments are so completely captured by the vested interests of capital that there seems little hope of anything changing.
@Ikonoclast “The established power of the fossil fuels industry and their fear of being left with stranded assets is acting to combat renewable solutions.”
I always assumed it is not “their fear” that motivates them rather than to literally ‘milk the cow to death’.
Thank you Ken Fabian for sharing your thoughts on this.
from the union of concerned scientists (2005):- “the osre [operational safeguards response evaluation] tests, at 27 of the 57 sites tested, revealed significant weaknesses indicating that a real attack would have put the nuclear reactor in jeopardy with the potential for core damage and a radiological release”.
for example, the distance from three mile island to new york city is 240km, to washington d.c is 140km, to baltimore 94 km. -a.v.
@Ikonoclast
I’m not a marine engineer, but I am advised by one who is that what I’ve proposed would be feasible.
FTR, I’m not proposing that the uranium collecting booms/platforms work like mobile trawlers. I saw them as staying more or less consistently in one location until they were at or near capacity. When the boom/platform was ready to return, the hanging membranes would be drawn up and the boom/platforms oriented so as to minimise drag.
That’s because they have to carry huge masses of cargo and an infrastrucuture to support people operating the ship, and of course the fuel. A large part of the vessel will be under water, and the ship will need to operate for perhaps a couple of decades to recover the sunk cost, (no pun intended) so the meterials need to be especially robust.
The boom or platform need support very little weight relative to its mass and it can be designed from highly durable and flexible materials. It doesn’t need to support humans or carry fuel and might need only some quite modest batteries,
I’ve seen Japanese designs for offshore windfarms that look like honeycombs interlocking. I don’t see why, 20 years from now, if there were a need to consider collecting uranium by this means, it could not be done. I would like to see one designed to catch flotsam from ships of course.
Personally, I see the strongest argument against the roll out of nuclear power as being the objection that in practice the security measures that any responsible jurisdiction would need to take to assuage the concerns (both reasonable and unreasonable) of the population about the safety of the plant would necessarily raise questions about civil rights which would not be raised if more innocuous technologies were used instead.
There’s no getting around that one, IMO. Accordingly, if you are going to infringe people’s rights to that extent, you’d better have a really compelling need to use the technology. I see no such need as things stand.
The AEMO report on 100% renewable energy is very interesting and shows what could be done to eliminate carbon emissions from the electricity sector and that the cost would hardly be noticeable to consumers in the context of what they have already experienced. However, the report does not describe what would actually be done. The goal is not to become 100% renewable, but to become carbon neutral or carbon negative. It’s not the same thing. Existing natural gas plants can be used to fill gaps left by renewables and the CO2 released can be captured and sequested at a relatively low price. Right now I can fill a ship with wood chips or other biomass for about $150 tonne and dump it in the ocean at a cost of about $100 per tonne of CO2 sequestered. This comes to about three cents a kilowatt-hour for an fairly efficient gas plant such as the Darling Downs Gas Plant. Even if costs don’t come down, this makes for a fairly cheap way to deal with intermitancy issues. The ability to use existing fossil fuel plants when necessary makes going carbon neutral a lot cheaper than going 100% renewable.
Fran, to power one 1GW nuclear reactor you’d need 150,000 platforms in constant operation. If each returned for processing just once a year, that’s at the very least 400 returning, and another 400 deployed, every single day. Running the system around the clock, 20 platforms/braids an hour would need to arrive at shore with military-like precision to be added to the processing queue, and another 20 an hour dispatched similarly. I wouldn’t want to be the one having to program navigation and motor logic and control circuits for those 150,000 platforms…and in those small-scale tests we’re all referring to, they were operating on something like 60 days turnaround, not 360…eek.
There’s a reason those companies are saying they’d need at least a billion dollars upfront *per reactor* to get the system going (that’s with trawlers picking them up and dropping them off every day – much simpler and more efficient, like buses compared to cars…the system you’re imagining would easily add another billion to the cost), and when they say you’d have to re-use each braid 20 times to bring the price down below $300 a pound etc, what they’re really saying is that the system has to run for 10 to 20 years to become cost effective…for the first few years, you’re effectively paying $3000-6000 a pound for uranium…
@Nick
Do you have a model for your 150,000 platforms? That sounds orders of magnitude larger than would be needed, but perhaps you can explain the reasoning.
