Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Theo; The Grattan Institute has recommended transitioning to electric and banning new gas connections.
No time to waste’: getting Australian homes off gas crucial for meeting net zero targets, report says
Grattan Institute analysis recommends governments help households transition to electric, and ban new gas connections for homes and businesses
Adam Morton Climate and environment editor
Mon 19 Jun 2023 01.00 AESTGetting households off gas for heating and cooking would cut energy bills and improve people’s health, and is necessary for Australia to have any hope of reaching net zero greenhouse emissions by 2050, a new analysis says.
The report by the Grattan Institute, a Melbourne-based thinktank, called on state and territory governments to set dates for the end of gas use and launch campaigns to encourage and help households become “all electric”, running on renewable energy.
It recommended governments also ban new gas connections for homes, shops and small businesses and set dates to phase out the sale of gas appliances and by which rental homes have to be fitted with electric cooktops and water and home heating systems.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/19/australian-homes-gas-net-zero-targets-report
Looking at the report summary, there is also a recommendation that landlords be forced to make rental accomodation all electric, and government provided indigenous accomodation be upgraded to all electric.
Australia is already facing a rental accomodation crisis because of landlords fleeing the industry, so this latest demand will just add to the list of reasons not to be a landlord. The full report admits all electric appliances cost more.
The full Grattan Institute report pushes heat pumps instead of gas burners. Heat pumps are fine in principle, but in practice they can be difficult to install. The German Green Party is facing a major embarrassment, they can’t get their heat pumps to work in their own Berlin party headquarters. So far they’ve wasted €5 million with nothing to show but political fallout.
The report also suggests coal generators are not being replaced by gas, they are being replaced by renewables + storage.
The problem with this claim is nobody is building the storage.
Australia needs major energy storage investment to face ‘wicked challenge’ of net zero, CSIRO says
By Andy Colthorpe
March 29, 2023Australia’s national science agency CSIRO has said the country needs to invest into multiple different energy storage technologies at massive scale to achieve its transition to renewable energy.
A new roadmap published today by government agency Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) highlighted that a 10-14x increase in energy storage capacity will be needed in the National Electricity Market (NEM) in the years 2025 and 2030. Australia is targeting net zero emissions by 2050.
The 200-page Renewable Energy Storage Roadmap discusses how storage can facilitate the uptake of renewable energy, enhance stability and reliability of the grid, and support industries. To do so at the required scale will mean reliance on diverse technologies beyond the accepted duo of lithium-ion battery storage and pumped hydro, it said.
“Over the long-term storage will accelerate the integration of renewables, enhancing grid stability and reliability, and supporting decarbonisation of industries. There is no silver bullet for reaching net zero so we need multiple shots on goal, like from renewables, batteries, hydrogen, thermal storage, pumped hydro, sustainable aviation fuels and a host of new science-driven technologies,” CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall said today.
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Read more: https://www.energy-storage.news/australia-needs-major-energy-storage-investment-to-face-wicked-challenge-of-net-zero-csiro-says/
Apart from problems of actually supplying the required electricity, the suggestion of going all electric is laughable, especially in places where you actually need home heating to work.
Australia is facing increasing problems with grid shortfalls and energy reliability and energy affordability, same as everywhere else which is embracing renewables.
If we continue with this madness, it won’t be long until Australians are paying AUD $5-10,000+ / year for home heating, same as Britain and Germany. Because if the last decade has taught the world anything, that lesson is claims renewables are cheaper are a complete fabrication.
If you think renewables are cheaper, why is everyone’s electricity bill going up, in nations which are embracing renewables? Why all the talk of “energy efficiency”, which is a nice way of saying energy rationing? And if renewables are so cheap, why is energy storage such a “wicked problem”, which requires major investment? You don’t have to be a genius to figure out who is paying the costs of that “wicked” investment.
