ETS: Electricity prices to double within two years

1 January, 2010 by

Minchin: stunned

… and treble by 2024. All thanks to the ETS. Fortunate, then, that it will never make it into law:

New modelling by the Government’s energy market operator reveals the wholesale price of electricity will rise from $30 per megawatt hour in 2010 to about $100 by 2024.

In a national transmission report released before Christmas, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) predicts the price will double to $60 per megawatt hour by 2012.

The wholesale price makes up less than half of the final bill that reaches each customer, who also pays distribution costs.

The AEMO modelling is based on Treasury’s carbon price estimates under the proposed emissions trading scheme, which from next year will force big polluters to pay for their emissions. [Er, well it would if it was actually law yet – Ed]

Opposition energy spokesman Nick Minchin yesterday accused the Rudd Government of trying to hide the real costs of tackling climate change.

“I think Australians will be stunned to learn that their power bills could more than triple as a result of Mr Rudd’s climate change policies,” Senator Minchin said.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Tom Switzer: Don't expect too much down Mexico way

1 January, 2010 by

"Climate agreement? We don't need no stinking climate agreement!"

Always right on the money, Tom Switzer says that the chances of any agreement on climate in Mexico are microscopic:

All the evidence indicates that President Barack Obama won’t be able to lead the world to a post-Kyoto deal. This is because the politics of the environment have shifted dramatically in recent months. There are many reasons for the changing climate in Washington. Here are four of them:

First, both Congress and the White House remain pre-occupied with other policy priorities from overhauling the healthcare and immigration systems and increasing 30,000 troops to Afghanistan to implementing new Wall Street regulations and tackling double-digit unemployment and skyrocketing debt and deficit.

Second, polls and surveys Pew, Gallup, Zogby, Rasmussen show Americans are quickly losing faith in the science of man-made climate change. A Harris Poll found that those who believe that carbon dioxide leads to global warming have dropped from 71 per cent two years ago to only 51 per cent today. And this poll was conducted before Climategate erupted.

…

Third, world leaders are recognising that reaching a global consensus on climate change is even more difficult than reaching a global consensus on multilateral trade. China and India insist they won’t be part of what they see as an economic suicide pact. In Canada, a Kyoto signatory that has increased its emissions much faster than the US, the ETS bill is stalled in legislative limbo. In Australia, the conservative opposition parties just defeated Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

…

Fourth, this year is an American election year. A huge new energy tax that threatens to cut wages and jobs unnerves politicians facing a mid-term vote. And not just Senate Republicans either. “Blue Dog” Democrats from the South as well as “Brown Dog” Democrats from the Midwest and Great Plains, whose states are dependent on coal and manufacturing, are uneasy about the administration’s energy policies.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Rudd's New Year delusion on climate

1 January, 2010 by

More spin than a launderette

Spinning is what Labor does best, and Kevin Rudd is a master of the art. Copenhagen was a disaster – only rescued from achieving absolutely nothing by the presence of the Obamessiah himself, who cobbled together a flimsy, eleventh-hour non-agreement in order to have something to announce to the waiting media. But not according to our Kevin, speaking in a typically patronising New Year address, who actually divined some kind of outcome:

We saw more than 90 per cent of world leaders supporting the Copenhagen Accord on climate change.

It was by no means a perfect agreement, as Australia wanted much more, but it was an agreement nonetheless, where the alternative was complete collapse and total inaction.

Globally, we’ve agreed for the first time that temperature increases must be kept within two degrees Celsius [Just like that – world leaders agree, and the earth’s climate meekly follows – Ed] and that rich and poor countries alike will bring down their carbon emissions to limit increases in global temperatures.

As one of the hottest and driest continents, Australia is experiencing the impact of climate change first, and hardest [No it isn’t. See here – Ed]. We therefore have a deep national interest in global and national action on climate change.

If we do not act at home and abroad, we betray both our children’s future [“and our grandchildren’s future” – Ed], and their ability to enjoy our natural wonders, including the Barrier Reef.

Pious nonsense.

Read it here.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,
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