FTR Nick, I concede that there might well be scaleability problems with the approach. I was merely noting that the EROEI objection was improbable.
@Ken Fabian
What Ken said
Fran, not being an expert on any of these things, I might have it wrong 🙂
But the tests seemed to indicate a kilo of uranium per braid per year of submersion or thereabouts.
And a 1GW reactor apparently consumes about 150 tonnes of natural uranium a year…
I can’t find where I derived the figures for the braids from, but the following quote from this report seems to indicate as much:
Click to access annex-1b.pdf
“The Environmental Science Research Laboratory, the Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry reported that 1,200 t-U/y could be collected from seawater if the 2.1 millions braid type adsorbents, 60 m length, were set in 134 km2 sea area with an interval of 8 m.”
Actually that would come out at 262,500 braids/platforms required per reactor, but there’s been better results from different adsorbent materials more recently…
That quote may have been based on a single 30 day submersion period, not a year? In which case I’d be out by a factor of 12…I’ll have another look later tonight.
@Nick
And in addition, it would depend on how many braids you could attach to a platform. If you could attach 20 or 30 …
As I said, it seems a moot point because we are a very long way from building enough reactors to tear through conventional supplies in a couple of decades and even further if we include breeders, Th232 reactors and so forth. Who knows what humanity will be able to do in 50 years time?
My principal interest here was the EROEI question rather than the overall feasibility of doing things this way right now.
Reading about extracting uranium from sea water is interesting, but isn’t something that will ever be done on account of how the world is no where near to running out of uranium thanks to Hinkley C asking for a minimum wholesale price of about 15 cents a kilowatt-hour and that nasty accident they had in Japan.
Nuclear fuel supply is way down the list of concerns this side of 2050. The UK has 120 tonnes of plutonium to use somehow, either in a fast reactor, heavy water reactor or as mixed oxide in light water reactors. That should keep them going for a long time.
Australia has most of the world’s easily mined uranium (also thorium according to Geosciences) so we should be able negotiate a good deal but probably won’t. Countries like Kazakhstan will run down their reserves first. Where I agree with Pr Q is to get the in-principle decision first. If we kick started with a US made small modular reactor the initial fuel load (which could last four years) will arrive by ship then delivered onsite by truck. The security should be no more than a Royal visit. Funny how a few tonnes of uranium kept in a heavy box gets people excited whereas atmospheric burning of hundreds of millions of tonnes of coal does not.
Small modular reactors currently under consideration elsewheres will not be used in Australia as they are projected to have higher capital costs per kilowatt than larger reactors. An advantage is supposed to be lower financing costs due to quicker construction, but their construction time is still measured in years. Even if they took a week to build they would still be no where near competitive in Australia.
Skyrocketing CO2 levels may not concern the great thinkers here, but finally Americans are taking notice
i agree with Fran Barlow at 15 @Fran Barlow . the introduction of nuclear electricity would lead to the creation of a secret state within the state to ensure against the theft of fuel in transit or storage & against the seizure of facilities. bigger & more repellent than asio, it would have, in the national jurisdiction, extraordinary powers to surveillance & intervention, including licence to kill, and it would be answerable only to the highest office holders of the state. such is the danger of stolen fuel or seized facilities to state security, that its functionaries, were this fuel to be introduced, would adopt all measures deemed necessary, including subverting the constitution, to ensure state security against all conceivable worst cases. we owe it to ourselves (at least) to make work an option that doesn’t risk turning our country into a first world potemkim democracy. -a.v.
