Essay by Eric Worrall
In the midst of skyrocketing energy prices and domestic gas shortages, the Aussie Government has congratulated itself for missing its first emissions target.
Federal government releases first ‘climate change statement’, but remains behind on emissions targets
By national science, technology and environment reporter Michael Slezak
Key points:
- The government on Thursday delivered Australia’s first annual climate change statement
- It is also released an emissions projection report, which is part of the Australia’s new Climate Change Act
- Scientists say that for Australia to help stop global warming it should cut emissions by about 74 per cent by 2030
The Albanese government says despite being behind on its promised target of a 43 per cent emissions reduction by 2030, Australia is on track to achieve a 40 per cent reduction.
“I’m pleased with how much the government has achieved,” said Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen.
“Pleased, but not satisfied … there is so much more to do.”
…
The government also released independent advice from the Climate Change Authority, which Mr Bowen said showed just how much effort was required to reach the 43 per cent target.
The report said to achieve a 43 per cent reduction by 2030 and net zero by 2050, the “decarbonisation rate needs to be at least 17 million tonnes of carbon per year”.
That would require a 40 per cent faster rate of decarbonisation than has occurred since 2009, Mr Bowen said.
…
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-01/climate-change-statement-emissions-target/101721014
To be fair the Aussie Federal Government does have a plan to contain spiralling prices during their planned shutdown of coal and gas extraction – the latest news is the Aussie Federal Government plans to impose price caps on fossil fuel providers.
Price caps can have a severe negative impact on investment and availability. President Nixon famously imposed a 90 day price cap on gasoline in 1971. The result was a catastrophic multi-year drop in availability. The last price caps were removed by President Reagan, as one of his first acts as President.
Australia’s political leaders have not explained why they believe their price caps will work, why this time will be different.
Any sort of administered price is evil, given history.
But Labor has saved the Great Barrier Reef from climate change.
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/29/1139638618/australia-argues-against-endangered-barrier-reef-status
All they had to do was promise to spend some money, at some time in the future and that ALONE has saved the Reek from being ‘endangered’.
its fine so thats going to save sh*tloads;-)
Better crack the whip in the forced labor camps of western China in making half the world’s polysilicon for solar panels. Remember the motto “out of sight is out of mind”.
I believe half underestimates China’s role.
https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2022/04/chinas-share-of-worlds-polysilicon-production-grows-from-30-to-80-in-just-one-decade/
Written more than six months ago as well.
The entire human civilisation now depends on China for most manufactured goods. China burns more than 50% of annual coal extraction.
It does not take an Einstein to work out that achieving Nut Zero globally is an impossibility with current technology. Solar panels presently coming out of China will give about 25 years of productive life on average. They need to last at least 160 years to give a return on the energy needed to create them as well as the energy storage system that must accompany them to get dispatchable electricity.
Creating money is easy for the USA. Buying Chinese made goods with USD denominated debt will have a limited life.
so the west can aim for net-zero as long as China doesn’t- it’s a two-fer, we get to feel saintly while having a new enemy to hate
To be fair the Aussie Federal Government does have a plan to contain spiralling prices during their planned shutdown of coal and gas extraction – the latest news is the Aussie Federal Government plans to impose price caps on fossil fuel providers.
Pretty please NSW and Qld???
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/labor-doing-their-very-best-to-bring-down-energy-prices-plibersek/ar-AA14LuOR
‘a feat unparalleled in the world’ we are headed with the AEMO vision splendid-
https://reneweconomy.com.au/unparalleled-in-world-aemo-maps-route-to-hours-and-days-of-100-pct-renewables/
The astute observer will note-
South Australia has already operated at “net 100 per cent” renewables, but never without any fossil fuel generation. It exports excess wind and solar to Victoria, and in a few years will do so also to NSW through a new transmission link.
….and what will happen when Vic and NSW get rid of their coal and rely on the weather and sunshine too?
The amount “exported” to NSW and Vic is a piddlingly small amount compare to demand in those states.
There are also times that SA is running on close to 100% GAS and diesel.
That piddling amount can have huge swings. The 600MW link to Victoria swings 1200MW. That was enough to destroy the economics of Hazelwood.
Intermittency pushes out coal and ultimately drives prices up because the system becomes reliant on expensive gas generators.
