Guest essay by Eric Worrall
What do you call a field of energy research so economically useless that it is utterly dependent on government funding for its very existence? We may be about to find out, thanks to the desperation of cash strapped Aussie politicians fighting to retain Australia’s shaky AAA credit rating.
Australian Renewable Energy Agency funding cuts will lead to ANU job losses: Andrew Blakers
Dozens of researchers at the Australian National University in Canberra will lose their jobs if cuts to Australia’s renewable energy research agency are passed by the Parliament, according to one of the sector’s pioneers.
Deep cuts to the funding of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, contained in the Turnbull government’s omnibus “budget repair” bill before the Parliament this week, is an “existential threat” to clean energy innovation in Australia, Professor Andrew Blakers says.
Professor Blakers, a world leader in renewables research, says scores of his colleagues around the country will lose their jobs if the government gets its bill through the Parliament and advances that would deliver major economic benefits to the country would be lost.
…
“There is an existential threat to renewable energy research, innovation and education in Australia,” Professor Blakers said.
“If ARENA is dismantled, then many people would lose their jobs including dozens at ANU.
“In the longer term, Australia’s leadership in solar energy would vanish.
“After the fiasco involving CSIRO climate scientists, we now have a potential fiasco in mitigation of climate change.”
…
If we accept Professor Blaker’s premise, that withdrawal of government funding poses an “existential” threat to renewables R&D, the total lack of private interest in clean energy R&D tells us everything we need to know, about whether scientific breakthroughs which improve renewable efficiency would yield useful economic benefits.
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It’s high schools physics. The energy content, constancy and concentration are simply not there, by several orders of magnitude, even if you made wind and solar 100% efficient. But the smarter warmists know this. Their goal is to destroy modern Western Civ.
So ….the parisites discover that they are killing the host before they can reproduce ?
Awwww….must be due to global warming…:))
If it can’t exist unless subsidized, then it probably shouldn’t have existed in the first place.
This Australian renewables pilot project/research is being privately funded…
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/08/29/conergy-build-world-first-islanding-solar-storage-project/
Then they don’t need government funding. It can all be cut now.
But . . But . . BUT! The private funding is government funded.
Flyover Bob is correct. 17 million out of 42 million in cost paid by the Australian government.
Are there any government tax incentives in this “private investment” (eg if you dudes invest in this pipe dream, you’ll get a 30% tax credit)?
Despite how often the left (er, now “progressives”) relishes the opportunity to scold the rest of us from their high moral ground of “sustainability”, none of their socialistic schemes can ever be economically sustainable. Their open fretting about funding cuts is an admission that their trojan horse of “climate change” cannot be sustainable and depends on funds seized from other productive areas of the economy to survive. People who value their liberty and their property and the liberty and prosperity of their grandchildren must slay this monster at every possible opportunity. It is a parasite that does not care if it consumes its host. Actually, it is “hell bent” on doing so.
Buckwheaton
One quibble, “other productive areas of the economy”, implies that the renewables are a productive area. Otherwise, bang on!
Use tax and regulation to rob from the middle class. Line the pockets of the rich. Give enough handouts to the poor to keep them on your side. It is the socialist way.
Eventually, the middle class is squeezed out of existence, the money train stalls, and the whole scheme falls apart.
“Australian Renewable Energy Agency funding cuts will lead to ANU job losses”
So what?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTmfwklFM-M&w=420&h=315%5D
Read between the lines. The job that Blakers is worried about is his own. That hardly makes him a credible voice to speak against the funding cuts “in the name of science”.
I will add that Blakers demonstrates noteworthy narcissism with the statement that the demise of his resaerch group woukd be “a fiasco in (the) mitigation of climate change”.
If they really are ‘world leaders’ they wouldn’t be needing government handouts, never mind being dependent on them for their very survival.
I don’t think that funding for research into renewables should be cut. That is not the main problem of renewables. The main problem is the enormous sums of money thrown into the massive application of renewables which are not technically and economically survivable without subsidies,
Lots of fundamental research is paid for with only a far away chance of getting something back in return. Like the search of the ultimate elementary particle or a telescope looking for a “nearby” second earth.
In this case research into better solar cells, or even more interesting, massive, cheap storage for power has the potential to give a huge return on investment, even nowadays, for remote locations far from the grid, or for when fossil fuel costs get higher than for renewables + storage.
Exactly! The most incredible example in my mind was in France, where a more or less perverse mix of politics, administration and industry led to the installation of thousands of wind turbines everywhere in the country
– mostly at wind-free places
– stuff imported from China
– with promises of electricity high buy to the investors, who therefore didn’t care about any ROI.
What we soon will need is, I guess, something like
http://www.heindl-energy.com/
But there is till now no prototype of it: everybody awaits the very last minute to start I guess…
Use the budget savings on a large solar PV array from a low cost leader if renewable energy is really the common goal. You don’t need research and education spending for more ludicrous demonstration projects to nowhere at this point.
ATheoK on August 30, 2016 at 9:37 am
A. A hell of a lot more plants than you expect.
Sorry: you completely bypassed the subject. I didn’t speak of what happens actually, but about what happened before the industrial use of nuclear power began.
B. Nuclear power is a proven, safe, affordable, and environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels.
It is true that thermodynamic plants (fossile or nuclear fuel) have a much higher energy output per installed GW than any renewable-based plant (solar, wind or even hydraulic) could ever produce.
But… how deep is your knowledge about the nuclear plant industry’s background, ATheoK?