@Ken Fabian
I doubt that I’ve heard such a bizzare and self serving political analysis in a long time. Public opposition to nuclear power underlies all parties avoidance of the issue. And public opinion is fueled by radiation phobia whose origins lie in the cold war and nuclear weapons. History has a long memory and building on that historical base, certain political tendencies have done their utmost to foster radiation phobia at every possible opportunity. Helen Caldicott (“trust me I’m a doctor”) is a prime example of the anti-science quackery that has been represented as truth. There is plenty of blame to share around for failure to take meaningful action on climate.
Now onto storage. As I have already remarked once on this thread, there is a remarkable tendency to just use the AEMO report as a political document. It seems what it actually says does not matter much. Here is what it says about storage:
Given the chosen mix of generation from diverse sources across the NEM, investment in specific storage solutions such as batteries and compressed air did not emerge as being economic for large-scale deployment and were not included in the modelling.
As for Isentropic’s device, they have a grant of 14 million quid to build a pilot from the UK Energy Technologies Institute which is in turn funded by the UK government and large energy companies. Contributing companies include BP, Shell, EDF and Eon.
One may reasonably ask why Germany has not stepped forward on this one and commenced a demo plant. They seem to have enough money to bring over 5 GW of new coal capacity on-line this year. Why do they need to do this?
The writing is on the wall – as a generalized solution, storage technology is not economic, technologically immature or both.
Quokka,
Nuclearphobia is a well earnt reaction to the fact that reactors fail and leak spreading an invisible contamination which business and government have a long track record of lying about.
The most blatant example of the deceptions and coverups was with the three mile island reactor where the hydrogen explosion was denied and concealed. Had this been openly accepted then all reactor buildings of this type could have been modified to eliminate the threat that hydrogen buildup presented. And there may have been a far smaller Fukushima disaster.
This stuff is dangerous and the people running this equipment are human and will fail when given the chance. The public intuitively understand this and that is why we don’t have reactors in this country.
Another major impediment is our conservative dominated media which people also intuitively understand to be a vehicle of concealment and coersion.
Now the probability of Australia’s economy crumbling under the force of Destructive Weather events with the next forty years is extremely high, and the last thing that any country needs is abandoned nulcear facilities and decaying radioactive waste piles. Far fetched? I don’t think so.
@quokka “… public opinion is fueled by radiation phobia whose origins lie in the cold war and nuclear weapons. ”
We have gone through this more than a half a dozen of time over on LP.
The recent Fukushima incident did highlight once again the risk of systemic regulatory failures involving the IAEA, a National Government and licensed operator in preventing and managing a nuclear disaster. Further, the utter lack of ability to find and establish long term solutions for nuclear energy waste and desperate solutions, such as storing MOX material on top of reactors which are exposed to known natural forces, does not give the public confidence in the maturity of this technology.
@Hermit
” It’s just I confidently predict those kinds of novelties are not enough for an industrialised society brought up on the teat of coal and oil.”
Shouldn’t your confidence be shaken by the AEMO analysis? Obviously it has a mix of assumptions, some optimistic and some otherwise. But if you are confident that the analysis is badly wrong, how about spelling out the crucial errors, and how the results would change if they were corrected?
It’s worth pointing out that the AEMO conclusions have been matched by plenty of other studies, with different technological assumptions. Most of these have been prepared in an advocacy context, and so need to be discounted a bit. Still, you need more than a gut feeling to conclude that you are right and all these analyses are wrong. Here’s a US example
http://www.civilsocietyinstitute.org/media/041713release.cfm
When people get a pet idea, an idée fixe, they are almost always impervious to reason and logic after that point. I am sure I am no different. Of course, that is what idée fixe means; a preoccupation of mind held so firmly as to resist any attempt to modify it, a fixation. Our host, very perceptively, calls each sandpit “A new sandpit for long side discussions, idees fixes and so on.”
Some of my idée fixes (if that is the plural) over the last five years have included solar convection towers, peak oil, peak energy, supposed poor EROEI of solar power and MMT (Modern Monetary Theory). I also have in interest in left politics and Marxism that goes way back although I am not and never have been a Marxist as such.
