Preliminary estimates from the International Energy Agency, released in March, suggest that energy-related emissions of CO2[1] were unchanged in 2014 compared to 2013. Countries experiencing notable drops in emissions included China, Britain, Germany and the EU as a whole, but not, of course, Australia[2]
This has happened before, but only in years of global recession, whereas the global growth rate in 2014 was around 3 per cent. Of course, there are plenty of special factors such as a good year for hydro in China. Still, after looking carefully at the numbers, I’ve come to the conclusion that this really does represent, if not the long-sought peak in emissions, at least the end of the link between rising living standards and CO2 emissions.
The most striking feature of 2014 in this context was the behavior of fossil fuel prices. Coal prices had already fallen a long way from their peak levels in the years around the GFC, and they kept on falling through the year, even as coal mines began to close and lots of projects were abandoned. Oil prices remained at historically high levels until the middle of the year but then joined the downward trend, which has continued into 2015. Natural gas is a more complex story, since there isn’t a global market, and I haven’t figured it out yet.
Still, it seems to me that the 2014 outcome is a consistent with a story in which most growth in demand for energy services will be met by a combination of renewables and energy efficiency, and in which coal continues to lose ground to gas. The lack of demand implies that fossil fuel prices are likely to stay permanently below the levels anticipated when most recent projects were initiated.
Behind all this, it seems as if the various piecemeal measures introduced with the aim of switching away from fossil fuels are working better than almost anyone expected, and with minimal economic cost. Hopefully, this will encourage world leaders to set more ambitious targets, consistent with stabilising the global climate at temperatures 2 degrees or less above pre-industrial levels.
fn1. This excludes, for example, the effects of land use change, on which the IEA doesn’t collect data
fn2. At least after the repeal of the carbon tax
John Quiggin 
@Donald Oats
No doubt they’ll follow Arizona’s lead:
From the figures I found (2012) Arizona generates about 1% of its electricity from solar – about 40% coal, 30% hydro, 20% nuclear – so it looks like this solar tax is more to do with discouraging/penalising solar than anything else.
@Megan
Yes, the world capitalist-fossil fuel-industrial complex is determined to kill renewable energy. So we are in the process of the final locking in of dangerous climate warming well beyond 2C global average.
@Megan
Arizona is Republican? Oh, the governor is a Republican: who’d thunk it. The batsh*t crazy is all explained.
Given the number of sunny days per year in Arizona, you could almost disconnect from the grid and go solar 100% (with battery set for nighttime use). Or sell up and move elsewhere while the dunderheads run the joint.
@Donald Oats
If they set solar up big time, Arizona could produce enough power for the whole country although you would want generation elsewhere to reduce transmission costs. Probably no reason though why Arizona solar power could not power everything from California to Texas, in theory. Again, in practice they would distribute generation more than that if they did it.
But they are totally wedded to current BAU. Therefore it has to crash and burn before we get anything else significant. By then it will be too late to stop catastrophic global warming.
@Ikonoclast
Slight problem.
A power plant of 550megawatts needs 9.5 square miles of land.
See: http://climate.nasa.gov/state_of_flux#Topaz-Solar-Farm-930px-57.jpg
How many square miles would the Arizona plant need to cover?
Ivor, like Australia, with energy storage Arizona could get all its electricity use from rooftop solar. And I presume that, like Australia, it would also be capable of getting its entire primary energy use from rooftop solar, if they really wanted to.
Now note that I haven’t written that they will get all their electricity from roftop solar, or even that it is a good idea for them to get all their electricity from rooftop solar, I’m just pointing out that if they wanted to they could, without removing any land from use. And given the economic advantages of rooftop solar it makes sense to do it that way.
@Ronald Brak
Yes, rooftop solar plays a part, but at substantial less efficiencies.
Solar farm sites are well chosen and oriented with tracking. Roof sites are not.
If you drive around our cities you will see many roof installations, all flush against the roof and susceptible to overshadows for part of the day.
And of course blocks of units cannot be served by rooftop solar.
Capitalists wanting profits from solar may make some through selling panels to homeowners, but the real profits will come from acres of solar farms and the costs of production only they provide.
The need in the US is for solar to produce around 3 trillion KWHr per year.
Is there any calculation that US rooftops can provide around an average 600 million KwHr every hour, rain or shine?
How many panels would this take?
@Ivor
Area as such is not the problem with scaling up solar in big, sunny countries like Australia and the southern half of the USA. It is clear that the roof area in my suburb is easily adequate for the suburb’s electrical power needs and water heating needs. With about half of my north facing roof covered with solar panels and a solar hot water system, I make enough power for 175% of my four person household’s needs. That is I export power to the grid on average and probably power another 3 person household.