The majority of power produced by rooftop solar now occurs when the wholesale price is negative. That makes it a system burden rather than benefit.Only 1020 hours today and both SA and Vic have negative wholesale price – the rooftops have only just kicked in.
Modern Advanced Super Critical (A-USC) and Steam H coal plants can start up from cold in less than 30 minutes and have far less emissions than older plants
and they want to shut down Torrens island asap to REALLY screw SA for good
If you cap prices for those fossil fuel suppliers that fill in all the erratic supply gaps from wind and solar, they will cease doing that job.
Its an extremely inefficient, hence costly way to run a plant.
They have to exist and maintain the infrastructure, and if only running for intermittent short periods, have to cover those costs, hence very high unit price.
If they cease to do that job… the grid collapses !
In Syncons they trust! Perpetual motion machines that can spin all night to charge the EVs apparently.
We are training our gerbil to run faster on on it’s wheel 🙂
gas for home heat n cooking is crazy high and were told vic gas is going to go up again after it DOUBLED for zero real reason alrerady
“independent advice from the Climate Change Authority,”
Independent… my a**e.
Brought and paid for by the renewable trough !
Ian Plimer backs Chris Bowen-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/chris-bowen-is-the-one-to-bring-down-labor-govt-quicker-than-anyone-else/ar-AA14LRZE
Plimer is hilarious as aways, great link observa.
Still haven’t got my reviewers copy of his latest book 🙁
Has any country ever met their NDC goal in CO2 or money contribution?
Ouch….price caps won’t get new electricity on line….
It sure won’t as the coal generators aren’t paying world market prices already-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/coal-price-caps-just-won-t-work/ar-AA14Lxzo
The Albanese Govt are flapping their gums with price caps for coal because under our Federal system the States charge royalties with whatever they feel like and no way Qld and NSW are giving up that revenue without compensation. Quite the contrary as Qld hops in for more of its chop with rising prices-
https://www.sharecafe.com.au/2022/06/27/queenslands-new-coal-royalty-program/
The socially criminal thing is that caving to the “green fallacy” has robbed so many other more worthy social projects from being accomplished.
They’re being shoved off the side of the necessity ledger in order to support the misdirection of trillions of dollars that is the idealization of saving the planet… from a key element that constituent’s life, period.
This process is something one might expect to find in a badly written dystopian science fiction novel. A good science fiction novel would by nature offer a social rebellion, and a victory of the anti-hero if not hero.
Not as in reality, some hysteria leaden officialdom, the elected representatives of a people who have open access to systems of mass communication in this, the 21st century.
Instead, we seem to have produced not diverse examples of thinking, demanding conversations arguing the veracity of various propositions and rebuttals, but lemmings eagerly running hardest to be first over the cliff’s edge in mass suicide, as some badly twisted expression of virtue. God save us.
Well written Phillip.
All the developed western countries have swallowed the lies that have been created at the COP meetings .
They all want to reduce their emissions with out any thought of the consequences .
They have not sat down and had a proper debate on why they should even be taking actions to reduce emissions and also whether they can make a difference to the world by doing so.
Many governments are neglecting the core reason that we all have democratically elected governments .
Infrastructure ,health care and education are being neglected in many countries because of the impossible goals that governments have set them selves reducing emissions that can never make one iota of difference
They are elected to run the country building infrastructure ,roads ,railways and ports .
Governments provide health care , education ,a police force and law courts .
They are elected make laws and impose taxes to pay for these essential services .
They are not elected to stuff their economies in the vain hope of saving the world when there is no proof that CO2 will warm the world any more than at present .
When will governments tell the UN where to put their emissions and get back to looking after their people .
“Global warming” will go down in history as the silliest saga in human history. WUWT will be ultimately viewed as a rare beacon of scientific understanding in a sordid sea of religious zealotry that exceeded the reach of the Roman Catholic church at its peak.
One simple question, if answered correctly, would have circumvented the nonsense – why would the modern interglacial not end in exact same circumstances as the last four?
““Global warming” will go down in history as the silliest saga in human history.” Or, unfortunately, it may stay with us, like all religions.