I can at least point out that I have modified my opinions on certain matters. I think now solar convection towers might be less viable than a mix of solar PV and solar concentrating. I am no longer specifically a peak oil doomster and I accept that solar and wind power have viable EROEI of at least 10:1 for solar and up to 20:1 for wind. My interest in MMT continues but I don’t accept it uncritically. Neither do I accept orthodox bourgeois economics uncritically, even left liberal or social democrat economics which still generally accepts capitalism as the basic appropriate system without question.
I challenge everyone else on this blog to take a moment to think of cases where they have modified or changed a personal idée fixe.
Our general inability to modify fixed ideas once we have formed them is very intriguing. I think the relevant studies show that we cherry pick evidence and ignore disconfirming evidence. I think we also ignore the fact that our ideational models are always much simpler than reality. But reality without a personal mythos imposed on it is probably too “complexly pictureless” for us. We are limited beings.
The defining characteristic of human existence is limitation. The defining characteristic of all existence is limitation. All that exists is limited so far as we can tell, even the matter and energy of the universe. By induction, we can infer that non-existence is non-limitation. But non-limitation without existence and awareness, what is that? It is as least the absence of the pain and final futility which characterises all human life.
@Fran Barlow
Fran, we all have our pet ideas for solving the energy crisis. Most of us seem impervious to the disconfirming evidence which calls some of our pet ideas into question.
I am no fan of oligarchic capitalism as bloggers here will know. However, I do accept that a regulated free market (working freely within regulated limits) can be the appropriate mechanism for determining the most efficient and effective ways to do certain things in the economy. There is a rider on that and it relates to the issue of natural monopolies but let us leave that aside for the moment.
Surely the thing to do (as I have said before) is to;
(a) remove all subsidies;
(b) cost and charge negative externalities properly;
(c) set ubiquitous safety and insurance standards.
Then let the energy solutions duke it out on a level playing field.
So really, we don’t have to spend our time arguing about the best ways to solve the energy – pollution crisis from an energy generation-method perspective. We need to spend time arguing for the removal of subsidies, arguing about costing negative externalities (which will be complex to do properly), arguing about setting safety and insurance standards and arguing about the place to draw the line between public (natural monopoly) ownership and private ownership. Further, we need to run an argument about oligarchic private ownership versus distributed, cooperative private ownership and management. The latter is not the same as share ownership under an oligarchic, corporate system.
It is clear that the oligarchic, corporate system is intractably obstructing solutions of these critical issues and subverting our democratic system so that democratic demand is blocked. Democracy and oligarchic, corporate capitalism are antithetical.
@John Quiggin
Germany seems to show us that there are diminishing returns past about 30% renewables penetration ie it’s a growth killer. Note Spain, Germany and California still have nukes so it’s unknown how they will go if they (and gas and coal) are abolished entirely. Personal experience does influence views; for example I made a biogas digester that was messy and stank and wasn’t worth the bother. Now AEMO says biogas can substantially replace natural gas. It fails the smell test. Then the same week as the AEMO report Geodynamics says it can get 1 MW from its geothermal plant. A few years back that was hundreds of MW yet it’s a linchpin of the AEMO modelling.
A more circumspect analysis is that given by Martin Nicholson in BraveNewClimate and Online Opinion. However I’d still be pro-nuke even if renewables came in cheaper. They don’t take much physical input for their long working life, are visually unobtrusive and looked at objectively are relatively safe. Alarmism over safety issues should be balanced by equal alarmism over burning carbon.
Hermit,
What the….
“Germany seems to show us that there are diminishing returns past about 30% renewables penetration ie it’s a growth killer”
Renewables are only a growth killer for the fossil fuel energy sector,………and that is exactly what is supposed to happen. Domestic Solar PV and Water heating are economy enhancers as they reduce fossil fuel imports and redirect expenditure from energy to discretionary spending which benefits many other sectors of the economy.
I am certain that the biogas reference is for utility level involvement for power generation. If biogas (methane) were to be fed into the domestic grid it would be scrubbed first. Domestic level biogas does not have sufficient energy throughput to be a broadly useful renewable energy resource I believe.