The issues are materials for the build-out and storage. Most sources I have read indicate that materials for a solar panel build out are adequate. It is certainly easy to envisage that the world could build half the automobiles it currently builds, making them small and electric, and put all the spare industrial effort to solar panels instead. Advances in energy storage are also being made. These issues are solvable.
At the same time, we will have to envisage and build a lower ecological impact economy if we are to survive in the future. We are profligate with energy and materials. In the future, we will have to become quite frugal if we are to survive in harmony with natural physical and ecological laws.
It would be possible for us to survive in this way but I don’t believe it will happen. Corporate and consumer capitalism is bent on conscumption levels guanteed to destroy the biosphere as a relatively benign place to live and this system will probably succeed in doing this.
When the ecological crisis gets serious, citizen consciousness has to be raised to ensure the people understand that it was capitalism that was the system that would not change and which wrecked our planet. The remnant peoples (for that is all that will remain) must retain that knowledge and ensure such a system never rises again.
@Ronald Brak
For rooftop, the best case scenario – is:
7Kw installation produces 26 KwHr per day.
See: http://www.solarchoice.net.au/blog/7kw-solar-pv-systems-prices-output-return-on-investment
This would be a minority of days over a full set of seasons.
@Ronald Brak
For rooftop, the best case scenario – is:
7Kw installation produces 26 KwHr per day.
See: http://www.solarchoice.net.au/blog/7kw-solar-pv-systems-prices-output-return-on-investment
This would be a minority of days over a full set of seasons.
@Ikonoclast
Some people are exporting power to the grid, and are producing useful output.
But on a climate change basis, solar pundits need to produce a better case.
The annual average daily sun hours are:
Syd 4.8
Melb 4.0
Perth 5.2
Hobart 3.8
Canb. 4.8
Bris 6.2
Adel. 4.8
See notes to: http://www.solarchoice.net.au/blog/solar-power-system-payback-calculator
Noon winter sun is weaker than noon summer sun.
@Ikonoclast
Some people are exporting power to the grid, and are producing useful output.
But on a climate change basis, solar pundits need to produce a better case.
The annual average daily sun hours are:
Syd 4.8
Melb 4.0
Perth 5.2
Hobart 3.8
Canb. 4.8
Bris 6.2
Adel. 4.8
See notes to: http://www.solarchoice.net.au/blog/solar-power-system-payback-calculator
Noon winter sun is weaker than noon summer sun.
@Ikonoclast
@Ronald Brak
Australia consumes around 200 billion KwHr pa (ie over 8760 hours).
See: http://www.indexmundi.com/australia/electricity_consumption.html
My back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests this needs @ 20 million perfect roof-tops north of Sydney.
@Ivor
Your comments beg the question: What is your solution to meeting energy needs without burning all fossil fuels and causing catastrophic climate change?
The answer is that we must go for renewable energy only and accept whatever standard of living that gives us. Nuclear fission is unsafe and also non-renewable. Nulcear fuel runs out in about 2055 at current use rates.
How is it possible that we would need 20 million rooftops north of Sydney for domestic power needs when my half of my north facing roof with a 5.5 kW system in Brisbane makes enough power for 1.75 households like my 4 person household? We use all the power we like by the way.
Industrial electric power is another issue. A combination of wind farms and concentrating solar thermal sites with molten salt heat storage will provide industrial power. Maybe industry won’t be as big as it is today. Maybe we will walk, ride bicycles, take the transit train and drive (many fewer) light 500 kg electrical cars instead of the current endless traffic jams of 2,000 kg plus SUV monsters. Maybe we will go back to one TV and one PC per household and a tablet or two. Maybe the junk food and meat industries can be retired and we can live on brown rice, pulses, fruit and vegetables. It is possible. It wouldn’t kill us. It would actually do us good. What will kill us is continuing the current system.
Some quick calcs suggest Australia uses about 28.4 kwh of electricity per person per day of which 6.6 kwh is residential. The difference is industry and infrastructure. You may not personally smelt aluminium but you benefit from living in a country which does. Assuming that current use is reasonably frugal the total electricity requirement will almost certainly increase with the need for electric transport, population increase, desalination, electricity-for-gas substitution and so on.
Secondly that electricity demand follows well established patterns with a normal peak around 8 pm, maximum demand in heat waves and minimum overnight demand about a third of that. That’s big ask for solar which doesn’t work at night and for wind power which may be becalmed Australia wide as it was the last week in March. Given that the punters want reliable electricity at certain times and it should preferably be low carbon and moderately priced it seems to me the options are limited.
