Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Awareness is slowly permeating through the media that renewables inevitably lead to higher electricity prices – and that the Australian energy grid is in deep trouble. But this awareness is too little, too late, to save what is left of what was once one of the cheapest electricity grids in the world.
Climate change zealots need to get real
Peta CredlinJune 18, 2017 12:00am
WELL, now we know.
The biggest deniers in the whole climate change debate are those who think we can have affordable power, lower emissions and a reliable network.
We can’t.
And after they almost sleepwalked their way to defeat at the last election, it would appear Coalition MPs have found their voices again on the issue that has defined Australian political debate over the past 15 years or more.
There’s no doubt that any policy that lowers Australia’s CO2 emissions will increase the cost of power and any move away from baseload capacity will make our network more unreliable.
Forget the movie, this is the real “inconvenient truth” that climate change zealots have never wanted to acknowledge. For too long, the views of the Zeitgeist have dominated debate and anyone daring to question any aspect of climate change was branded a sceptic. Scientific fact or not, any issue that’s galvanised the Left to the point of hysteria makes me sceptical that it’s more about the politics than anything else.
…
Right now, China’s emissions are 20 times those of Australia and even if they meet their Paris Agreement commitments, by 2030, China’s emissions will be 50-60 times ours. Seriously? We sell off industry and jobs in a mistaken belief the world that is acting with similar intent but it is clear they’re not, and won’t. Again, remember my refugee example and you get what I mean.
It’s claimed that the Chief Scientist’s report to COAG aims to address the “trilemma” of achieving lower prices, greater security and a 28 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030. Wrong. The report is about meeting the emissions reduction aspiration (which it converts into a commitment) at the lowest cost without major interruptions to supply. It’s not about affordable, reliable power; it’s about climate change.
…
So what about Finkel? The Finkel Report is a government paper released a few days ago in Australia, which attempts to chart a roadmap for transition of Australia to renewable energy.
Buried under the waffle about energy security and orderly transitions and the need for more energy security is this gem;
…
3.2 Agree to implement an orderly transition:
• NEM emissions reduction trajectory
• Clean Energy Target
• Require all large generators to provide 3 years’ notice of closure.
…
7.2 Form an Energy Security Board.
…
Read more: http://www.environment.gov.au/energy/publications/electricity-market-final-report (page 28)
The requirement for the notice period is repeated several times throughout the report.
The reason for the three year notice of closure is likely the recent abrupt closure of coal plants in several locations in Australia.
Unlike gas, coal cannot be scaled up and down at whim to try to balance the wild fluctuations of renewables. Under Australian rules (and rules in many US states), renewables appear to have pre-eminent access to the grid.
Australian Coal operators are responding by shutting down now unprofitable businesses.
The Australian government response – force remaining coal plant operators to keep operating for a minimum of three years after their businesses become unprofitable, regardless of financial losses to shareholders.
This in my opinion is naked government expropriation of shareholders funds. Not a policy likely to encourage badly needed investment in Australian energy infrastructure, at least not the kind of investment which will lead to a reduction in skyrocketing Aussie electricity prices.
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Hey, cheap dependable baseline coal capacity –
Don’t go!!! Don’t leave me now, now, now…
I would expect that the real power generators would likely give the 3 years notice. We must remember that it is illegal for a company to trade whilst insolvent. The state of insolvency can exist for quite some time before the receivers, or administrators move in. There are dire penalties for company officers should they permit trading whilst insolvent.
All I can say is “what a mess” the incompetents in Canberra and the various states have got us into.
Expect more industries to close up for good or move off shore.
However, Australia should have the lowest electricity prices, lowest food prices and lowest property prices.. Yet the opposite applies. How is that.
Unexpunged deep state communism
It’s a lackey country.
“See – owe to Rich June 18, 2017 at 2:03 am
Donald, why should coal be losing money if electricity prices are high and coal is efficient and cheap? There is probably some reason, but please can you spell it out?
Rich.”
Good question. Coal provides cheap power, and renewables – mainly wind – provide expensive power. While the wind is free, the capital costs of the wind farms are very high. To balance things, we have a “Renewable Energy Target” and to get this to work we have “Renewable
Energy Certificates” (RECs). If you have an accredited ‘renewable energy” power station, for every one megawatt-hour you produce, you are entitled to one REC, which you can sell. Power Stations providing non-renewable energy – ie, coal and gas, are required to purchase these RECs. This basically means a massive subsidy from coal and gas to wind farms.