Even politicians must be starting to realise they’ve been sold a falsehood, that any genuine attempt to achieve net zero would make them unelectable. But even now, I believe they’re still hoping to kick the can down the road, telling themselves something might turn up, desperately trying to not be the politician who is remembered for pulling the plug on the world’s renewable energy pipe dream.
Sounds familiar…
Storage amounts to a unicorn, as far as things with a name that do not really exist at grid scale.
Just keep it all out of sight.
story tip
Australia’s Woodside okays $7.2 billion Trion deepwater oil project in Mexico | Reuters
“Even politicians must be starting to realise they’ve been sold a falsehood… trying to not be the politician who is remembered for pulling the plug on the world’s renewable energy pipe dream.”
___________________________________________________________
They would be heroes.
Not with the people they care about impressing.
It would be more accurate to say “Renewable energy scam”.
Monthly Cost of an Electric Stove
https://www.electricrate.com/electric-oven-vs-gas-oven-cost/
Electric Stove . .. Gas Stove
6 Mos … $66 … $45
1 Year … $132 … $90
2 Years … $264 … $180
5 Years … $660 … $450
Gas costs less than Electric … Electric also increases Grid Load and Demand
Unless, of course, TPTB decide to artificially inflate the cost of natural gas
I have cooked with both and while I really like the control that gas gives you, I am kind of spoiled with a glass top electric because it’s so much easer to clean. With an all electric house, I don’t have many options.
To each his own— or, so it used to be- now making your own choice is verboten.
I would never go back to glass top electric
The small convenience of cleaning is drowned out 1000 times by convinience of heat on and off instantly
Garbage ‘think tank’ reports like this won’t stop until there has been a major energy grid disaster laying bare their false assumptions—all renewables need is storage when there isn’t any remotely on the horizon.
My guess is the grid disaster will be California, NY, or UK. Germany can get maybe saved by Norway hydro interlinks. EU will simply reverse itself on its ICE auto ban as the impossible 2035 deadline grows closer. Ditto CA on its insane class 8 diesel truck 2035 ban. There is presently NO such electric truck in existence, even experimentally. Never will be, because big rigs are supposed to haul freight, not motive batteries.
Unfortunately, those think tanks see mountains of money to keep pumping out garbage reports.
Grattan Institute: Australia Should Shut Down
Domestic GasIts Economy to Hit Net ZeroIt’s time the government put their money where their mouth is.
Build/refit a hospital with it’s energy exclusively from renewables and it’s backup exclusively from battery.
I dare ya.
Might I suggest starting with Walter Reed.
They could at least do it for Parliament House. That would be chuckle worthy to see the live feed drop out as all the lights go out on these clowns.
G’Day Mark,
“…as all the lights go out on these clowns.”
Good choice of a word. Pollies aren’t what they used to be. Early 1995 I was driving from Brisbane to Melbourne, through Canberra. Radio on listening to the broadcast. “If the hairy-chested gentleman from across the aisle would care to step outside.” I damn near ran off the road laughing.
It’s our money
Perhaps those calling for an outright ban on fossil fuels should put their paymasters’ money where their mouths are and refuse to use anything including electricity that isn’t 100% reliant on fossil fuel.
Prof. Michael Kelly FRS, and formerly a Prof of Technology at Cambridge University. calculated that the 100MW battery installed in Adelaide in 2018 at a cost of £45m would power the emergency wards (30% of total wards) at Addenbrooks hospital in Cambridge for 24 hours on a single charge. The back up for the whole hospital is currently supplied by two diesel generators which run for as long as there is fuel and cost £250,000.
https://www.thegwpf.org>content>uploads>2022>03>Kelly-Net-Zero-Progress-Report.pdf
So stunning to see most wealthy western democracies run by people with no critical thinking skills and an addiction to magical beliefs. The sophistication of planning is at rock bottom and the outcome will be a disaster without doubt.
Politicians have discovered that creative ballot creation, acquisition and counting can obviate the need for votes from legal voters.
