“The perception that fossil fuels are cheap and renewables are expensive is now out of date”, said Michael Liebreich, chief executive of Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “The fact that wind power is now cheaper than coal and gas in a country with some of the world’s best fossil fuel resources shows that clean energy is a game changer which promises to turn the economics of power systems on its head,” he said.
Hopefully this will drive more renewable energy incentives in Australia. I am hoping but not holding my breath. We could be a world leader in renewable energy but it doesn't seem to be debated or on the agenda of either side of the major parties.
Im sure renewables are gradually getting cheaper with more mass production etc but the storage systems that are needed for base load are still very expensive.
I really don't see the problem people have investing in renewable energy? Forgetting the climate change debate, surely having something like wind/solar farms in lieu of something like coal plants for power generation has got to seem more appealing?
You don't get all the waste and emissions from renewable like you do with fossil fuels.
But then I remember the opponents of renewable energy think this.
i dont want no wind turbine in my neighbourhood, with its ultrasonic brain waves giving me inner ear cancer please.
Gonna get bagged out for this but I think wind is not a renewable energy or one that is sustainable. The definition of renewable/sustainable energy is one that is near infinite. Best example is solar energy, it's near limitless.
I think nuclear energy (Thorium power plants) + solar energy is the way to go.
Wasn't a fair chink of yhe carbon tax supposed to research and what not of renewable sources? Or just carbon tax payments for the poor? Has anything been done?
Thorium and Molten Salt Solar plants look awesome... but I don't know all the technicalities behind them. AFAIK there is only 1 operational Thorium power plant in the world (India) so I guess it's not very common/easy to set up a Thorium plant. Google tells me that there is a Molten Salt plant in Spain and 1 approved for Cali.
Article talks about PV Solar though, not Thermal Solar... so I don't know if the Molten Salt would hold up on the price end. Would be cool though.
Wasn't a fair chink of yhe carbon tax supposed to research and what not of renewable sources?
Nope, not at all. They do vaguely mention things like that when they talk about carbon tax, to trick your brain into thinking they've said that the money will go into research and what not of renewable sources, but they didn't actually ever say that it would. Most of the money is going into tax cuts for households and into welfare payments, and a small percentage will go directly to companies that cause pollution so they can "move to greener practices", so I imagine they might get some discounted industrial equipment to replace their old machines.
Even that last bit I said about updating old machines seems too logical for the government to also have thought of it, so disregard that. They'll probably just paint stuff green.
Yeah, except that recent studies have shown that tidal generators and wind generators appear to be having atmospheric, tidal and weather effects. Which should have been completely fucking obvious to begin with but "hey, free energy!".
Yes, hurry up and start building Thorium plants, or a solar updraft tower.
Yeah, except that recent studies have shown that tidal generators and wind generators appear to be having atmospheric, tidal and weather effects. Which should have been completely fucking obvious to begin with but "hey, free energy!".
What sort of negative effects occur due to wind power plants?
Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s research on Australia shows that since 2011, the cost of wind generation has fallen by 10% and the cost of solar photovoltaics by 29%. In contrast, the cost of energy from new fossil-fuelled plants is high and rising. New coal is made expensive by high financing costs. The study surveyed Australia’s four largest banks and found that lenders are unlikely to finance new coal without a substantial risk premium due to the reputational damage of emissions-intensive investments – if they are to finance coal at all. The carbon price adds further costs to new coal- and gas-fired plant and is forecast to increase substantially over the lifetime of a new facility.
Is that a news story or an Advertisment ?
Thats the stupidest thing Ive seen since yesterday when i read that Attenborough and The BBC tried to tell ppl that temperatures in Africa have risen 3.5 degrees in 20 years in the Africa doco.
Windpower is the worst renewable of all because it only works when the wind blows not too hard and not too slow.
Germany is being horribly caught out by precisely the same delusion about renewable energy that our own politicians have fallen for. Like all enthusiasts for “free, clean, renewable electricity”, they overlook the fatal implications of the fact that wind speeds and sunlight constantly vary. They are taken in by the wind industry’s trick of vastly exaggerating the usefulness of wind farms by talking in terms of their “capacity”, hiding the fact that their actual output will waver between 100 per cent of capacity and zero. In Britain it averages around 25 per cent; in Germany it is lower, just 17 per cent.
How is a power station that produces electricity around 20% of the time cheaper than a Coal station that can produce electricity 100% of the time ?
Thats just DUM !
Its similar problem for Solar. Once the Sun moves out of range it produces no power, or if its too cloudy. These are not viable sources of Electricity for a City/Industry. They can only exist if something else is able to produce power when they cant.
Britain and Germany can draw power from Europes Nuclear Power.
Where will Australia draw power from when Mr Wind and Miss Sunshine arent available ?
Gas Power Stations are replacing Coal and likely Nuclear in America.
Same will happen here.
After all, That was ENRONS plan for Carbon Trading, to promote Gas.
Its similar problem for Solar. Once the Sun moves out of range it produces no power, or if its too cloudy.
Molten Salt Solar Power Plants can use stored heat energy for up to (and past in some cases) 5 days. At full capacity. Solar plants don't need the sun to run all the time.