Not only that, but renewable energy power stations are given preference in selling energy on the National Energy Market. This means that even when demand is high, renewable and non-renewable energy compete, and supply is also high, so prices may – or may not – be high. But when demand is low, wind – providing it is producing – sells as much as it produces and there is no or negligible market for coal or gas. So even though price can be low, coal does not get a look in. Now coal power stations cannot be turned on and off on tap, so the coal being burnt is wasted. Gas, depending on the arrangement, can turn off and on if used to power gas turbines – which are very inefficient at ground level (which is why they are useful for jet aircraft, but have proved excessively costly for railway locos, cars, lorries and ships – other than naval vessels – which do not have to worry about cost.).
So while the Hazlewood Power Station produced the second cheapest energy in Victoria, it was losing money, especially after the Victorian government trebled the royalties on coal. Also getting fairly old, so it was time for some items to be renewed. With the balance firmly against coal, there was no likelihood of the necessary updating and refurbishment being profitable. So it was closed.
Sic transit gloria mundi! (“Thus passes the glory of the world.”)
Test, successive attempts to post here seem to have failed.
“The problem of analysing political choices against the metric of a Monetary measure is the Money as a Thing is most certainly a Variable and as any good technologist, scientist or metrologist will tell you a unit of measurement has to be clearly defined and fixed.
The dollar. He notes that it is a variable. Why anyone should attempt, on this earth, to use a
variable as a measuring rod is so utterly absurd that he dismisses any serious
consideration of its use in his study of what should be done.
He also considers ‘price’ and ‘value’ and the fine- spun theories of philosophers and
economists who have attempted to surround these terms with the semblance of meaning.
These terms, like the monetary unit, may have had meaning to men in the past but they
mean nothing whatsoever to the modern technologist. The standard of measurement is
not relevant to the things measured; and the measuring rod and the things, measured as if
they were stable, are all variables.”
Climate Change politics and belief systems based upon Climate Alarmism are related, the one is insinuated into the discourse and assumptions of everyday life by the Other. Climate Alarmism is neo – Liberalisms answer to the need for a secular, multicultural religion to act as the new “Opium of the masses”
The Australian problem is one of Neo-Liberal Ideologues and Technocrats ignoring the democratic will and needs of its own population to serve the needs of Global Corporate Capital.
There has just been a General Election in the United Kingdom, The “Magic Money Tree” was a much-discussed term, thrown at the Anti-Establishment Jeremy Corbyn as a pejorative insult.Many here will be familiar with Mr Corbyns Brother Piers Corbyn, a man who I admire greatly and share both his far left political and heretical views on the Climate Change Religous Narrative.
Carol Quiggle sums up the confusion resulting from a conflation between Wealth ( Things) and Money ( an IOU)
Now all said and done one is if one is to be scientifically objective, necessarily compelled and sensibly advised to look at the evidence. As the Grandson of Two South Wales Coal Face workers, I have nothing against the Black Gold, except of course the death of my Maternal Grandfather from Silicosis, On Renewables on, Hydro Carbons and on Fossil Fuels ( I am also one that actually follows the Abiogenic Hypothesis and not the fossil fuel one) what one really needs to do is compare the energy inputs and energy outputs and consider the aggregate energy demand required to produce the necessaries of life.
Money and Goods Are Different
”Thus, clearly, money and goods are not the same thing but are, on the contrary,
exactly opposite things. Most confusion in economic thinking arises from a failure to
recognise this fact. Goods are wealth which you have, while money is a claim on wealth which you do not have. Thus goods are an asset; money is a debt. If goods are wealth; money is not wealth, or negative wealth, or even anti-wealth. They always behave in opposite ways, just as they usually move in opposite directions. If the value of one goes up, the value of the other goes down, and in the same proportion.”
The Relationship Between Goods and Money Is Clear to Bankers
In the course of time the central fact of the developing economic system, the
relationship between goods and money, became clear, at least to bankers. This relationship, the price system, depended upon five things: the supply and the demand for goods, the supply and the demand for money, and the speed of exchange between money and goods. An increase in three of these (demand for goods, supply of money, speed of circulation) would move the prices of goods up and the value of
money down. This inflation was objectionable to bankers, although desirable to producers and merchants.On the other hand, a decrease in the same three items would be deflationary and would please bankers, worry producers and merchants, and delight consumers (who obtained more goods for less money). The other factors worked in the opposite direction, so that an increase in them (supply of goods, demand for money, and slowness of circulation or exchange) would be deflationary.”
http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2016/08/neo-liberalism-billy-no-mates-or-just.html
http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2017/05/finacial-illiteracy-blind-leading-blind.html
Judith Curry did a wonderful blog post last year around the time that she retired from her Professorship it is titled, The Republic of Science. I find this article and its failure to adopt a reliable fixed variable against which to conduct a comparitive analysis deeply un scientific. We must get the Politics and the money out of scientific questions, this applies to all sides of the question.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/06/17/daily-telegraph-there-is-no-such-thing-as-affordable-renewable-energy/
“The problem of analysing political choices against the metric of a Monetary measure is the Money as a Thing is most certainly a Variable and as any good technologist, scientist or metrologist will tell you a unit of measurement has to be clearly defined and fixed.
