Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Sydney Morning Herald Andrew Charlton just said something about climate change which almost made sense, before getting lost in the weeds of the fake green hydrogen revolution.
I hate to say it, but Barnaby has a point on climate
Andrew Charlton
Co-Director of the e61 Institute for Economic Research
October 29, 2021 — 5.00amEleven years ago, as adviser to prime minister Kevin Rudd, I sat in the room with US president Barack Obama, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, German chancellor Angela Merkel and other world leaders in the dying hours of the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen.
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Hour after hour, hope drained out of the room. It became clear that the meeting was going to fail for one simple reason: the developing countries were blocking the deal.
At one point a Chinese official thumped the table and shouted: “Rich countries cannot tell people who are struggling to earn enough to eat that they need to reduce their emissions.”
A Latin American negotiator explained what was happening. “For centuries your countries have prospered by exploiting the world’s resources,” he whispered into my ear. “How can I go home from this meeting and tell the slum dwellers they must stay poor to help clean up your mess.”
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Watching the failure in Copenhagen taught me an important lesson about climate change. No amount of moral energy from those who are less affected and less vulnerable will motivate those who are most affected and most vulnerable. This lesson is relevant for Australia’s domestic politics. For 10 years since Copenhagen, Australia’s climate debate has foundered for a version of the same reason.
Climate activists from the inner cities promote their impeccable science, their colourful rallies and their passionate rhetoric. But no super-majority of urbanites will ever convince regional workers whose jobs are at risk to heed their righteous commandments.
Most of Australia’s 18 coal-fired power stations are expected to close over the next 15 years, leaving about 10,000 direct workers looking for new jobs.
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So, as I watched the messy compromise this week between the Liberals and Nationals, I had a horrifying reflection. Barnaby Joyce is right. Or at least, the Nationals leader is right about one thing: we need to solve this for the regions first.
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The great shame is that this was possible. The clean energy opportunity for the regions is real if we choose to capitalise on it. Research released last week showed that many of the jobs in the new clean energy industries are in hydrogen production, renewable energy, batteries, green metals and mineral processing using clean energy are just some of the opportunities that can create tens of thousands of new jobs in Australia’s regions.
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Andrew Charlton is a managing director at Accenture, adjunct professor at Macquarie University and co-director of the e61 Institute for economic research. He was an economic adviser to Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd.
Read more: https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/i-hate-to-say-it-but-barnaby-has-a-point-on-climate-20211028-p593uu.html
I’m impressed Andrew, for a SMH contributor you almost had it, then sadly lost it. Your green hydrogen “solution” to rural jobs will never fly, because you forgot another great pillar of country life – nobody trusts the government.
If green hydrogen was remotely economically viable, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Every farm would have its own green hydrogen plant, we would be churning out gigalitres of the stuff, like farms do in the USA when they have a frackable natural gas deposit on their land.
But green hydrogen is not economically viable without massive government support, and likely never will be. Green hydrogen produced by anything other than steam reforming fossil fuel, or maybe in the distant future zero carbon nuclear power, is a politically motivated chimera, which will need an indefinite period of generous government life support to exist.
From tech entrepreneur and regular WUWT contributor Rud Istvan, the author of Blowing Smoke;
… Most hydrogen is made by steam reformation of natgas, which isn’t green. Less than 5% is via water electrolysis, mostly special non-industrial circumstances because more expensive. Electrolysis is about 70% energy efficient.
To be stored in meaningful quantities, hydrogen is either highly compressed in special costly carbon fiber wound epoxy cylinders (90% efficient because of PV/T=k heating), or liquified, about 75% efficient. Needs to be used in PEM fuel cells (cars, grid) since SOFC (Bloom Energy) crack and have poor lifetimes, PEM are at best 60% efficient and use platinum catalyst on Nafion membranes. Expensive, why there aren’t many in commercial use anywhere despite years of Plugged Power trying and hyping. So 1*0.75*maybe 0.9*0.6= Maybe 0.41 net hydrogen energy efficiency. Same as CCGT. But with a lot more capital expense for an ‘industry’ that does not exist yet for good reason.Now over at Judith’s a while ago we recalculated the faulty EIA LCOE for on shore wind. 2.15x CCGT. So Australia green hydrogen will be at best as energy useful as natgas at over twice the cost. Yup that is what makes it ‘green’. GREEN anything means more expensive AND more problematic.