1. Before comparing the use of nuclear energy for electricity production with other primary energy sources, one first should build coherent balance sheets in the financial, energetic and emission contexts for the process as a whole.
That means to calculate the cumulated costs, energy needs and CO2 emissions produced by
– extracting, refining, enriching, reprocessing, waste disposal and definite storage of all nuclear fuel components;
– construction, maintenance, dismantling, waste disposal and definite storage for all sites involved in all phases of the nuclear chain.
Having done that job you see
– how expensive the chain really is;
– that it consumes over the long term nearly as much energy as it produces (especially the breeder chain);
– that it well emits far less CO2 than coal or gas, but nevertheless more than renewables, when you consider the process in its entirety.
2. Moreover, the waste circuit of that chain is barely incredible.
A traditional nuclear plant with a gigawatt of installed power needs about 30 tons of enriched unranium every year. Together with special steal and zirconium: about 120 tons a year, most of it radioactive enough to impose a long time storage far away from civilization.
One ton of enriched fuel needs 6.5 tons of uranium oxyde; one ton of uranium oxyde requests at mining site not less than 2,000 tons of rough extracted material.
The remaining 1,999 tons plus lots of hard chemicals plus lots of water? That all lies in never processed so called tailings in Africa, Australia, Canada, Kazakhstan etc etc.
3. The immediate waste processing future doesn’t look much better: in France, Japan and Great Britain, the nuclear industry has introduced the MOX concept (a mix of plutonium and depleted uranium oxides). Used MOX fuel needs to rest for 60 years instead of 6 before processing for long time storage.
For 4G breeders building plutonium out of depleted uranium by using high energy neutrons, the cost and energy balance is even worse: more (and more dangerous) reprocessing activities, and more complex dismantling due to the high energy neutrons and to the liquid sodium technology.
The thorium is no escape at all: it is fertile but not fissile, and must be therefore be breeded into uranium 233 (by avoiding, of course, collateral generation of uranium 232).
4. Last not least, while so many people really believe that fusion is a clean process compared with fission, this „fact“ has been falsified long time ago. The only feasible fuel approach is the deuterium/tritium mix; and since we lack tritium on Earth (we have approx. 5 kg of it), we must breed it too 🙂 out of lithium (if we can: even for lithium/ion batteries, there might be not enough of it).
Moreover, the deuterium/tritium produces extremely harsh neutons, what is another problem.
5. So yes, ATheoK: solar plants are costly toys, but offshore wind energy used in Germany for example has inbetween a load factor which reaches 50%; and all these toys produce far less waste than do nuclear plants of any kind.
6. And yes, ATheoK: nuclear fusion energy will be over the long term the only practicable solution for our incredibly growing mankind. So we must invest money, thoughts, human power and energy to construct the best possible path to that solution.
Why does this sound familiar? “and advances that would deliver major economic benefits to the country would be lost.” I am old enough to remember that I should be flying around like George Jetson right about now. Of course advances are made but why should it be this particular unit that makes them? The following is an example of one completed project.
Cane2Fuel: feasibility of producing biofuel from sugarcane waste
Investigated the feasibility of producing biofuel from sugarcane bagasse.
The project lasted about 3 years, cost about A$2m and:
“The project concluded that it is not currently economic to produce biofuels from sugarcane bagasse.”
Three years phew! I wish them no ill will but Governments work on limited resources and make hard or unpopular decisions sometimes.
The solar powered flying car of the day or two after tomorrow.
Exactly. All we need do is look to the future, we have little choice of course and those in the industry know that in spades, but at what price?
My personal favorite “It went to Australia to die” renewable story…..
The soon-to-be- laid-off ‘scientists’ cry that the economic benefits of their work will be lost. That WOULD be something to be concerned about if there WERE any discernible economic benefits. If it all well and good to do basic research to discover neat things like Higgs Bosons but it is very disingenuous to try to claim economic benefits from such research. The economic part is pure speculation.
Sage I get your point (see below) but the Higgs Boson? Honestly? Life, near as I can tell, went on just fine before the Higgs Boson was “discovered” and quite frankly I haven’t noticed the quality going up much since.
You do have some idea about the cost of the LHC right? In light of that, I very much expected my toilet would be transmuted to gold almost immediately after the Higgs was confirmed.
In short, I meant to repeat the old adage (WRT to the Higgs): If you already know the answer, there isn’t much point asking the question.
Dozens? Dozens of researchers at ANU might be displaced? That many? Are there more than twelve weather channels on OZ TV? Maybe they could get jobs changing tires? Or oil? You know, it wouldn’t be that hard for a climate researcher to get a job as a prostitute.
Wow. That could put Australia right on its ear couldn’t it? An economic collapse! Probably should sacrifice a couple of sheep. That ought to do it.
Hundreds of researchers around Australia, including dozens at both the Australian National University and the University of NSW, will be faced with the dole queue if cuts to Australia’s renewable energy research agency are passed by the Parliament, according to one of the sector’s pioneers.
_________________
Hopefully not. At the dole queue this green profiteers would meet people who worked hard to finance such social emergencies as dole queues.
Green climate refugees find save space at Christmas island.
They should be summarily fired simply for using the pompous term ‘existential threat’ to their employment. Semantics and obfuscation are the products of those who have to dress up their communications because the message is so trite.
The NSW Climate Fund is shutting down as it has run it’s course, was only meant to be for 5 years, it makes money but only if weather hot, but perfect timing as we enter La Niña cycle. Money can still be made from Gas in cooler weather.