The dollar. He notes that it is a variable. Why anyone should attempt, on this earth, to use a
variable as a measuring rod is so utterly absurd that he dismisses any serious
consideration of its use in his study of what should be done.
He also considers ‘price’ and ‘value’ and the fine- spun theories of philosophers and
economists who have attempted to surround these terms with the semblance of meaning.
These terms, like the monetary unit, may have had meaning to men in the past but they
mean nothing whatsoever to the modern technologist. The standard of measurement is
not relevant to the things measured; and the measuring rod and the things, measured as if
they were stable, are all variables.”
Climate Change politics and belief systems based upon Climate Alarmism are related, the one is insinuated into the discourse and assumptions of everyday life by the Other. Climate Alarmism is neo – Liberalisms answer to the need for a secular, multicultural religion to act as the new “Opium of the masses”
The Australian problem is one of Neo-Liberal Ideologues and Technocrats ignoring the democratic will and needs of its own population to serve the needs of Global Corporate Capital.
There has just been a General Election in the United Kingdom, The “Magic Money Tree” was a much-discussed term, thrown at the Anti-Establishment Jeremy Corbyn as a pejorative insult.Many here will be familiar with Mr Corbyns Brother Piers Corbyn, a man who I admire greatly and share both his far left political and heretical views on the Climate Change Religous Narrative.
Carol Quiggle sums up the confusion resulting from a conflation between Wealth ( Things) and Money ( an IOU)
Now all said and done one is if one is to be scientifically objective, necessarily compelled and sensibly advised to look at the evidence. As the Grandson of Two South Wales Coal Face workers, I have nothing against the Black Gold, except of course the death of my Maternal Grandfather from Silicosis, On Renewables on, Hydro Carbons and on Fossil Fuels ( I am also one that actually follows the Abiogenic Hypothesis and not the fossil fuel one) what one really needs to do is compare the energy inputs and energy outputs and consider the aggregate energy demand required to produce the necessaries of life.
Money and Goods Are Different
”Thus, clearly, money and goods are not the same thing but are, on the contrary,
exactly opposite things. Most confusion in economic thinking arises from a failure to
recognise this fact. Goods are wealth which you have, while money is a claim on wealth which you do not have. Thus goods are an asset; money is a debt. If goods are wealth; money is not wealth, or negative wealth, or even anti-wealth. They always behave in opposite ways, just as they usually move in opposite directions. If the value of one goes up, the value of the other goes down, and in the same proportion.”
The Relationship Between Goods and Money Is Clear to Bankers
In the course of time the central fact of the developing economic system, the
relationship between goods and money, became clear, at least to bankers. This relationship, the price system, depended upon five things: the supply and the demand for goods, the supply and the demand for money, and the speed of exchange between money and goods. An increase in three of these (demand for goods, supply of money, speed of circulation) would move the prices of goods up and the value of
money down. This inflation was objectionable to bankers, although desirable to producers and merchants.On the other hand, a decrease in the same three items would be deflationary and would please bankers, worry producers and merchants, and delight consumers (who obtained more goods for less money). The other factors worked in the opposite direction, so that an increase in them (supply of goods, demand for money, and slowness of circulation or exchange) would be deflationary.”
http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2016/08/neo-liberalism-billy-no-mates-or-just.html
http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2017/05/finacial-illiteracy-blind-leading-blind.html
Judith Curry did a wonderful blog post last year around the time that she retired from her Professorship it is titled, The Republic of Science. I find this article and its failure to adopt a reliably fixed variable against which to conduct a comparative analysis deeply unscientific. We must get the Politics and the money out of scientific questions, this applies to all sides of the question.
Apparently you know nothing about LCOE. Lazards well respected report shows that wind and solar are now competitive with traditional energy on an unsubsidized bases. Stop living in the last decade. You are simply wrong.
Levelized cost of energy is an inappropriate measure of comparison.