Source: WUWT Comment
Even The Guardian in one of their saner moments noticed green hydrogen numbers are shaky.
Using hydrogen fuel risks locking in reliance on fossil fuels, researchers warn
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Renewable electricity production is increasing rapidly as costs tumble. But it still makes up a small proportion of all energy used, which is mostly provided by coal, oil and gas. Using the electricity directly is efficient, but requires investment in new types of car and heating systems.
Using the electricity to create hydrogen from water and then using carbon dioxide to manufacture other fuels can produce “drop-in” replacements for fossil fuels. But the new study concludes this cannot work on a large enough scale to tackle the climate emergency in time.
“Hydrogen-based fuels can be a great clean energy carrier, yet their costs and associated risks are also great,” said Falko Ueckerdt, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany, who led the research.
“If we cling to combustion technologies and hope to feed them with hydrogen-based fuels, and these turn out to be too costly and scarce, then we will end up burning further oil and gas,” he said. “We should therefore prioritise those precious hydrogen-based fuels for applications for which they are indispensable: long-distance aviation, feedstocks in chemical production and steel production.”
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/06/hydrogen-fuel-risks-reliance-on-fossil-fuels
If there is a path to economically viable green hydrogen, it will take a long time to find it. So the huge government subsidies required to kickstart the green hydrogen revolution would not have an end date.
A switch from mining and farming to green hydrogen production would require rural people to abandon livelihoods which do not require government support, and switch to putting their entire lives in the hands of fickle city politicians, who would have to provide a reliable long term subsidy of hundreds of billions of dollars per year, to fund an entirely new industry which currently has no real market.
Andrew, you are expecting people who have never seen anything but ham fisted job killing environmental regulations, an almost complete failure to invest in vital infrastructure like roads and water reservoirs, and ongoing utter disrespect from city politicians, to suddenly about face and completely trust those same politicians with their livelihoods.
Good luck selling that plan to rural communities.
I don’t agree; he was nowhere near close. “Climate activists from the inner cities promote their impeccable science”. No-one has seen this magical impeccable science.
Baby steps, you know…
You beat me to it. I actually laughed out loud when I read “impeccable science” 🙂
Impeccable is a tricky word. It isn’t a synonym for ‘correct’.
The usual definition of impeccable is:
Climate science is peer reviewed and produced by highly credentialed researchers and it conforms to the ‘narrative’. In that sense it is impeccable. It’s a moral judgment by people whose morals are garbage.
I think it’s “impeccable” not impeccable but you are required to fit the inverted commas yourself
In this context it is a synonym for “settled”.
Perhaps he meant “implacable science’.
Nope.
His voice-to-text must have missed the true word: “impeachable”. LOL
lee,
There appears to be a phrase missing from the sentence! It should read: “Climate activists from the inner cities promote their implacable science, gleaned from years of watching early morning kiddie cartoons about unicorns and rainbows!”
The CAGW narrative has surely been the most implacable and widespread propaganda campaign in world history; at least until the Branch Covidians got firing on all cylinders! Scaring children and mind-numbed city slickers with tales of destruction is all they ever do!
Impeccable should be read as “immaculate”, as in immaculate conception, as in a crock.
Impeccable in this case means cannot be pecked, no matter how ludicrous.
There you go with all those NUMBERS again Eric.
How dare you (and Rud).
You know they make CoP attendees’ heads hurt 🙁
Ha 🙂
Must stop conflating Actual Truth with Green Facts
Didn’t Biden say that he would always choose truth over facts?
Probably off topic….but where are they going to get the asphalt for the paved roads to drive their hydrogen fuel cell cars on ?
This is the land of the four-wheel-drive. Paved roads are for pussies and urbanites (but I repeat myself). 😂
Four-wheel drive and slick forest roads, from the summer monsoons, are almost as much fun as firearms and the local moonshine mixed in the proper proportions!
Zig Zag is right, bar big cities and some large arterial roads most of our roads don’t see a lot of asphalt even without a fossil fuel ban.