@Hermit
I will make a comment based on the phrase “what the punters want”. What the punters want is one thing. What they will actually get is quite another and it simply will be is physically, chemically and ecologically possible. If it is possible with sustainable economy and technology they will get it. If it is not possible with sustainable economy and technology they won’t get it. It’s that simple. This means that if living with renewable energy etc. enforces a far more frugal lifestyle on us then we will just have to suck it up. The alternative of burning all fossil fuels means catastrophic climate change. At some point people will realise the jig is up and knuckle down as they do in global wars. This time it will be a global war, not against nature, but against nature gone rogue because we have induced extremely serious disruptions of the biosphere.
It’s not just climate change either. It’s limits to growth, resource depletion, species extinctions, disruption of many natural cycles and widespread pollution by tens of thousands of nasty chemical and by-products.
As Bob Dylan would say (if he understood AGW and LTG which he apparently doesn’t BTW);
“(They) Had no idea what kinda s h i t was about to go down.”
@Ikonoclast
@Hermit
Its not possible to form a view without proper sources. otherwise you end up with nothing but poetic concepts.
Here is the annual incoming solar power per day.
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/solar/index.jsp?colour=colour&time=latest&step=0&map=solarave&period=12month&area=nat
it is around 5.5 KwHr per day/per m. in NSW. Solar panels have efficiency of 70% or less particularly when they warm up.
So how do you get a sizeable proportion of Australia’s current 200 billion KwHr demand?
What is the basis?
I have no solution to climate change – it is too late as all sensible proposals have been shafted by corrupt, careerist politicians, indolent economists, and a self-centred middle-class reveling in the pretty gains it currently enjoys from a temporary economy based on offshore low wages and dehumanised social conditions.
I can only hope for a new technology and population decrease.
@Ivor
Look at Beyond Zero Emissions “Stationary Energy Plan” for Australia. There are real and viable plans for renewable energy. Look at Stanford U’s plan for completing providing ALL USA’s power needs from renewables. These are not just poetic concepts.
But I agree – “It is too late as all sensible proposals have been shafted by corrupt, careerist politicians, indolent economists, and a self-centred middle-class reveling in the petty gains it currently enjoys from a temporary economy based on offshore low wages and dehumanised social conditions.”
I mean too late in the sense that there will be serious consquences. That does not mean all is lost yet. Much is due to be lost but not all… yet.
Ivor,
A book Sustainable Energy Solutions For Australia by UNSW energy researcher Mark Diesendorf was published last year. It goes into a lot of detail if you’re interested and the researchers did computer simulations of meeting energy needs with RET and real weather conditions – RET plus biogas turbines in grey still wintry days was the solution.
I have heard anecdotally some countries seem less suitable for RET than Australia, like Vietnam, but also that enough research hasn’t been done there yet and there is the possibility of international energy grids also.
One other issue is the energy burden of manufacturing countries – the head of the climate council said at a talk when I asked that eg China as a manufacturing country might need to have more nuclear.
This does not seem fair to me.
Mark Diesendorf is also one of the main academic authors who have written papers on the possibilities of a sort of war-time-mobilisation rapid response to mitigate climate change given time is running out, so the more market based solutions are too slow now
Diesendorf et al are very keen on biogas but from experiments I think it stinks, literally. Search the BBC website for buses powered by poo gas and it will say at best it can replace 10% of natural gas. A study in California thought 15% more with an all out effort. The Germans are using the CO2 scrubbed from biomethane (typically 25% by volume) then react it with hydrogen to make synthetic methane. They point out the gas grid can store weeks or months of energy (heat and to make electricity) unlike any practical battery.
No doubt the leak sealed multi source methane economy has potential. However we urgently need a replacement for coal and gas ain’t it.
@Hermit
There are many niche solutions and many industrial size solutions to fit our renewable power needs. It will take a combination of “all of the above” to do it. It is simply taking things out of context to point at some single niche solution and say (for example) “poo won’t power alminium refineries or even buses”. Of course it won’t and indeed better uses might be found for poo. Treated dry waste can go back on non-food crops like cotton and even on some food crops like cane.
If we are absolutely determined to have aluminium refineries (and we need them somewhere in the world) then the places with serious hydro power are probably the right places. Nonetheless it is still quite possible that for example solar convection towers up to 1,000 m tall each, which could produce power 24/7 (yes, they actually produce more power at night because the temperature differential between base and top increases at night) can provide industrial levels of power.
@ZM
Thanks for that.