This post addresses the issues: https://scienceofdoom.com/2017/01/31/renewables-xviii-demand-management-levelized-cost/
This paper (http://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/18239/RSCAS_2011_45.pdf?sequence) makes “a very simple point regarding the proper methods for comparing the economic value of intermittent generating technologies (e.g. wind and solar) with the economic value of traditional dispatchable generating technologies (e.g. CCGT, coal, nuclear). I show that the prevailing approach that relies on comparisons of the “levelized cost” per MWh supplied by different generating technologies, or any other measure of total life-cycle production costs per MWh supplied, is seriously flawed..”
LCOE specifically excludes the cost of backup facilities. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a set of published numbers that is easily used to compute the price that rate payers will likely pay for electricity generated largely by non-dispatchable sources. If you want to guess that it will be annoyingly high, you’ll likely to be right.
Note also that costs of renewable energy will tend to fall disproportionately on those with lower income. That is to say — large amounts of renewable energy is a regressive social policy that transfers money from the poor more than the rich. Where are the social policies to offset that effect? Conspicuously inadequate/absent as far as I can see.
“Assumes 30 MW system in a high insolation
jurisdiction (e.g., Southwest U.S.). Does not account for differences in heat coefficients within technologies, balance-of-system costs
or other potential factors which may differ across select solar technologies or more specific geographies.”
” does not take into account…. reliability or intermittency-related considerations (e.g., transmission and back-up generation costs associated with certain Alternative Energy technologies)”
Lazards study shows scenarios where the costs of an idealized version of a solar plant (located where loads vary based on capacity) compares favorably to the costs of traditional energy. It is not a study of actual LCOE
This is a very interesting commenting experience. Parts of a Longer comment seem to get posted without moderation and other parts get filtered another part simply keeps disappearing.I trust that the Blog admin will post the longer whole comment to provide some context to what I am saying which is I think a fundamental point on the difference between empirical sciences, Political Science and Rhetoric. The OP is I would argue political rhetoric and dressed in Scientific pomposity lacking any empirical substance based as it is upon the absurd Dollar Measure.
“The problem of analysing political choices against the metric of a Monetary measure is the Money as a Thing is most certainly a Variable and as any good technologist, scientist or metrologist will tell you a unit of measurement has to be clearly defined and fixed.
The dollar. He notes that it is a variable. Why anyone should attempt, on this earth, to use a
variable as a measuring rod is so utterly absurd that he dismisses any serious
consideration of its use in his study of what should be done.
He also considers ‘price’ and ‘value’ and the fine- spun theories of philosophers and
economists who have attempted to surround these terms with the semblance of meaning.
These terms, like the monetary unit, may have had meaning to men in the past but they
mean nothing whatsoever to the modern technologist. The standard of measurement is
not relevant to the things measured; and the measuring rod and the things, measured as if
they were stable, are all variables.”
Climate Change politics and belief systems based upon Climate Alarmism are related, the one is insinuated into the discourse and assumptions of everyday life by the Other. Climate Alarmism is neo – Liberalisms answer to the need for a secular, multicultural religion to act as the new “Opium of the masses”
The Australian problem is one of Neo-Liberal Ideologues and Technocrats ignoring the democratic will and needs of its own population to serve the needs of Global Corporate Capital.
There has just been a General Election in the United Kingdom, The “Magic Money Tree” was a much-discussed term, thrown at the Anti-Establishment Jeremy Corbyn as a pejorative insult.Many here will be familiar with Mr Corbyns Brother Piers Corbyn, a man who I admire greatly and share both his far left political and heretical views on the Climate Change Religous Narrative.
So privatisation had noting to do with higher electricity prices. Our australian goverments could not run our utilities efficiently, so they sold them to another foreign government that can. I am sick of unqualified ministers running our country. Many of them have no training in their portfolios and are at least incompetant. Again our government is supposed to work for the people, however they do the bidding of wealthy donor companies. What sort of democracy is this?
Canning electricity project based on astetics is more than stupid. Polititions, polititions funded by big coal.
Solar, wind and batteries are the future, same as 1Gbps for minimum home networking. But that is another story.
Of course there is the massive Beetaloo shale gas prospect in the emptiness (1/20 the population density of Siberia) of the Northern territories, with perhaps enough gas to power the continent for the next 30 years. Whats that Skippy? – it involves fracking!. Cant have that can we Skip!. Ban it!. So what if it provides employment!. It would cause irreversible damage to natural rock formations, and profit seeking frakers always dispose of their vast volumes of deadly carcinogenic chemicals by pumping them into any and all potable water aquifers, when not spraying them across the countryside; greens know this!. Also, they let most of the methane leak into the atmosphere causing worse climate damage than coal!.