Big cities, and their Obama/Biden-world-mix of denizens, are responsible for most of global warming, due their HUGE “micro climates”, such as from Portland, Maine to well south of Washington DC, and from north of SF to south of San Diego.
Nature has been totally destroyed in those urban SPRAWLS
All the newfangled RE systems should be located in the big urban SPRAWLS, i.e., “Electricity generation close to the user”.
What is not to love?
With no fossils, we will all be wearing jute-based clothing, and leather hand-sewn moccasins.
Here is my latest example of prepping for the “End of our World”, as we will fondly remember it.
EXCERPT from:
WIND AND SOLAR TO PROVIDE 30 PERCENT OF FUTURE NEW ENGLAND ELECTRICITY CONSUMPTION
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/wind-and-solar-provide-50-percent-of-future-new-england
Energy systems analysts of Denmark, Ireland, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, etc., have known for decades, that if you have a significant percentage of wind and solar on your grid, you better have available:
An adequate capacity, MW, of other power plants to counteract any variations of wind and solar, 24/7/365, year after year.
An adequate capacity of energy storage, such as1) pumped hydro storage, 2) hydro plants with reservoir storage, and grid-scale
battery systems.
RE folks often advocate:
1) Electricity must be 100% renewable by 2050
2) Getting rid of the remaining nuclear plants as soon as their licenses expire, or sooner
3) Getting rid of natural gas, coal, oil, propane to reduce CO2 to fight climate change
4) Biomass power plants (burning mostly trees), because the combustion CO2 of biomass is “renewable”.
World Fossil Fuels Supply is 84 Percent of World Primary Energy
Coal, 27%; Natural Gas, 24%; Oil, 33%, a total of 84%, plus Nuclear, 4%; Hydro, 6%; Renewables, 5%, after more than 20 years of subsidies.
Some of the primary energy, about 10%, is used for exploration, extraction, processing and transport to produce primary energy to users. That 10% of primary energy is often called “upstream energy”.
For example, to produce ethanol from corn requires a very significant quantity of primary energy to produce a gallon of ethanol for blending with gasoline; the combustion CO2 of ethanol is not counted, as is the CO2 of burning biomass, because they are “renewable”, per international agreement.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2020/06/20/bp-review-new-highs-in-global-energy-consumption-and-carbon-emissions-in-2019/?sh=4714e7f066a1
I like your thinking, Willam. Let them sow the wind and reap the whirlwind (Hosea 8:7). I already have a design for Boston and San Francisco.
Boston:
I think a couple of windmills in the middle of Central Park are in order. Why should all of the unsightly stuff be put elsewhere where city people don’t need to worry about getting it shoved down their throats?
Willem,
The JoeBama ruling elite doesn’t want to SEE, or HEAR, the results of their policies; designed to enrich their wealthy cronies! Even the obsequiously servile class, bred and indoctrinated just to shuck and tote for them, are shielded from their follies!
Only the rebellious and heretical, feral humans are forced live around these monoliths to their pride! That’s why all the new God of Wind idols are being placed far offshore; you don’t expect Hussein Obama or Bill Gates to look at them through their pricey coastal mansion windows, do you?
I wonder what is more C02 – an asphalt road or concrete road? Both require fossil fuels.
I wonder how CO2 brick or paver sidewalks and side streets are. In The Netherlands they dig em up to work on utilities, then put the same material back when they are done.
The bricks are very valuable and thieves just dig them up, take them someplace and sell them.
They will make the roads out of concrete!! Oh, wait a minute, about that.
Gotta use Flag Stone, River Cobbles or Adobe Bricks
Bryan A
Let’s try Lego block paving instead – what could possibly be wrong with that? We could even use child labour to lay the Lego blocks. As opposed to sending children down dangerous toxic holes in Africa to dig out for cobalt for green posers to drive their absurd cars about pretending they are doing something worthwhile.
Lego is made from petroleum
Details, details, always those pesky details!
Yellow brick.
No need of asphalt.
After they will get plentiful, cheap and reliable electricity storage, they will create levitating vehicles.
Those roads will be paved with good intentions.