I have read a fair bit of Diesendorf’s older stuff, but not his “war-time-mobilisation rapid response”.
As this is where we are headed, I will chase this up.
Do you have explicit references on this?
Ivor – “corrupt, careerist politicians, indolent economists, and a self-centred middle-class ..”
A little simplistic, but close, as you’ve burrowed down to a level lower than the merely symptomatic ones concerning LTG and global warming.
Hate to sound gloomy, but the real problem is people per se. There are some basic conditions which drive our species. Humans are at core quite egocentric, even solipsistic. I’ll leave out the connecting logic here, but suffice to say all this self-centredness leads to an innately exploitative world of seperate individuals – exploitative of other species, the environment and each other. Milennia of cultural evolution – what we call civilisation – have pushed these egocentric and exploitative tendencies into the forefront of our consciousness, where once they were only latent.
Therefore, there is no hope at all of any reversal of this spiral towards self-destruction unless these selfish behaviours can be somehow curbed. And that is a very big ask. They cannot be eliminated since we are now hard-wired with them. Only extreme governance can impose sanctions to curb the worst excesses. Unfortunately, looking around this planet I don’t see any kind of government system in existence fit for this job, nor any kind possibly forthcoming.
Democracy has become a very sick con.
As others have mused, some sort of dystopian future involving lawless anarchy, following a catastrophic population crash, might form some basis for a resurrection of a better world order. But even of this fantasy I am skeptical, for it could merely be another in an endless cycle of similar cons to be played out over a very long time span. Who knows, we have probably been here before, if the black obolisk of 2001 is any indication.
All I can say positively is that in the end the planet will probably keep spinning, but whether there will be fools clinging to it or not is a fine point to be debating on blogs such as this.
@dedalus
I wouldn’t give up on “democracy” as a governance structure just yet.
I think we need to take back control of it and try to make it work the way it’s described in the brochure. One part of that is fixing our totally corrupt media so that the citizens get the information they need. Another part is fixing the problem of being run by a duopoly.
As Tony Windsor said recently (my paraphrase): “We don’t have democracy, we have a ‘choice’ between two virtually identical management teams rather than any contest of philosophies.”
I’ve yet to see an example of someone who “gets” climate change but advocates going on as we are with BAU regardless. There are technotopians etc… who are full of blind hope/faith but I mean someone who actually says: “Yes, let’s have the predicted outcomes of climate change. I’m all for it, and for continuing on this path.”
Hi Ivor, below are a few resources.
Delina, Laurence L., and Mark Diesendorf. “Is wartime mobilisation a suitable policy model for rapid national climate mitigation?.” Energy Policy 58 (2013): 371-380.
Delina, Laurence L., and Mark Diesendorf. “Governing Rapid Climate Mitigation.”
APA
Delina, Laurence L. “Governing the rapid climate mitigation project.”
APA
This Australian group hold talks and have videos from talks on the subject:
http://www.breakthroughonline.org.au/#!safe-climate/czjc
Also
Delina, Laurence L., Mark Diesendorf, and John Merson. “Strengthening the climate action movement: strategies from histories.” Carbon Management ahead-of-print (2015): 1-13.
Ivor, you wrote:
“Yes, rooftop solar plays a part, but at substantial less efficiencies.”
What’s your definition of efficiency, Ivor? Rooftop panels average higher efficiency that panels used in utility scale solar installed at similar times. Rooftops solar produces roughly infinitly more electricity for each square meter of land removed from use, so rooftop solar is far more land efficient. Rooftop solar is cheaper than utility scale solar in Australia, so it is more economically efficient on straight cost. Rooftop solar competes with the retail price of electricity rather than the wholesale price, rooftop solar is in that regard far more economically efficient. Also, rooftop solar doesn’t have the inefficiency of transmission losses.
“Solar farm sites are well chosen and oriented with tracking. Roof sites are not.”
No. It’s unusual for solar farms to have tracking due to the extra cost. Australia now has one of the minority of solar farms that does.
“If you drive around our cities you will see many roof installations, all flush against the roof and susceptible to overshadows for part of the day.”
Noooo. They are not all susceptible to overshadows for part of the day. You must be looking wrong. Perhaps you should get your eyes checked. In fact, are you sure you should be driving?
“And of course blocks of units cannot be served by rooftop solar.”
Again with the eye checking. Also, I will point out that in Australia we have wires connected to our buildings that are full of electricity. We can and in fact do use these wires to move electricity about the place. For example, from a building with solar panels to one that does not have solar panels. It’s all part of the miracle of electricity.