That’s impossible. Climate zealots, and indeed Climatists of all stripes don’t live in the real world, but rather in an alternate reality of their own making. They much prefer their alt-world to the real one, which is why they become so angry when Skeptics/Climate Realists try to spoil things for them by pointing out inconvenient facts. They endlessly repeat a slew of memes, in robotic fashion like “coal is dead”, which simply means they want it so, and if they just keep repeating it and wishing for it, it will become true.
I’ll say it again and again, and maybe someday someone may listen .. There is no GHE!
http://i736.photobucket.com/albums/xx10/Oliver25/zeichnung1.png
This sounds like a head in the sand. All that can be said is that renewables are more costly than conventional sources NOW.
The costs of renewable sources has reduced over the past decade. How much further they may fall in the next 10-20 years is speculation and there are real issues about storage.
But never is a big word and in this context utterly foolish. History is littered with those who thought new technologies would never catch on or fail – internal combustion,steam trains, industrial machinery etc. They later realise they were wrong and futilely wtry to hold back progress.
E.g.: In 20years the standard roof tile may have PV embedded at an additional cost of £5 person metre, connected to a hybrid vehicle where the battery is used for energy storage. PV cells may be manufactured in a continuous process like carpets.
So how about this; let the free market decide, not government. That is really all we are asking for. The problem is that the Greenies want it NOW, regardless of the cost.
“The biggest deniers in the whole climate change debate are those who think we can have affordable power, lower emissions and a reliable network.”
Nuclear power around here last quarter wholesaled at around 4 cents. We have 57% nuclear, shortly to be increased to 80%, and prices retail from 9 to 11 cents per kwhr.
But the revolution in nuclear energy not far away is the movement to molten salt reactors – at least 50% cheaper to build, built in factories, cheaper to operate, totally safe, extremely proliferation resistant, can probably produce power for under 3.5 cents, have 60 year lifespans (or more). They will prove that the cheapest power can be emission-free.
Political bodies should probably be prohibited from passing legislation in areas of which they so obviously have no knowledge (mostly, anything that involves technology). For example, when wind and solarcame along, many of our more ignorant (blue) state govts required grid operators to accept their power when they produced it. The more ignorant (and lying) greenies claimed that this would simply replace one source of power with another, no extra cost involved (since the non-renewable power source would not have to expend fuel). A couple of BIG, stupid assumptions, which our politicians did not understand – when you suddenly stop buying power from a non-renewable power generator in preference to renewable, you are 1) not saving the cost of that unused power, since it depends on a whole lot more than simply the cost of the fuel being saved, and 2) what’s worse, for baseload power plants, no fuel is saved at all, since they cannot ramp their power output down that quickly, if at all. For a nuclear plant, the fuel costs are almost an insignificant portion of their total cost – less than 3/4th of a cent per kWhr. Not buying their power (which has happened on large scales in the midwest where there is lots of wind power) simply reduces their income with little effect on their costs, thus they lose money. Naturally, the anti-nuke greenies then point to nuclear plants as “high cost” providers, a complete lie, as is usual.
Some states now require renewables to provide grid-level capabilities to prevent them from toxifying their grid – they must be able to provide power “on demand”, and impossibility, even if they were equipped with the greenies phony solution to their unreliability (battery power!!!). Apparently the greenies don’t realize that batteries only store energy, finite amounts of energy, and cannot produce energy. And they must be recharged at some point by those renewables, which makes their output unavailable to the grid.
It is perversely reassuring that California is not unique in producing incompetent politicians, and voters who keep returning them to office. California should have served as a bad example of letting greens run an electrical system with the Enron blackouts, but no one seems to have learned anything useful.
Australia seems to have doubled down on everything self-destructive California did.
Here we are head long in to a fast, blindfolded, race to the bottom, lead by the very people who created this problem, namely politicians.
Their goal is deindustrialization of the West as part of Never Again(TM).
Why do I feel like I’m reading about a scene from “Atlas Shrugged “?
The “price index” graph from the article sort of resembles a hockey stick…
Coal is dead. Long live wind- http://anero.id/energy/wind-energy/2017/june
Explain that graph to us all Mosher while you and your caravan of true believers that you can build a reliable system from unreliable components cheer this-
http://www.skynews.com.au/news/national/sa/2017/06/17/sa-power-station-demolition-to-continue.html
When the rolling blackouts begin in earnest next summer, on top of the recent 18-20% power price rises across Australia, you and your airhead computer modellers are about to be consigned to the dustbin of history.