Yah, but… those roads all lead to the same, very hot destination.
Before too long somebody will invent a resin bonded cellulose surface to replace tarmac. It will be hailed as a green solution and a wonderful way of divesting from fossil fuels. Then, some years in the future, someone will work out exactly how much land that could be growing food is actually being used for these projects (including biofuels), while people still starve in parts of the world.
I’ve missed something obvious. Hydrogen is to be produced by hydrolysis. The electricity to perform the hydrolysis is to be produced by “renewable” power sources, presumably solar panels or windmills close by the electrolysis plant. The hydrogen is then going to be transported for distribution to motor car refilling stations. Presumably the transport will also be powered by electricity. Cars are then going to be powered by combustion of hydrogen.
It all sounds like a perpetual motion machine designed by a committee to me. That would be one which requires continuous injection of energy at various points to make it work. For example in the manufacture of solar panels, trucks, and compressors.
And this is going to create thousands of jobs where previously there were tens of thousands. My question is what these thousands will do? Perhaps clean and polish the solar panels?
Why not just domesticate unicorns and use them to power the cars directly?
It actually sounds like exactly the problem of mule trains. What you mostly end up carrying is hay for the mules.
Indeed. In his book ‘the collapse of complex civilisations ‘ Joseph Tainter cites the problem of feeding the Roman empire, not from the sea route accessible Egyptian wheat fields but from the landlocked farms of Gaul.
The horses ate all the grain needed to transport the grain before it got to Rome. And since each farm was required to supply grain based on its size, that meant that the gift of a farm in Gaul became regarded as a death sentence.
So when a barbarian warlord said ‘gimme ten percent and I will protect you from the Romans’, it was a no brainer.
Tainter’s thesis is that civilisations grow to match and then exceed their resource bases, As they approach the limits of what the resource base can deliver scarce resources must be administered carefully by an ever larger bureaucracy…which is not in and of itself productive, and at a given point collapse happens when people realise that there would be a lot more resource of there were no bureaucrats and about 95% of the population as well.
Civilization then reverts to its natural ‘peasants and warlords’ structure.
Just change “Continual Injections of Energy” to “Continual Injections of Money”
That is the sell problem to the population, every high school student who did basic science can see the problem. Leftards never actually do science they were too busy on climate action strikes so the problem escapes them.
Broken window economy.
Don’t worry about the energy. It’s all powered by money. Your money.
The glimmer in this dumpster of journalistic hubris is that there is huge divide between urbanites and the real world, nominally referred to as “rural” or “the regions”.
It used to be that almost everyone was rural or at least adjacent. Now the bulk of humanity lives in concrete and glass caves in concrete and glass canyons, have never seen a real tree much less a forest, or a farm, or a wild animal, or a bird that wasn’t a pigeon. The bulk of humanity is so disconnected from “nature” they accept any and all puffery nonsense about “climate change” and readily agree to absurd “solutions” to non-problems.
The rural-urban divide goes much deeper, though. The county-by-county map of recent presidential elections reveals that 85% of the national land base votes red while 15% votes blue. That 15% is strictly urban: mega-cities in turmoil and decay.
Recently some pundits have suggested a national divorce, a splitting of the sheets between red and blue. If done on a county-by-county basis, the reds would get all the farms, forests, mines, wells, power plants, dams, rivers, and highways — and the blues would get the rotting urban wastelands, the Media, and the failed bureaucracy. It seems like a win-win for everybody.
Indeed.
Mike,
If we wall them off and carefully allocate their resources, they would make great prisons and re-education centers! Think “Escape From New York” writ large!
I’d even be willing to commute the life sentence for those that prove they are capable of hard work and rational thought!
Sad but True. Rural communities don’t matter unless they deliver more votes than urban communities.
The point also lost in the left garbage is those working in the fossil fuel sector are high paying FIFO jobs usually well north of $150K pa. The much touted green jobs promoted by the leftards even if they ever eventuate are basically install technicians lucky to be around $60K. Who do the leftards really expect is going to vote to put themselves out of a high paying job into of the uncertainty of perhaps fighting for a low paid job.