“Capitalists wanting profits from solar may make some through selling panels to homeowners, but the real profits will come from acres of solar farms and the costs of production only they provide.”
The average cost of wholesale electricity today here in South Australia so far today has been about 4.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, peaking at 5 cents. The cost of retail electricity according to my electricity bill is 32 cents per kilowatt-hour or 42 cents including service charges. The world’s cheapest known utility scale solar power has been bid in at 6 US cents a kilowatt-hour in the UAE. So currently utility scale solar cannot make a profit in Australia, but rooftop solar can and does and, depending on the installation, can do so without subsidy or feed-in tariff. The more solar capacity there is the worse the economics of utility scale solar get as electricity prices are pushed down further during the daytime, while rooftop solar is far less affected by this due to distribution costs.
“Is there any calculation that US rooftops can provide around an average 600 million KwHr every hour, rain or shine?”
Yes.
“How many panels would this take?”
About 22 billion square meters of panels which is about 70 square meters per person which is very roughly the amount of roofspace they have per person. But I really can’t recommend trying it.
@Megan I admire your optimism, but I don’t think the problems of democracy, or any political system, have much to do with the number of parties involved. Not saying, of course, that the conservative side(s) are not far worse than the progressive side(s), so insofar as our democratic “choice” goes, it is usually clear as to which side one should vote for.
But if you consider the various types of political systems that have been around for thousands of years, it’s stark the common factor which has led to the crisis that the ecosystem and global population now faces. This common factor is simply the human propensity to think egocentrically, and thus to become exploiters in one form or another. It’s historically the case that the exploiters were of a higher caste, either of a royal or aristrocratic or religious variety – the kings, the dukes, the priests, the shamans, the rabbis, the gurus, the witchdoctors – but things have gotten a whole lot more democratic these days, and the exploiters are mainly your normal carpetbagger and capitalist types. And yes, I include myself, who sometimes lies in bed at night wandering how to subdivide the backyard or construct a granny flat to exploit the local council development guidelines. I’m sure we can all envisage our own paltry invidious greedy trick to substitute for this example.
Once only a very few could be a king, or a priest or guru, but today anyone can be a carpetbagger. Isn’t that just wonderful. And you don’t need to go to Oz or the US to find carpetbaggers. Russia and China are full of them.
Article in Bloomberg describing how the money being invested into fossil fuels is running out/has run out.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-14/fossil-fuels-just-lost-the-race-against-renewables
@Ronald Brak
It looks like you are writing more as an enthusiast, instead of looking at the issue with more rigor.
What is the calculation or assumptions that show:
will generate
600 million KwHr every hour, rain or shine????
Output is different to capacity.
Ivor,
This paper discusses research with hourly weather simulations into meeting Australia’s energy needs with RET .
Click to access UNSW-100pcCleanEnergy.pdf
“In 2010, energy demand in the NEM [National Electricity Market] was 204.4 TWh and peak power demand was 33.6 GW. Figs. 1 and 2 show more detailed sections of the plot for a typical week in January and a challenging week in late June/early July, respectively. The simulation sum- mary report is shown in Table 1.
The baseline scenario meets 2010 demand within NEM relia- bility standards, with 6 h on winter evenings when demand was unmet: 15 June 6–7pm, 1 July 6–7pm, 2 July 6pm, 7 July 7pm. Comparing Figs. 1 and 2, it is apparent how the seasonal variation of solar radiation influences the ability of CST plants to dispatch power.
…
6.1. Eliminating unmet hours through demand reduction
The main challenge for a 100% renewable electricity system is peak periods when generation from variable sources may con- tribute little. We consider how reliability is improved by actively managing load during these hours of otherwise unmet demand. Fig. 3 shows that a 5% reduction in the six demand peaks is sufficient to bring demand and supply into balance for every hour of the year. As these peaks occur on winter evenings, this reduction could be readily achieved through energy efficiency measures, particularly to reduce residential heating demand, or by temporarily interrupting controllable load”
Ivor, you seem confused. Just what exactly is it that you’d like to know about? Take a few minutes to think about it, and then write your questions and I’ll see if I can help you.
It’s likely that Australia’s 2015 emissions will exceed those of 2014 after a modest drop in 2013. I’d liken it to competitors running backwards in a footrace after the starter’s gun… really a most odd situation yet we are not surprised. The reasons are reduced hydro, reluctance to run gas fired plant with price rises looming and lack of carbon tax to penalise coal burning. That’s despite closures of a smelter and other industries. The wind and solar build out has stalled but pre-existing power output should be maintained.