It would burn off the nerve endings almost instantly, very little pain and a quick death. Lowered into a big Pit of Molten Salt however, might be slow and painful. Slowly roasting as you're being lowered.
Modern day black coal and gas plants are pretty clean nowerdays. The waste gas cleaning systems (scrubbers) remove most of the shite. The plumes of white smoke coming out of modern day coal plants is mostly steam.
I agree that they pump out a shit load of CO2 though...
Wasn't a fair chink of yhe carbon tax supposed to research and what not of renewable sources? Or just carbon tax payments for the poor? Has anything been done?
My understanding is that the process is: tax carbon based power -> refund it to the consumers -> prices go up to cover tax but consumers can match -> it's now lucrative for companies to emit less carbon.
Basically, "let the market solve it" by creating an incentive.
what a load of baloney. i have been enjoyinhg listening to idiot hipsters by watching portlandia. every episode is a direct parody of fpot.wind power hahahaha nice one...
My understanding is that the process is: tax carbon based power -> refund it to the consumers -> prices go up to cover tax but consumers can match -> it's now lucrative for for companies to emit less carbon.
Basically, "let the market solve it" by creating an incentive.
I'd expect a turkey such as yourself to come up with a nonsensical statement like that. It's a big fat scam. You pay more tax to make people rich with bullshit 'carbon credits'.
In fact the government subsidizing solar panels along with faux deregulation of the electrical power generation industry has lead to the biggest scam in this country.
Poor people can't afford solar panels - their power bills have more then doubled in the recent years. Why? The power companies are all but going out of their way to overbuild unrequired electrical infrastructure because they're guaranteed to get the money back from the consumer. The mandating x cents on the kw/h being paid back in credit is another hit. Someone has to pay. It's a market solution, funded by the government via your tax dollars on one hand as well as the 'market' beomg all but obliged in their shareholders best interest to emit more carbon because thats the only way they can now make money.
Government picking winners is not a market solution.
Modelling for the federal government’s key climate change adviser acknowledges carbon prices could slump in 2015-16, probably creating a $4 billion revenue hole in the already stretched federal budget.
I think that this analysis and the numbers it has produced need to be taken with a grain of salt for a number of reasons. Firstly, the news release states:
This new ranking of Australia’s energy resources is the product of BNEF’s Sydney analysis team, which comprehensively modelled the cost of generating electricity in Australia from different sources.
These aren't observed market prices, these are the outputs of modelling. So this analysis isn't showing prices that are currently being paid in the market for energy from these sources, it is showing what the prices could be if their assumptions are correct and the variables behave the way the modelling team expects. Now it is extremely unlikely that this model will be released to the public so that all of the assumptions can be identified and subjected to scrutiny, but there are some assumptions that are made clear in the press release, such as:
including the cost of emissions under the Gillard government’s carbon pricing scheme.
A reasonable enough assumption prima facie, though given the observed instability in carbon pricing schemes (see Europe) it is questionable whether the price of carbon can be accurately projected over medium to long timeframes.
However even without a carbon price (the most efficient way to reduce economy-wide emissions) wind energy is 14% cheaper than new coal and 18% cheaper than new gas.
This is far more interesting and one of the key assumptions leading to this results is:
New coal is made expensive by high financing costs. The study surveyed Australia’s four largest banks and found that lenders are unlikely to finance new coal without a substantial risk premium due to the reputational damage of emissions-intensive investments – if they are to finance coal at all.
I think this assumption is extremely questionable. Firstly, the study reached this assumption of a risk premium by undertaking a survey, not by observing actual market lending rates. I am pretty skeptical that observed market lending rates to fossil fuel projects would be materially higher than wind projects due to a reputational risk premium. By this logic, the financing costs of many mining projects would be subject to a similar reputational risk premium which is simply not something I or anyone I know whow is familiar with the industry is aware of. Secondly, a large infrastucture project such as a power plant is typically not funded by corporate debt from one or two domestic banks, but rather by project finance sourced from a syndicate of both domestic and overseas banks. If for whatever reason the domestic banks were imposing some sort of risk premium on these types of projects, there would be very little difficulty in sourcing the funding from international banks who had no such reputational anxiety over fossil fuel projects. Hence, I think this last assumption is by far the most unlikely to reflect reality.
So in summary, I obviously can't say conclusively whether the predictions of this modelling will come to pass or not - but I can say that from the information provided in the press release that there is enough grounds to be skeptical.
Coal/Oil is not renewable.
By definition it will run out.
Greed says it doesn't matter because it won't be in the next 5/10/15/20 whatever years.
It will run out by definition, the counter argument to that is some future generation will have made solar/wind/nuclear/cow farts uber ...
But the proponents of that argument never acknowledge we might (have to) be that generation.
And anytime mankind chooses greed over long term survival proves that Planet of the Apes ain't fiction.
mankind isn't stupid and the market based economy without interference will sort it out. fossil fuels become scarce then other sources become cheaper. they have been now for years. yes solar is cheaper per kw/h then coal, its market, not government who decided this. the carbon tax among other social engineering taxes has the side benefit of making a select few very rich and those who can least afford it worse off.
PM
WWW