Geodynamics is a shoe string venture at this stage. Major funding will yield major energy returns, this is the global experience with Geothermal Energy production.
This renewables discrediting argument theme is all very desperate. Fortunately, the market is taking absolutely no notice of such rhetoric.
@Ikonoclast
Despite being a socialist, I would, with some temporal, spatial and functional qualification, agree. In the short and medium run, scarcity is for all practical purposes, certain to be a feature of life, which can only mean, in my view, that some resort to ‘market’ mechanisms is apt.
Assuming one could be confident about the scope of the concept ‘subsidy’ and separate it from, for example, such income transfers as reduce inequality, then yes, with some qualification on the concept of ‘insurance’. I see a very substantial role for ‘the state’ defined broadly to be involved in infrastructure and ‘self-insure’.
@Hermit
Well put. I’m alarmed by both.
@BilB
Origin has just dumped it’s joint venture with Geodynamics writing off $200 million. Funny sort of shoe string. It is delusional to suggest that EGS is even remotely similar to existing Geothermal. Drilling 4-5 kms down into granite and getting it to fracture the way you would like is really hard. There is no global experience with EGS at any scale. In fact, if you go back a few years, all the talk was of Australia being the global leader and there was a bit of a geothermal bubble on the ASX. EGS proponents in other countries were envious of the ability to raise capital in Australia. Really!
Sometimes physical reality cannot be bought. If EGS delivers the goods that’s great, but it is still in the “maybe” basket.
@Ikonoclast The trick seems to be changing while appearing to not change “idée fixe” eg in 2010 Abbott instructed Turnbull to destroy NBN in 2013 the LNP policy is to deliver NBN better and cheaper than the ALP.
Interesting chat with Helen Clarke on RN yesterday. Her polls in opposition were as ad as 2% approval yet she went on to lead 3 coalition govts and is now in a senior position in the UN. Her philosophy was to always project confidence and to be consultative and cooperative.
I would have thought, Quokka, that you would be totally positive and proposing the use of a small nuclear device to create a cavity at that depth.
@rog
Misleading. She had a PPM of 2% when she became LotO, but her personal approval was much larger than that at its worst.
Of course, she copped nothing from the Kiwi press comparable to that with which Gillard was assailed. Had she been an Austalian PM, I shudder to think what would have happened to her, media-wise.
Let there be no doubt
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/saturdayextra/helen-clark/4682388
Quokka –
How is it bizarre and self serving? Why is it bizarre to conclude that more than 2 decades of climate science denial and obstructionism within Australia’s mainstream conservative political party has been a profound impediment to the promotion of nuclear as climate solution? Given that I think the day the LNP stops it will be the day they probably begin to actually promote nuclear as solution – how is that self serving? Or anti-nuclear or even anti-LNP? I want them to ditch that obstructionism and the dangerous lies that go with it. I want them to start developing their own policies to tackle the problem instead of working so tirelessly to obstruct the policies of others.
I think climate science denial and obstructionism has had an insidious effect on the politics of energy and having more than 2 decades of being nurtured at the centre of the policy ambitions of a mainstream political party has been deeply damaging. I think far more damaging than anti-nuclear activism. It has to stop.
Why Isentropic started in Britain probably has to do with beginning in and being in Britain. Securing funding for a 14M pound pilot project does not sound like a failure, no matter how you spin it.
@Hermit
Employees, tradespeople, professionals, business operators and other industries should be able to expect the same level of integrity, responsibility and accountability from nuclear and fossil industry as is expected of them without being called alarmist.
@BilB
Strange what effect a 20% guaranteed market share and generous subsidies will achieve.
Strange what a guaranteed minimum price of about 12 cents a kilowatt-hour for 20 years won’t achieve in the UK for Hinkley C.
@rog
The language here was loose. It was PPM not approval.
“Alarmism over safety issues should be balanced by equal alarmism over burning carbon.”
Hold on, this is a total non sequitur. You were talking about renewables and implicitly equating NIMBY objections to wind turbines with well-founded concerns about nuclear waste, proliferation etc. Then you suddenly bring in carbon.