Today the ‘reverse auction’ concludes under Direct Action. We’ll find out how much the government is prepared to pay for less methane from sheep’s tummies. However the single biggest reduction would come from shutting down coal fired power stations an option which is not in the script. There’s even talk of a new 900 MW coal station near Alpha in Qld. Sheep’s tummies not quite as gassy, new power stations….which will prevail?
@Ronald Brak
Do you agree with the Bureau of Meteorology map I cited earlier, that showed annual average solar power per meter?
in the middle of NSW?
is this 18 MJ per hr?
Did you read the Bureau’s metadata information?
If you use google to convert 18 mega joules to kilowatts, do you get 5 KwHr?
Does this suggest to you that a square meter of horizontal solar panel produces a maximum of 5 KwHr if it operates at 100% efficiency?
If you read this article “40% Efficiency” do you agree that solar cells exposed to a full days illumination can produce 2 kwhr per day over a full year?
If not, what is your evidence and how does it correct the Bureau of Meteorology?
or do you have a different way of converting MJ into KwHr?
or do you have more efficient solar cells than Australian scientists at UNSW?
@Ronald Brak
Do you agree with the Bureau of Meteorology map I cited earlier, that showed annual average solar power per meter?
in the middle of NSW?
is this 18 MJ per hr?
Did you read the Bureau’s metadata information?
If you use google to convert 18 mega joules to kilowatts, do you get 5 KwHr?
Does this suggest to you that a square meter of horizontal solar panel produces a maximum of 5 KwHr if it operates at 100% efficiency?
If you read this article “40% Efficiency” do you agree that solar cells exposed to a full days illumination can produce 2 kwhr per day over a full year?
If not, what is your evidence and how does it correct the Bureau of Meteorology?
or do you have a different way of converting MJ into KwHr?
or do you have more efficient solar cells than Australian scientists at UNSW?
@Ronald Brak
Third line above should read:
is this 18MJ per day?
All such schemes to “reduce CO2 emissions” are really schemes to avoid reducing CO2 emissions. Schemes designed to avoid reducing CO2 emissions include;
(1) Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS);
(2) Emissions Trading Schemes (ETS);
(3) The new (in)Direct (in)Action scheme.
On the surface, in theory and technically, some or all of these schemes appear to be designed to and indeed capable of reducing CO2 emissions. In fact all of these schemes are designed and promoted in Machiavellian fashion by committed neoconservatives to prevent action. How does this work? They promote a scheme which looks feasible on the surface but which has underlying technical, economic or political reasons why it will never work. They induce their opposition to work within this framework getting the opposition to waste all their time working within said pointless framework. Thus the opposition never commits to a policy, namely straightforward taxes, which would actually work. It is standard indirection or diversion strategy.
Taking them one at a time. CCS was never going to work because of the costs and technical difficulties associated with it. There is an enormous overhead cost in capturing and storing CO2 and this greatly reduces the generation efficiency of a coal power station. There is nowhere safe enough to store the CO2 to avoid the dangers of later out-gassing. CCS cannot be applied to most oil consumption. Imagine a CCS unit (for later CO2 storage) on every car, trucj and plane. The idea is ludicrous of course. Government money was diverted to fruitless CCS attempts when it could have gone into researching the renewables economy.
The ETS was another confidence trick scheme by the neocons. They wanted to create a market in a negative externality rather than simply regulating and/or taxing it. At a time when markets are over-financialised and manipulating everything (cartels, oligopolies, bought politicians) why would you trust the market with anything this important? Only complete naivity would lead to this decision. The facts on the ground show all ETS schemes have failed miserably. This is what the neocons wanted. ETS schemes were designed to fail.
Now we have direct action. This scheme is the biggest joke of all. Pay people not to pollute? How? How do you assess what they were going to pollute? How do you assess how much pollution they have prevented? How could you possibly do compliance on such a scheme. The government has hung out a big sign “Rort This”.
Compared to all these shenannigans, which have all failed, a carbon tax would have been simplicity itself. Tax every fossil fuel for the weight of CO2 it releases when burnt. The chemical formulas are known. The weight of carbon to be released on burning is known. The amount of fossil fuel sold for combustion is known. Carbon tax correctly priced = simple and effective action on climate change. All complex, shifty, neocon shcemes = complete inaction on climate change.
Clearly, the entrenched capitalist forces that control our world society and world economy still want no action on climate change. There are new entrepreneurial capitalists who are driving renewable energy development for profit and with far less subsidies then fossil fuels get. The radical, revolutionising aspect of capitalism (creative destruction) might finally win through and change things. But this is going to be too little too late. This is what comes of letting capitalist economics run our society.
