Finkel’s new portrait
Would never have seen this coming, since Finkel is the magic pudding that cuts emissions and prices!
A MAJOR electricity retailer has announced a $130-a-year price hike and blamed closing coal-fire power plants, among other factors, as some government MPs dig in their heels on the Finkel report.
There is a growing push within the Coalition to ensure coal plays a key role in the government’s energy policy coming out of the Finkel report’s recommendations.
Queensland LNP MPs have been among the most vocal in the push to keep coal in the energy mix, since a three-hour Coalition party room meeting in which more than 20 backbenchers raised concerns with the proposed clean energy target.
Energy Australia, which has 120,000 customers in Queensland, announced yesterday it was putting up prices 7.3 per cent. (source)
Madness on stilts.
Australian Climate Madness 
We are truly governed by idiots. Slobbering, moronic f’ken idiots ! Words fail me.
Piers Akerman has a superb article in the Telegraph which every Australian should read.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/piers-akerman-the-shocking-finkel-report-will-burn-us/news-story/42284b4c97a6133cb5ebd4e07047352f
All of this argument over percentages and “emissions” is ludicrous.
Global warming is nothing but a sentimental myth that lacks any evidence whatsoever. The fact that terms such as “climate change” is referenced as though it were anything but fantasy, that human activities affect the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere, or the fact that CO2 simply has no relation to surface air temperature is completely beside the point, as is the economic horror of junk science and absurd politics. As a new Maunder Minimum approaches, with the associated loss of abundance, we are only a couple of years from another 1970’s cooling panic.
From Fri 16 June The Advertiser:
“A team of experts commissioned by the Federal Government has identified 185 sites in SA suitable for hydro power energy projects…” – this in the driest state in the driest country.
Compare this grand plan with an interesting Letter to the Editor in Feb 2017:
Fantasy land fix
BEFORE anyone gets too excited about ANU Professor Andrew Blakers’ proposed “pumped hydro” solution at Cultana near Whyalla (“Watery solution to power problems”, The Advertiser, 17/2/17), it may be well to consider a few points.
The terrain will not give his preferred 400 to 500m height difference – at best it might give 200m, and that is being very generous.
To achieve the 300MW proposed with a 200m height difference the water flow rate needs to be 200 cubic metres per second. That is 720,000 cubic metres per hour or 720 megalitres. For comparison, this is around one-and-a-half times the average water use for Adelaide per day. This is without considering where the water would come from in the first place.
If there were suitable sites for both the upper and lower reservoirs, the 10-hectare reservoirs will store 100 megalitres per metre of depth, so one hour’s operation will drop the level 7.2m. For six hours’ operation the usable depth of water needs to be just over 43m – 150 feet – over the whole 10 hectares and as the level drops so will the power output.
The facilities at each end would need to be major engineering structures and the connecting pipework needed for a flow rate of 720 megalitres per hour would be enormous. There would also be huge costs involved in switchyards and transmission lines.
Another factor is that the facility would be a nett energy user as “efficiency” gets in the way of a perfect outcome. This means that over time the facility uses more energy than it generates.
If the plan is to use wind power to provide the off-peak power to pump the water, he might consider the fact that SA’s wind farms operate at around 30 per cent of rated capacity on average and are below 30 per cent for 50 per cent of the year and below 8 per cent for 20 per cent of the year.
So the reliability of his proposed scheme is tied to the intermittency of the wind and we are only too familiar with that already.
Having spent over 40 years as a civil engineer involved mostly in construction (including some hydro), I am a seasoned cynic and when people bandy around costs without any detailed consideration of the particulars and talk about “fast tracking”, my BS alarm screams.
The gap between theory and practice is very wide. Many people have fallen into it and never been seen again.
The fact that federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg and SA Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis are enthusiastic about the “plan” is more a measure of government desperation than the worth of the proposal.
They would serve us better by concentrating on returning to a system that works rather than being seduced by fantasy land solutions. Just up the road from Cultana is a 560MW power station capable of producing that output year round regardless of the weather and it is being demolished.
How stupid is that?
DAVID BIDSTRUP, Plympton Park.
“How stupid is that?”
Pretty damned stupid. But then , what could you expect from utterly brainless individuals are determined to “fight climate change”.
For a few decades there the species became enlightened and gave up the insanity instilled in the populace by King James with his book about fighting witches. But in the last thirty years Homo Sapiens regressed to the point that the masses can again be manipulated by the same idiocy that brought us vampires, werewolves, and the Inquisition.
Simon as you have appear to have been concerned with the increase in energy costs for the common man, I believe you should then be at the vanguard demanding that pensioners and other low income earners be compensated for the rising cost of energy.
The rising costs of electricity may in part be attributable to the phasing out of coal but It is hard to disagree with economic opinions that the use of coal will continue to decline due to the falling price of renewables and storage ( ‘it’s the economy stupid’) . It should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that as long as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, the wind continues to blow and the rivers flow downhill then coal will have an uphill battle to maintain its dominance.
There are of course costs and problems associated with the transition. The Finkel review tries to address these problems such as price increases and power shortages and should be applauded. Disruptive technologies usually have losers who will try to preserve the status quo that keeps the share price and executive bonuses intact . It is becoming clearer that their efforts will be futile in the long run, but as they also have big pockets this process could take a while.