The hoi polloi can go pound sand. There’s grifting to be done.
This is what happens when organised crime is run by governments. One of the more sensible and unsubsidised developments for household energy is the Panasonic Natural Gas/Hydrogen fuel cell. It provides hot water and electricity in an efficient package:
https://www.panasonic.com/uk/corporate/sustainability/products-and-solutions/hydrogen-fuel-cells.html#ResidentialFuelCells
When operating at the optimum mix of electricity and hot water output, these units have an energy conversion efficiency of 95%.
A small version of these, say just 1kW, combined with solar panels and battery would be an economic system to move off the electrical grid in Australia. They would make distribution of electrical power in residential areas redundant. Or just go with the 5kW unit and batteries to increase surge capacity for a few hours.
The theft through electricity bills in Australia has so distorted the efficient operation of the energy supply chain that the most efficient technical solutions are not even being considered.
And what do they do with the “C” that carries the four “H”s?
The pyrolysis of the methane to pure hydrogen suitable for a fuel cell results in CO2 production. The reaction is endothermic and the required temperature depends on the catalyst. The separate gas streams would be quite warm so suitable for preheat of incoming air then water heating with the CO2 going to atmosphere and the H2 being converted to water in the fuel cell.
This is viable technology already in domestic use. It is reported to achieve an overall thermal/electrical efficiency of 95% in the electricity generation plus water heating application. It is way ahead of any grid NG power generator in terms of efficiency. I expect similar to some of the European suburban combined heating and electricity systems using high temperature power generation or process plants that have co-generation for electricity and process heating..
“with the CO2 going to atmosphere”
This would appear to be a pretty significant downside…?
Only to the hard of thinking.
Why would you throw away all the energy from the carbon bonds just to make a lower calorific fuel?
It would be like buying diesel at $2/litre, decomposing it under heat and steam, to make a fuel that will give you 1km/litre. And, that fuel can explode in the atmosphere at a huge range of fuel air mixtures, it also leaks through steel pipes, making them brittle in the process.
I’m not seeing the benefit here, other than an industrial company taking a viable fuel and taking a large sum of money from the consumer to produce hydrogen that MUST have such low impurities that it doesn’t damage a fuel cell, (or is it?). NASA have problems with that purity requirement, unless you liquefy and distill the O2 first.
The Grattan think tank’s thinking has always been primarily about how to inflict socialism in Australia.
Their leftism bias has always been palpable.
They, of course, will continue to use gas and continue to use coal fired electricity.
‘We are independent, taking the side of the public interest rather than interest groups. We receive no ongoing government funding and reject commissioned work to ensure this independence.‘
Any idea where they get their funding from?
https://grattan.edu.au/about/supporters/
They got a coupla mill$ kickstarter seed from the Labor fed govt in the early 2000s iirc.
Then it’s “donations”.
Alternatively, Australia could easily meet “net zero” by requiring all citizens return to the life style of Cro-Magnon civilization.
As Pharaoh said in the movie The Ten Commandments, “So let it be written, so let it be done.” (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4emcNAf5lY )
> So far they’ve wasted €5 with nothing to show
And they could have bought a Decaf, Soy Latte With An Extra Shot And Cream for that.
Ha 🙂
With the push to destroy energy infrastructure and farming, the West is facing what amounts to a simultaneous Great Leap Forward and Holodomor.
For any who are not aware of it, go and find (and read) the UK FIRES 2019 report Absolute Zero to see what they have planned for us (not for themselves though).
Just read it .
Here’s an extract
Apart from flying and shipping, all of our current uses of energy could be electrified. With tremendous commitment the UK could generate enough non-emitting electricity to deliver about 60% of our current final energy-demand, but we could make better use of that through incremental changes in the technologies that convert energy into transport, heating and products.