The same will play out at COP26 the French who just dummy spat at Australia over cancelling a $90B sub contract will demand Australia give up coal exports worth hundreds of billions of dollars in future years. The dummy spit was to placate French workers and companies who missed out and Morrison will reject stopping exporting coal for the same reasons.
The issue is political and you don’t win political fights by being in the minority and not listening and engaging with the population but try to impose your morality and lecturing.
Let’s be clear. There is no such thing as “government subsidy”. It is taxpayer subsidy. By implication, every wealth destroying “green” job will be at the cost of > 1 wealth creating jobs in the private sector. We are heading for a Soviet style economy, and that wasn’t good.
The other problem is that the people who are expected to pay for these changes see the likes of Greta, XR, Insulate Britain and the rest protesting and wanting to make life difficult and expensive for them, and all the while taking full benefit from modern technology.
There is a cartoon doing the rounds with the caption (IIRC)
“If you do not trust the government you are not a conspiracy theorist.
You are a history buff”
Australia is sitting on the solution to their future rural and urban energy needs, and also for their potable water needs. Australia has the worlds’ largest reserve of uranium, almost 30% of the worlds’ reserve, but is only the third leading producer (which they mostly sell to others). Unclear power works for everyone, especially in Australia, where sea water can be converted to potable water for thirsty cities and rural agriculture. Nuke ’em!
Ron,
I think you meant “nuclear power!”
“Unclear power” is what the Greentards feel can take on the work done by fossil fuels currently!
While Australia’s politicians argue or ignore research and development continues;
https://www.ansto.gov.au/research/programs/nuclear-fuel-cycle
I always thought it was that rural people are not insulated from the real world like city dwellers are. Speaking sarcastically, I find the people who best know how the world works are the people with the least amount of experience in it. For instance, the people who have only lived in a city their entire life best know how farmers should grow crops.
The problem is that people who live in the real world are greatly outnumbered by people who only live in cities. Permanent city dwellers are insulated and only know theory and ideas proposed by the very same people who also don’t know how the real world works.
CAGW is still alive because insulated city dwellers don’t have the life experience and first-hand knowledge that things aren’t as bad as they are told. How could they? They live their life surrounded by concrete and pavement.
classic my new city neighbours thought the fox running in their yard was “sweet” a week later i showed he my 10 dead hens in bits and asked if the fox was still cute?
she STILL thought we shouldnt kill foxes!
well new hens from incubated saved eggs but she wont be getting the eggs going forward
In keeping with that thought, note that the “brilliant” catastrophists at Harvard live in Boston, having no real idea from where their energy, food, clothing, and shelter come. It is disconcerting, however, that many U.S. land grant universities (agricultural, engineering, science and technology schools by charter), usually located in small towns to smallish cities, are gradually selling their souls to the devil. Look no further than the main source of their grant research funding — the federal government — plus their gradual mission creep into the liberal arts and social “sciences.”
they want to reduce methane too
so cull the national herd (yeah while were rebuilding after droughts) and steaks at 40 or more a kilo lambs 45 a half leg etc
or we COULD allow on farm methane storage and run the farms on it like usa did from the 20s onwards
of course aussie occ health n safety and the epa would manage to make that un doable by insane over regulating too…
The pic of 9 volt battery producing hydrogen should be enough to convince everyone that making hydrogen on the go should be the future BUT capitalists wont let go of the monopoly they have on energy supply. a car needs 40,000 volts at the plug to make the spark jump across the gap, Voltage of Automobile Spark Plugs – The Physics Factbook (hypertextbook.com) that’s about 4,444 9volt batteries. Greedy capitalists killed this man because he was threatening their stranglehold they have on our everyday lives . Stan Meyer explains the Water Fuel Technology. Water car GENIUS – YouTube
Idle question: How much energy is in the bonds of the water molecules in a gallon of water versus the amount of energy in the bonds of the hydrocarbon molecules in a gallon of gasoline?
Someone here probably knows that off the top of their head. I really don’t know the answer.
4,444 9 volt batteries in series is not how the 40,000 volts is generated.