Anyone want to take bets on which of the western world countries experiences a catastrophic grid collapse first due to the brilliance of their respective “leadership”? We could do a pool of some sort. I know, it’s a sick joke, but it seems inevitable that there will be such an event at some point. Right now it seems that Australia, the UK, and Germany are neck and neck with portions of the US – like California and New England, and maybe Texas pushing for the lead.
I think Germany is the clear front runner on that score. The German Government is busy stockpiling fuel so their riot police have the resources to put down the revolution everyone is expecting in February.
Barnes:
My money would be on the UK: they are also dependent on interconnects from Norway
& France. And France has just floated their plan for rolling blackouts [if the winter is bad] due to the nuclear power plant design flaws.
You can also “bet” that investment firms will be shorting industries all over the EU.
BZ,
The French reactors seem to have age flaws rather than design flaws. They have operated so reliably for so long that they should be praised, not questioned.
If only other counries were smart enough to do similar for electricity generation.
Geoff S
I’m tipping my State of South Australia will lead the pack in Oz as they build a white elephant interconnector to NSW coal at present while interconnected Vic and future NSW are Hell bent on shutting down their coal generation and emulating SA with unreliables. That was bleeding obvious with the greenouts in SA recently when the Vic interconnector went down in a storm but apart from a few lonely dissenting voices the MSM are right behind the net zero fairytale.
Would it be legal for WUWT to run a book with a commission going to the ongoing funding of this great resource?
It needs to get up and running fast. Hungary appears to be hitting the highest prices for electricity this week. That suggests the greatest pain but could be just their reliance on NatGas.
I suggest that UK will be friendless by February. Anyone with floating power stations please leave them in the Thames.
Ukraine should be excluded.
Well the Netherlands are hell bent and determined to hit their target, regardless of the discomfort and food insecurity it causes:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/netherlands-reportedly-set-forcibly-close-201513615.html
You seen how big those Dutch farm boys are? I wouldn’t want one of them p*ssed off at me, let alone the whole clan. And where do the Dutch get most of their police and military recruits from? How long will Dutch police and soldiers continue to obey orders to shoot at their own families?
The Dutch government is completely nuts.
So it begins in earnest with the cheaper power promise but never come between a metoo climate changing State Premier and a bucket of fossil fuel money!
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/albanese-government-to-lower-energy-prices/vi-AA14LW8U?category=foryou
40%nor 43% or 75% of nothing is nothing. Australia is like the UK in its role of domestic CO2 production, it is insignificant as a world player. The best bit is CO2 is insignificant as a climate control world player also.
With those facts in mind you have to ask what do the politicians around the world imagine they are doing, other than destroying highly evolved energy systems needed to sustain highly evolved civilisation?
As night follows day, emissions targets cannot be met without destroying the civilisation we have built.
I guess it is a normal part of a politician’s job to deceive the populace when targets are not met, and to deflect any criticism or scrutiny. The biggest problem is that the populace may not connect the two dots of cause and effect as all their life becomes worse due to mandated increases in the price of energy.
have to disagree price caos are bad
the oil/gas mobs are almost ALL OS based pay little tax back and get some handouts. wages have NOT risen nnor has their cost to extract I doubt
so the pairing with the insane manipulated EU usa prices is pure price gouging “because they can”
flog it to OS for their market rates rude but thats the way bigbiz works(dirty) but home supply should be cost and a MODEST profit no more!
buttface bowen need to not miss a date with a semi full of sewage, his targets are insane as is he
The ex – Mayor of Fairfield is talking again..
Same epic stupidity as in Canada.
7 years of Justin Trudeau attacking and taxing energy
$200Billion squandered on endless do gooder greenie nonsense
Canada’s GHG target for last year was 615Mt
Canada’s actual GHG level was 672Mt.
And that with economy shutdown due to Covid
“a plan to contain spiralling prices during their planned shutdown of coal and gas extraction”
lots of creative accounting? like, fail to account for the short life span of wind/solar/batteries and fail to account for the environmental costs necessary to produce vast amounts of wind/solar energy, fail to account for the lost investment in fossil fuel power shut down before the reasonable end of their useful life? etc., etc. Then find ways to subsidize wind/solar/batteries in hidden ways? And, once energy is extremely expensive, we’ll obviously use far less- and THAT will lower costs because we’ll be freezing in the dark…..
These impossible socialists, with their “this time will be different”. It’s never different, just worse.