If we only used electricity, delivering all the transport, heat and goods we use in the UK would require 3x more electricity than we use today. If we expand renewables as fast as we can, we could deliver about 60% of this requirement with zero emissions in 2050. Therefore in 2050 we must plan to use 40% less energy than we use today, and all of it must be electric.
“Therefore we must plan to use 40% less energy than we use today and all of it must be electric”
As noted in my reply to MarkH – are they being serious here or ‘tongue-in-cheek’?
For instance, they also talk about retrofitting a vintage VW Beetle with an electric motor at a cost of £25,000 or £47,000 for a newly converted model.
I don’t think their plan really involves car ownership by the general public. You will own nothing, you will remain within your designated 15 minute city area (enforced by facial recognition cameras and digital passports), you will eat zee boogs and you will be happy (or else).
I wish they were joking.
I’m not sure how they plan on getting goods imported or exported with the total ban on commercial shipping. Don’t forget that they’re also planning to ban concrete too, so how they will build all this infrastructure is somewhat of a mystery. Or how they plan to manufacture all of the necessary rail lines, power transmission lines, etc without any new mining. I’m not sure if they realize the industrial processes required to manufacture solar panels either, or lithium batteries for that matter.
Their assumptions about being able to generate even 60% of what they need are laughable and infantile. The utopian day dreams of undergraduates at best.
The thing with these people is, they have no skin in the game. Should their predictions turn out to be wrong (which they will), they lose nothing. They will likely just pretend that they didn’t even make them, or that they meant something entirely different by them. However, the repercussions for normal people from their prophesies are very real. Normal people stand to lose businesses, jobs, livelihoods and even their lives.
Reading their reports it is difficult sometimes to tell if they are serious or tangentially pointing out the stupidity of the effort.
I haven’t noticed any pattern or history of biting satire from these folks. I’m afraid that they are likely very serious. At the very least, it would pay to assume that they are serious until such time that their bow ties spin around, water spurts from the fake flower in their pockets and they proceed to exit the stage in any one of John Cleese’s funny walks.
OMG go look at the “experts” at the Grattan institute, a bunch of bolshies, mostly funded by TAXES. Every institution, unless it is explicitly right wing, eventually becomes left wing. I now understand enough about human nature to see why that is.
“Grattan Institute, a Melbourne-based far-left, globalist, group-think-tank/
There, fixed it for them.
Are we getting any closer to understanding:
How the desire to Save The World is has become the desire to Rule The World and that The Savers don’t seem to ‘get’ or grasp that there’s a difference.
There most definitely is a massive difference, encapsulated in someone’s famous saying about ‘Tyrannies and Evil’
i.e. That the very worst tyrannies are the ones created out of the very best of intentions
(or words to that effect)
Also: “The road to hell is paved etc etc”
Too many people want to save the world but at the same time have so very little tolerance and empathy of everyone else.
No matter what you do: It Is Wrong in somebody’s book
Their site says they are a public policy institute using rigorous data analysis from their own experts and published work. I would like to see how their “experts” would fare in a serious debate of the the particle physics involved in “ global warming” or the material and economic reality of what they propose.
It is reasonable to expect that technologies that don’t work effectively and result in significant increases in energy costs and frequent blackouts, will eventually be abandoned. Not everyone in government is stupid, and the general population will tend to give preference to their security and basic needs in the present, rather than the future, alarmist claims of uncertain disasters due to CO2 emissions.
All is not negative, however. There could be some positive outcomes of governments pressurising the economy to electrify. Australia has one of the highest percentages of homes with roof-top PVPs. However, I rarely see a house with as much as a quarter of the roof area covered with solar panels. Less than 1/8th of most roof areas are covered with solar panels.
Following is what I think could be a realistic scenario in the future, which could reduce energy costs for home owners. Those who plan to build a new home, could design the home so that the entire roof area is covered with solar tiles that are as durable as conventional roof tiles. Good for 40 to 50 years.