If you ever maintained an older car you would remember the distributor, condensor (capacitor), contact/points, and ignition coil. The “contact” rode on a cam inside the distributor, with the points closing a circuit from the battery during the “dwell” to charge the primary of the ignition coil. When the cam opened the points the circuit opened and the primary coil’s magnetic field collapsed, inducing a high voltage surge in the secondary coil. That was fed out the top of the coil to the center tap of the distributor by a high voltage wire, and from the distributor through to the correct cylinder through the spark plug wires. The actual voltage of the battery wasn’t as much an issue as the need for enough power to drive the starter motor to spin the engine while simultaneously powering the ignition system, hence car batteries rated in CCA – cold cranking amps. Once the engine started the alternator took over, and recharged the battery. Today’s electronic ignition systems usually have separate coils for one or two cylinders and no distributor, no points, no moving parts, but generating the high spark plug voltage is basically the same.
Did you forget the sarcasm tag, or are you actually as paranoid as you seem?
Not to mention being a 2nd Law of Thermodynamics den!er.
Man may not be able to create or destroy energy but we know how to amplify it ,
Lots of foot soldiers from Heartland reside here Ha MarkW
In this week’s “Time to Wake Up” speech, Sen. Whitehouse discusses the Heartland Institute’s role in disseminating “alternative facts” on climate change to our schools, as well as the positive impact of teaching “good solid science” in classrooms.
Time to Wake Up: Rhode Island’s Teachers Teach Climate Change and the Dishonest Heartland Institute – YouTube
What struck me in the story is the realization of the appearance of a new Imperialism that is happening. The new Imperialism doesn’t involve physical occupation but it does involve a similar type of CONTROL as it did in the past. It consists of control by implementing a new religion consisting of sacrificial actions to appease the new priesthood of “climate change”.
This new religion will not require just tithing to support it but instead a willingness to give up as much of your hard earned wealth as it takes to support the new idols of solar panels and windmills.
Current populations that have little energy are already living a natural life and should not change. The remaining population that currently live an energy prolific lifestyle will be reeducated in the theological underpinnings of the new religion and how they should live to properly meet their responsibilities.
The only people who will have dispensation to violate the new theology will be the priesthood who need the flexibility to insure everyone else acts appropriately. Of course this will require that the priesthood have the needed finances to perform their duties properly.
Does this sound a little like communism maybe?
Communism always was a religion disguised as a political system! The neo-Marxist cults that include Climastrology are even more blatant in their fervor and beliefs! There were never any economic theories beyond the famous religious mantra: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!”
Of course, I never realized till now that Marx was also transphobic and exclusionary! I always thought he was just F’ing insane!
“…population that currently live an energy prolific lifestyle will be reeducated in the theological underpinnings of the new religion…”
Sounds like Pol Pot and the killing fields of Cambodia.
I still want to know how you are going to transport and store all this hydrogen. I just can’t get the pictures of the Hindenburg out of my head!
Andrew Charlton lost me at “ impeccable science”. Didn’t read another word after that.
“But green hydrogen is not economically viable without massive government support, and likely never will be.”
The “…never will be” is correct. Adding massive government support doesn’t make it viable. The money to run the government comes from us. So everyone has to pay for it one way or another. When it comes to energy, if it won’t fly in the free market it won’t fly at all.
From the article (my bold): ” Research released last week showed that many of the jobs in the new clean energy industries are in hydrogen production, renewable energy, batteries, green metals and mineral processing using clean energy are just some of the opportunities that can create tens of thousands of new jobs in Australia’s regions.“
–
–
And by the same token, tens of thousands of jobs tied to the current system will be lost. If it’s a wash, where jobs created equals jobs destroyed, then I wouldn’t get to excited about all those new jobs.
But if the hydrogen economy creates more jobs than are destroyed, then either energy costs will go up because more labor is needed or wages will go down if energy costs are to remain the same.
Due to energy density and handling issues, I suspect that jobs will increase and costs will increase. There will be more inputs needed – not necessarily just labor – to deliver the same energy in usable form to the user.
It doesn’t matter what the rurals will support; what matters is what the urbans have the power to shove down their throats
I don’t see why many livestock farms, wineries, breweries and food processing plants wouldn’t have anaerobic digesters to produce heat and power, plus solar panels on their roofs.
anyway, Australians are backing renewables -one third of the homes in Queensland have solar panels for example.