@Ronald Brak
You may find, as other posters have noted, that in suitable sites or situations, rooftop solar will work.
But this does not apply to the population at large nor to industry.
Most houses are not oriented correctly, have wrong angled roofs and are not illuminated from dawn to dusk.
Most people in multistory flats have no roof space.
If a suburb is built on a hill, only a minority face true north.
It is much better to look for solar farms situated carefully and with advanced tracking.
Then the figures look more plausible – for suitable sites.
@Ivor Both large-scale solar sites and small-scale rooftop installations have their problems. The former for reasons outlined in earlier posts, the latter because of inefficiencies of scaling. What about a compromise between these two extremes?
Medium-sized solar installations with tracking, many per suburb, located in suitable sites (as substations are currently), protected by secure fencing. Each installation capable of supplying electricity to, for example, 100 houses. If a single rooftop installation costs, say, $10k, such a medium-sized 100-unit installation would cost less than 100 times $10k due to economies of scale, and also benefit from better siting, tracking etc. This type of rollout could be paid for by government expenditure, and amortised by additional fees into council rates.
@ZM
My instinct is that 204 Twh may be achievable with properly sited solar farms with tracking and using cells with 40% efficiency.
Transmission losses are the only factor.
To switch to 50% solar, solar farms would need to find approx. 140 million square meters of suitable open flat site.
About 35,000 acres?
Possibly there are suitable sites in outback NSW or Qld, NT, SA, WA?
Maybe there will be an improvement in transmission technology?
@dedalus
The more I look into this – the more I am against domestic roof top projects. Most streets in Sydney are not oriented north south or east-west.
I have more confidence in solar farms to do their stuff, provided 40% efficient cells are produced.
You just need the right site(s), and tracking.
@Ivor
With renewables, both energy and other resources, the correct approach will an eclectic and mixed set of solutions. This will involve both micro or niche solutions and macro or industrial scale solutions. The economics of roof-top solar are now very good even without subsidies. For example, don’t forget solar hot water is from direct solar energy. Every bit of hot water (except for maybe a little backup electrical heating) in the whole of Australia should come from solar heating.
Many houses do have suitable roofs, or at least part of the roof, that is suitable for solar power. The idea is to use that part of the roof that is suitable if you have it. My roof happened to be eminently suitable bacause my house is a long and slightly boomerang shaped oriented east-west, thus it has much north facing roof. The fact is if a house is passive-designed properly to be energy efficient it will naturally have a lot of north facing roof. You seem to be forgetting the implementation possibilities going forward. The more we design and build houses with good passive and solar design characteristics, the more houses will be suitable for solar power.
With current houses, flats, units etc. the issue is one can use solar when it is appropriate and not use solar when it is not appropriate. Yes, some people will get renewable power in a different way. Tasmanians will naturally use more hydro power. South Australians will use a healthy mix of wind and solar (both rooftop and large-scale) and so on. You seem to be advocating an “all or nothing” position. All houses have to be suitable for domestic solar or else it’s not worth implementing solar on any houses. That is not a logical proposition.
You also seem to think the solution must be all rooftop solar or all large-scale solar. This is not the case. A mixed system will be more robust and will even save transmission costs in many cases.
From a s o c i a l i s t point of view, micro-production (using as much as is efficient and effective) is an excellent proposition. It makes people partly independent of centralised corporate capitalist production. Of course, they are still dependent on the manufacturers of solar panels and small wind generators etc. but the model of ownership of these enterprises can change too in the long run. From a s o c i a l i s t point of view, the more decentralised production we can encourage in power and everything else, the more we can move away from centralised corporate command economies and centralised state command economies. This will be a good thing.
@Ikonoclast
How does your comment that:
fit in with my statements:
Sharon Beder nails the failure of tradeable pollutions rights in 2000 (before they morphed into the also now failed ETS concept). This ought to be compulsory reading for all advocates of ETS and like tradeable pollutions rights schemes. I don’t know what Direct Action should be called. It’s so ludicrous that it ought to be called the “Rort me and pollute to your heart’s content” scheme.
https://www.uow.edu.au/~sharonb/liability.html
Sharon Beder sums it up and her analysis is 100% vindicated by the 15 lost years of 2001 to 2015.
“The real and potential benefits of tradeable pollution rights are ideological and financial rather than environmental. They were developed to reduce the costs of environmental protection to industry, to enable continued economic growth and to keep decision-making power in the hands of industry. They have not led to significant environmental quality improvements. The most often cited success case is the use of tradeable pollution rights for removing lead from petrol between 1982 and 1987. Whilst proponents claim it saved petrol refiners hundreds of millions of dollars those same proponents admit it “appears to have had very little impact on environmental quality… In Canada, lead in gasoline was eliminated by gradually raising standards set out in traditional regulations.” (Cassils 1991: 10).