The house could contain an additional room, like a laundry, for Sodium-Ion batteries, that are currently being improved. These batteries are not yet ideal for EVs because of their low energy density, compared with Lithium-Ion, but they are ideal for battery storage, because they are very safe and affordable.
Such a system will provide more than enough energy to run all household appliances, including the recharging of the owner’s BEV.
Any surplus energy will be sold, through the connected grid. The initial, additional cost of the house construction, using solar tiles instead of conventional tiles, and installing a battery-storage room, will be recovered in approximately the first 10 years, and for the next 30 or 40 years the house owner will have totally free energy for all home appliances and their electric vehicle. What could be better?
Here’s a brief description of the current state of Sodium-Ion batteries.
“Low temperature performance: The normal operating temperature range of sodium batteries is -40°C to 50°C (lithium batteries -20~60°C), and the capacity retention rate is nearly 90% at -20°C. Compared with lead-acid batteries and lithium iron phosphate batteries, the capacity retention rate of 60%~70% has obvious advantages, and the low temperature performance is excellent.
Safety: The internal resistance of sodium-ion batteries is higher, and the thermal runaway temperature is higher than that of lithium-ion batteries. In tests such as overcharge and overdischarge, acupuncture, and extrusion, the safety performance of sodium-ion batteries is excellent.
Fast charging performance: Sodium-ion batteries have better rate performance and are suitable for applications such as fast charging, responsive energy storage in some of top 5 energy storage battery companies, and large-scale power supply.”
https://www.takomabattery.com/sodium-battery-vs-lithium-vs-lead-acid-why-sodium-battery-is-so-popular/
The utility, the grid, has to be funded somehow, and so the rate structure will be changed in some manner that allows this. Like the present spot market, in the event you need the grid, you will pay through the nose…
Looks like it will relieve some of the lithium resource depletion problem. I am not sure it really negates some of the other issues often mentioned with renewable grid integration. But for the right house in the right spot in the right part of the world with a owner able to make the investment and a society willing to make the huge grid modification investment and another country absorbing the manufacturing cost, environmental consequence $ $ $ . . . . I just think we are just shuffling things around on the same planet still.
Vincent,
solar is a poor source of electricity.
If you want solar for your house, do not have grid connection.
That is acceptable in my eyes because large sources of solar with grid connection causes all sorts of problems for the grid operator because of its time – generation level profile, i.e. low level in the morning and evening, peaking around midday.
A grid is essential goes without saying and it needs to be reliable and stable, solar is a negative to that. Not only that solar output plummets during times of bad weather and even with a domestic battery means that there has to be sufficient alternative grid capacity to cover that loss of generation for connected consumers.
“There could be some positive outcomes of governments pressurising the economy to electrify.”
and they are?
“Not everyone in government is stupid”
Given the direction they are collectively taking us, the few who aren’t stupid are even more dangerous that the majority who are…
Half of all EVs are SUVs and sodium-ion batteries are not powerful enough to be used in them.
Build new fossil fuel and nuclear generators, sell more gas ranges and furnaces, remove all wind and solar from the grid and outlaw EV’s from recharging using the grid.
Wow, such a suggestion- it’s forbidden to talk like that! you must be shunned! 🙂
“renewables + storage” will probably become the falsehood of the decade. There is a reason no one will use the correct units (MWhr) and instead keep using MW.
“Australia Should
Shut Down Domestic Gascastrate itself to HitNetNut Zero”what they really meant 🙂
Multiple shots on goal. “Science driven technologies” –
Well guess you might want to make your last remarks as head banana of CSIRO as dumb as ever…
———–
Marshall finishes as Chief Executive in June 2023.
Professor Doug Hilton, has been appointed Chief Executive, commencing on 29 September 2023. Professor Hilton is a molecular and cellular biologist.
I wonder if Doug can give us his definition of a woman.
“…the country needs to invest…”
Methinks they require a quick look at a dictionary under the heading of meaning of “need”