Honestly, I think you and quokka have dug yourselves into a hole, and are ignoring the standard advice in this situation.
Well, I have to say that I am disappointed, though not at all surprised, that the economist quarter failed to pick up on the disaterously rapid rise in CO2 levels which just blasted through 400 ppm at a rate that guarantees the worst of all future worlds.
The focus of this thread is now redundant as the prospect of decarbonising Australia will no longer be necessary where the purpose is Carbon Emission Reduction. The techniques of Carbon Reduction, renewables energy technologies, will achieve a new focus in preserving our standard of living in the face of certain substantial Global Economic Collapse. The rapid development of solar energy technologies has been fortuitous as Solar Collectors, PV and heating, will be the principle means by which families can secure their energy supplies independently of a volatile external market place.
I am convinced that we have a maximum of 20 years of stable global economies before destructive weather events and rising heat levels (not temperatures but duration of heat events and humidity levels) destabalise Global Food Security and trigger a multiplicity of migration and ethnic conflicts.
Whereas the market approach to Climate Change Action has shown measurable results, it has failed the test of time to achieve objective. Game over.
@BilB I’m inclined to agree with you on that one, the argument has been reduced to semantics and debating points.
@John Quiggin
Err… what standard advice? The AEMO has done what was asked of them, and produced a report of 2030 and 2050 all renewables scenarios with (somewhat uncertain) cost estimates. It has not said that this is optimum in any respect. Unless I’ve missed it, there is no assessment of the emissions intensity for the scenarios.
If you are so certain about this “hole”, you will have no problem with insisting that AEMO do a technology neutral report that includes nuclear. However, I would like to see a slight change and that is to set a limit on emissions in electricity generation – say 50g CO2 /kWh or whatever you like, but that sounds good to me. Then engineer to that objective. As I already have said, I believe this would not be an onerous task for AEMO – the tools and methodology they already have should do the trick.
Then I would like to see the hard stuff. The stuff that AEMO specifically excludes from it’s report – how to achieve the transition. Some sort of first pass at implementation plan(s) with time lines, full carbon accounting, identification of technology risk, identification of the critical paths and so on. Then claims about build times can be taken out the realm of hand waving.
What is abundantly clear from the AEMO report is that the scenarios are heavily optimized (I hope and assume not over optimized), highly dependent on the mix and geographical location of the various generation technologies and new transmission capacity. This is at complete odds with “baseload myth” crowd, whose logic has been to just throw low emission capacity (of the ideologically correct variety) at the problem and hope it all comes out in the wash. This works up to a certain point – then trouble. See new coal capacity in Germany as an example.
Implementation of the AEMO’s renewables scenarios is likely to be very “tricky”. The report suggests this and that it is pushing the envelope on network reliability a bit. From a system perspective such complexity lends itself to delays and cost blowouts. That is not a reason in itself to reject them, but all the cards need to be on the table. Nuclear is simpler from a network perspective – just replace the coal burners. I want all these things properly assessed to the best of our current knowledge.
If we don’t want to be “amateur” about this, a proper assessment of all scenarios is demanded. As is some sort of first pass at implementation plan and time lines. As I said, if the anti-nukes are so certain of their position, they have nothing to fear. So how about it?
As a footnote, 2030 as a target for a low emission electricity supply for Australia looks out of reach now. Nothing will happen in the life of the current parliament and if the right wingers get in, as seems likely, nothing in the next, regardless of “direct action”. We had better start dealing with realities rather that virtual build of renewables at fantastic rates.
Fightback round 2. Australia’s emissions declined barely 1% in the period 2000-2012. The avowed 80% cut by 2050 should be nearer 20% pro rata in this period. But wait there’s another problem; the PM has said household power bills should come down $250 a year after ‘reforms’. Perhaps AEMO didn’t get the memo about electricity costing less not more.
No doubt someone can explain how it will be done. We’ve already heard how Germany building new coal fired power stations turns out to be green after all. I’m reminded of a term used by Kevin Drum who is on the blogroll; he calls for a ‘reality based community’.