There you have it. Regulations work. Pigovian taxes (like a carbon tax) would work. Fancy schemes promoted by neocons don’t work precisely because they are designed and intended not to work.
@Ivor
I apologise for that mischaracterisation of your position. I didn’t read it carefully enough.
Now, if only someone who mis-characterised my position on another topic, not you Ivor, was big enough to apologise. 😉
We have to ask why the Montreal Protocol on CFCs has worked OK whereas carbon pricing has either been a dud or exploited for political gain. Possibly the relative costs to consumers is a key factor. Australia’s RET has 65% approval but only saves maybe 20 Mt out of 500+ Mt so the average consumer feels little pain. See the RET Review website for various estimates. The carbon tax did cause claims of pain (in the sense of a crippling mosquito bite) and demonstrably reduced emissions. The European ETS underwhelms due to its plethora of free permits and cheap credits many of which may be physically worthless. Dare I suggest divestment and Earth Hour are also rather weak gestures. No pain no gain as the governor of California used to say.
if outback solar farms increase in penetration they will need some kind of power smoothing to cope with sudden cloud cover. It would be interesting to see they proliferate or go backwards under something like an ETS as opposed to the RET.
@Hermit
“If outback solar farms increase in penetration they will need some kind of power smoothing to cope with sudden cloud cover.”
(1) Sudden cloud cover is quite rare in the outback.
(2) Molten salt energy storage.
(3) Distributed power generation over a wide geographic area. (The sun always shines somewhere by day).
(4) Distributed wind generation over a wide geographic area. (The wind always blows somewhere).
(5) Solar convection towers which produce power 24/7.
(6) Hydro and pumped storage where appropriate.
The list goes on. There are so many solutions there will be no problem at all if we have the material resources to scale up the build-out of renewables. It looks like we probably do have the resources for the build-out. After all, solar panels use silicon the most abundant element in the biosphere / lithosphere. Even rare earths, lithium etc, look abundant enough plus there will be further technological advances and substitutions. However, we will still have to limit population growth and total physical growth of infrastructure. The planet is finite. Other issues loom large; climate change, topsoil loss, availability of fresh potable water, species extinctions, nitrogen cycle, phospherous cycle, dying oceans, poisoning of the planet and so on.
As Magaret Atwood said, “It’s not climate change, it’s everything change. The next hundred years will be extremely challenging for humans and will determine whether we go extinct or not. On our current path, if not seriously altered in time (which means starting right now), we are on track to go extinct.
Oops, I should have closed the quotes on the Magaret Atwood statement. “It’s not climate change, it’s everything change.”
Clouds cause a dip but don’t necessarily halt power generation from solar photovoltaic cells. A “sudden” cloud cover is very unlikely for a large scale solar farm.
Concentration of sunlight onto a specially designed and actively cooled solar cell can see very high efficiency, which gives large scale solar an advantage over rooftop solar PVs. Concentrators have to track the sun, obviously enough.
We are nowhere near the limits of what solar energy systems can achieve. Furthermore, there is large scope to reduce actual energy requirements of our electronic products, even those that need standby power. We haven’t invested nearly enough time and energy into cutting standby to a bare minimum. Given that TVs etc can be wirelessly networked, a rechargeable battery should be all they need for sitting in standby mode, listening for a signal over the network (for example).
I doubt that humanity risks extinction from climate change, for the simple reason that life (in general terms) has the capacity to endure a huge range of conditions. The real question is what our population figures will look like, year by year, as climate change’s effects become more significant and pernicious. It could be very bad, or we might muddle along. Personally, I reckon the more we see population reduction on a voluntary basis, the better; unfortunately, capitalist societies are scared witless of population decrease, as it removes one easy way of making money. Selling into a dwindling market base stretches the capitalist’s cognitive capacity beyond its fairly lazy limits. Mind you, if we keep finding ways to remove humans from the production of goods and services, it’s a good question as to whether capitalists are already stretched severely.
Just to be precise, Ikonoclast: “extinct” means zero population—everywhere! It’s a big bold brassy call to say we risk extinction (from climate change and its effects).
Even if our emission rate of CO2 has levelled off, there are still other GHGs which need monitoring, especially CH4 (i.e. methane), given we are substituting natural gas for coal in many regions.
In any case, we have to get it into our collective skullss that burning fossil fuels is to borrow from the future, and borrowing into a rising interest rate regime at that.