Rooftop solar panels are a natural for augmenting domestic hot water tanks.
Save money on electric utility bills.
But nobody expects to get their on-demand household hot water from solar panels alone.
They all still rely on grid-connected, coal fueled electrical power.
grifter,
Most ranchers and farmers don’t have the time, or money, to waste on frivolous activities!
But I’m sure you could find some willing to try out new projects if you donate yours!
Griff, FYI another thing that households in Australia cover their roofs with are lots of black plastic hose that circulates water from their swimming pools to maintain comfy pool water temperature for year-round swimming.
Aussies know how to harness sunlight alright.
Just have to work out how to avoid melanoma 🙁
Many farms, etc already have anaerobic digesters, where it make economic sense for them to do so.
They have solar panels on the roof because government is paying them to do so.
Once again, if something has to be subsidized, it isn’t successful.
That’s not backing renewables; it’s their simple way of getting back via subsidies some of the money taken from them by governments, and of insuring themselves against price rises.
And, since you seem to full of ideas about what other people should do with their money and property, why don’t you lead by example and make your own anaerobic digester wherever you live.
Go green, go poor, go broke and see farming land grabbed up by the wealthy. There is opportunity in green.
“Progressives” are riding a political dead horse in their war on fossil fuels. Burning fossil fuels most likely contributes less than 5% to the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations and water vapor and the formation of clouds have more to do with the warming of the earths surface than do atmospheric CO2 concentrations. “Progressives” can save face by realizing that natural gas is the ultimate clean burning renewable (burning four hydrogen atoms for each carbon atom) and has long been being produced and used from sewage treatment plants and landfills. Any biomass is easily converted to natural gas. If biomass is considered a safe renewable, so should be natural gas. Then nature has already produced more than we can use in a lifetime.
Build more pipelines and ship more LNG to developing countries.
“Watching the failure in Copenhagen taught me an important lesson about climate change. No amount of moral energy from those who are less affected and less vulnerable will motivate those who are most affected and most vulnerable. This lesson is relevant for Australia’s domestic politics. For 10 years since Copenhagen, Australia’s climate debate has foundered for a version of the same reason.”
He both learned the lesson and failed to understand the significance of the lesson. At the global level, developing countries *will not* voluntarily embrace poverty for the sake of CO2 reduction (nor should they, when the benefits of industrialization for their citizens are vastly larger than plausible negative future impacts of climate change). That means that Australia’s tiny share of global emissions are quite irrelevant — whatever mitigation strategies Australia adapts will have a negligible affect on future climate, and any of those strategies that result in net harm to Australians *independent* of climate change should not be adopted.
Australians should instead focus on improving the lot of the “most affected and most vulnerable”, which makes them less vulnerable to the variations and risks of *any* future climate and the current climate as well.
Just a nit to pick with Rud, currently commercially available CCGTs are over 60% efficient, which makes them over 20% more efficient than the net hydrogen efficiency. And add in the losses due to having to transmit and transform H2 power twice instead of once, making it even less efficient.
I find most if not all these comments on Hydrogen as an energy provider totally irrelevant as once you apply the Thermodynamic Laws to the concept, whatever you do it will require more energy to produce and distribute the hydrogen than the energy which it eventually produces. End of story.
Dancing around subsidies and manipulated legislation relating to costs is a total waste of time except for those who gain from the corrupted policies, where one guy’s profit is another’s loss.
However it can be fun reading some of the comments.
Slightly off topic,
Unbeknown to the 668 residents of Winlaton in NE England in August 2021 they began to use a blend of up to 20% hydrogen with 80% natural gas in their heating and cooking.
https://hydrogen-central.com/hydrogen-heat-homes-uk-wired/
Some quotes from a researcher at Exeter Uni and a member of the Institution of Energy & Technology’s Energy Policy Panel
“Higher concentrations would require not only significant network and infrastructure upgrades but also hydrogen specific appliances and boilers……..It could be rolled out across the UK…..But as hydrogen has a lower energy density per metre cubed of gas than methane this would give a maximum reduction in emissions from the grid of 7%……so blending is only an interim measure till we can find a more effective solution.”