Simon , despite being several centuries late to the party, you would have made a great Luddite . Your rants will be even more amusing in retrospect , say in five or ten years time.
“due to the falling price of renewables and storage”. Someone obviously suffers from a severe case of deep anal cranium insertion. Although $2.5 TRILLION dollars sunk into government mandated renewable energy programmes, guess (to the nearest whole number) how much of total global energy comes from wind? ZERO That’s right, from the IEA, it’s 0.46 per cent. The cost of windmill electricity is five times , and the cost of solar is ten times the cost of coal fired electricity.
Countries that have been drinking the Koolaid have the most expensive electricity in the world, and some in Europe have just realised it. That is why there are currently 2,440 coal fired power stations planned or under construction the world over. Obviously ruinables would not require enormous subsidies if it were economically viable.
Karabar
I thought Simon’s comments were about electricity generation. For wind alone the contribution appears to be about 2.5%. See the following regarding wind and other renewables.
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/electricity.php
https://www.iea.org/topics/renewables/subtopics/wind/
https://tinyurl.com/yaw8guvx
http://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/en/corporate/pdf/energy-economics/statistical-review-2017/bp-statistical-review-of-world-energy-2017-full-report.pdf
And some more from BHP
http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy/using-the-review/downloads.html
I am not sure where Karabar obtained the 2.65 trillion dollars figure from? If that’s Aussie dollars there must have been a sudden devaluation overnight if not that’s a lot of money. Even Dr Evil would think so see – https://tinyurl.com/yd4tao4b .
A more realistic estimate of the subsidies for renewabkes is 112 billion in 2014 compared to 490 billion for fossil fuels, see – https://www.ft.com/content/fb264f96-5088-11e6-8172-e39ecd3b86fc .
In my comment above I did refer to a minimum requirement of half a brain. In light of the above comment by Karabar I think I might have to lower the bar.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/05/wind-turbines-are-neither-clean-nor-green-and-they-provide-zero-global-energy/
Sufferers of chronic deep anal carnial insertion often talk a lot of shit.
The one & only reason for ‘this RET, renewables” scam is money. We are expected to fund the 3rd world thru the UN & move the world toward One World Government.
Abbot’s consignment to the back bench was brought about to further those aims & Turnbull is the key to achieving that, unless we get rid of him & his disciples soon.
That cabal will certainly destroy this country if left in power. The ETS is in place via stealthy financial wording & the drive to being part of the Globalist plan via the Liberal Party is in full swing. Get rid of Turnbull & his disciples soon, or else!
Karabar,
The 2.5 trillion figure that is quoted is 250 billion a year.if this figure is to be believed (and where are the calculations?) this is still much smaller than the 490 billion a year subsidies (as calculated by the IEA ) for fossil fuels.
Finally Karabar I am not sure why you are so anally fixated? I could hazard a guess why but this blog is family oriented so I wont speculate further..
Oh, the old fossil fuel subsidy myth.
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Great-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidy-Myth.html
You probably enjoy the Greek and Roman myths about Pandora, Hercules, Jason, Odysseus, Minotaur, Achilles, Medusa as well.
IF the public indoctrination system had not dispelled you ability for logic and reason, you might consider, that even if your ludicrous myth were to be true, it pales in comparison to the tax revenue generated by the oil, coal and gas industries. It might have even occurred to you that your meme were remotely accurate, that the world gets 70% of its energy from fossil fuels as compared to what for rainbows and mirrors? ZERO!
Karaban,
Do you actually read the articles you link to? I strongly suspect not.
The table in the article shows the subsidies divided the energy generated (for the US only) which is a very reasonable approach. Coal came in at about 20, gas at 32 , wind at 35 and solar at 280 . Th interesting thin to note that is that solar output in that table is shown as 19 TWh for 2013. . Currently the solar output has jumped by over 300% to 60 TWH so the ratio is down to less than 100. Wind has gone up by about 40% since 2013. Coal’s output in contrast seems to have declined see – http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-coal-closures-idUSKBN16R2D4 and https://qz.com/988271/donald-trumps-coal-promise-us-coal-fired-plants-forced-to-announce-closures-in-2017-alone-could-power-all-of-qatar/ .
It would be interesting to see how these figures stack up in 2017.
Finally You should be careful of the articles you link to especially if you don’t bother reading beyond the headline.
The 2015 article finished with “So yes, we should tax carbon and we should phase out unnecessary fossil fuel subsidies. But neither of those, nor indeed the two together, are panaceas. Pursuit of those policy actions should not let us forget that an energy transition is fundamentally a technological — not a price-based or pollution regulation — challenge. If we want solar panels and nuclear reactors and electric vehicles to replace fossil fuels, they simply have to do a better job at powering the global economy. As Brad Plumer recently summarized, we’re making progress, but we’re just not there yet.”
I am sure Karaban agrees with these sentiments. I do.
By the way I agree with you about rainbows but mirrors on some large scale solar farms are involved with the production of energy.
Karaban , I am a bit confused about the 70% figure that fossil fuels provide that is in your last paragraph. Other than nuclear (about 10%), what provides the other 20%?. I might have to remind Karaban that 20% is different from ZERO! (last time I looked) .
i think that Karavan has spent to much t time looking at his own reflection (the mirror reference gave it away) and developed the appropriately mythologically named personality disorder or is just straddling the border.