“While to many people pure hydrogen may feel like the logical answer there’s a chasm between the rhetoric and the reality, which raises another important question, how much should we be bothering with it at all?”
“The more you drill into it the more expensive and complicated it becomes and I think people are finally realising it does’nt look good”
“Current research shows that polyethelene is safe to transport 100% hydrogen, though the pipes need to be adjusted because you need to push through approximately three times as much hydrogen to supply the same amount of energy”
Will it stay “unbeknown” when the bill arrives?
It seems that a few newspapers bent the story a bit. It was originally announced in 2019 that Winlaton would be used in the trial although it does seem that they were largely unaware of the start date.
As to the bill who knows?
Since consumers pay based on the volume of the gas, will they get a discount for the “unbeknown” dilution of their energy source?
There seems to be an absence of engineers or a reluctance to consult them in any green energy tech (I grace the sector with the word tech reluctantly). The adolescent ‘understanding’ of them by climate scientists, the media and activists gives a distinct highschool science fair-like level of knowledge.
Even good scientists have an appallingly poor understanding of economics (once again you need engineers for economic-technological understanding). They report “breakthrough” world changing discoveries that an enginneer generally discounts in minutes once he studies the experiment. Think of all the “breakthroughs” we never hear of again.
Even if you can only make it out pure gold or diamonds, some scientist will jump up and down screaming when an engineer tells them it is too expensive to manufacture in any quantity.
I see the mention of various expensive and inefficient technologies holding back green hydrogen. This is one of the results of ignoring markets, or perhaps better distorting markets by government edict.
Free markets are the most efficient way possible of allocating resources. If the price or oranges rises compared to apples, you don’t have to ponder whether this is from a freeze in Florida, fuel price rises making local apples cheaper than distant oranges, a new apple orchard maturing and flooding the market … it does not matter. You buy fewer oranges and more apples, the decision is made in seconds without further ado.
People have been trying to make efficient and cheap electric cars for well over a century. That it hasn’t happened yet is a big-ass clue-by-four. Ignoring this in favor of arbitrary bans on ICE vehicles by 2030, 2040, 2050, or any other politically-inspired date just destroys the price signals which make markets so efficient. If politicians instead merely stole more taxes to fund more research, they’d get better results, but that doesn’t exercise the control they enjoy so much, and the political payoff is years down the road. Just as Biden took credit for the vaccines whose development began under Trump, so would politicians 20 or 50 years down the road take credit when some research started today finally developed the holy grail of efficient, reliable, cheap batteries or super capacitors.
Worse yet, research doesn’t work like that. You don’t work on something for 20 or 50 years and it suddenly pops out overnight. You get gradual improvements. First customers pay a lot for not much except the novelty. Each year brings gradual improvements, some more astonishing than others. But there is never a point at which something went from totally useless to perfect. Edison’s light bulb has a date assigned to it, but that is fake news; the ones before burned out quicker and gave less light, ones after burned out later and gave more light. Early adopters used them to show off their wealth and modernity.
That is how just about everything works. I bet even things like Pet Rocks had gradual phases. Frisbees did, hula hoops did, just about everything did.
“Andrew Charlton is a managing director at Accenture.”
Accenture is big time into IT services and consulting. If they believe in the hydrogen solution, why aren’t they jumping into it big time? Should be a very sound, can’t lose, business proposition.
Perhaps some inquiries into Accenture’s net-zero plans would be in order. Bet hydrogen is not a part.
Here’s a major fallacy in Andrew Charlton’s analysis: “hydrogen production, renewable energy, batteries, green metals and mineral processing using clean energy are just some of the opportunities that can create tens of thousands of new jobs”.
When you just count jobs in the energy industry, you are missing the most important fact: the energy itself can create a lot more jobs than are needed to create the energy. Worse than that, the rule of thumb is that every time you increase the price of energy by the equivalent of one job, the extra energy cost destroys 2-3 jobs in the rest of the economy. This is exactly what happens with inefficient “green” energy. All those praised jobs in the renewable energy industry would destroy many more jobs in the rest of the economy, simply because the energy produced would be more expensive.
“Green” renewable energy is a large-scale Bastiat’s Window.