CLEAN coal increasingly appears to be neither scientifically feasible nor economically viable. The only real alternative for Australia is nuclear yet those most concerned about anthropogenic global warming (AGW) oppose it.
Clean coal is the process of trapping carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal to prevent those emissions from entering the atmosphere. Local expert John Harborne, in a recent article, notes that the energy cost of trapping the emissions is almost equal to the energy produced from burning the coal and the area required to store the trapped emissions exceeds the area of the mined coal.
For its part the Federal government has introduced the Renewable Energy Target [RET] to combat the alleged problem of AGW. The RET mandates that twenty per cent of base-load energy must come from renewable energy [RE] by 2020. The Greens support this and with the fallacy of clean coal now revealed are demanding that all base-load energy come from RE.
The two main types of RE are solar and wind power. According to Professor Gary Willgoose the main form of solar power will be private residence solar panels. This is not a source of base-load power but the cost of these panels will impact on base-load power costs. They will do so because the cost of the panels will determine the cost of carbon emissions. A recent article by journalist Mark Davis shows that each solar panel will save twenty six tons of carbon dioxide emissions over 20 years at a net cost of $9000. This works out at $350 per ton. With the amount of carbon dioxide emissions being limited by government legislation this means the price of power from carbon emitting sources will have to increase by $350 per ton of emissions to enable the cost of the panels to be competitive. This will be achieved either by direct pricing to consumers or through subsidies paid by tax-payers.
In addition, most of the solar panels are imported from China. China is still expanding its fossil fuel energy network so coal power from Australia will be used to build the Chinese solar panels. There will therefore be no net saving of carbon dioxide emissions from the greater use of solar panels in Australia.
Wind power is also unlikely to be able to supply base-load power. Wind power is intermittent and to replace the twenty per cent or six mega watt of coal power with RE will necessitate the construction of twenty mega watt of wind capacity. Over twelve years this will mean two wind towers per day will have to be built at a cost of $34 billion. But even with this large oversupply of potential wind power there will be times when no power can be supplied by wind. Two studies by Dr Tom Quirk and Peter Lang showed that power from where the wind is blowing cannot be transferred to wind-free areas because wind-free conditions are usually simultaneously widespread over most areas of Australia.
The position of the Greens is that computer modeling shows that the construction of RE will be an economic and employment bonanza. But we do not have to rely on modeling to see whether this is true. Over the last decade many other countries have invested in RE. Spain and Germany have both invested in solar power and now have high unemployment and national debt. Both countries are continuing to invest in fossil fuels and Germany in particular is investing in nuclear power. A similar situation exists in Denmark which had invested heavily in wind power.
In fact nuclear power is the only feasible and proven alternative to fossil fuels. France has had the bulk of it power from nuclear for over thirty years and has the cheapest power costs in Europe. Nuclear power is cheaper than any other power source except coal and natural gas. The fourth generation Fast Integral Reactors are ninety nine percent efficient and produce small amounts of low radioactive, non-weapon grade waste. Fifth generation reactors will be ninety nine point nine per cent efficient and run on thorium as well as uranium. The efficiency of this power would mean that Australia’s resources of thorium and uranium could provide base-load power to the world for centuries.
The coal industry must either dispute the science of AGW or concede that the continued use of coal will acerbate AGW. The Greens and Government must abandon their opposition to nuclear power. By limiting RE to solar and wind and excluding nuclear, the government and the Greens will be condemning Australia to a drastically reduced standard of living and far less prosperous future.
Cohenite lives in Newscastle.
*********************
Notes and Links
Cartoon by Nicholson from “The Australian” newspaper: www.nicholsoncartoons.com.au .
The John Harborne link is;
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8408
The Mark Davis link is;
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/energy-smart/touched-by-sun-stroke-20090605-byim.html
The Tom Quirk article is here;
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8559&page=0
The Peter Lang article is here;
http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/peter-lang-wind-power.pdf
A discussion of the Baseload Fallacy in respect of wind power by Peter Lang is here;
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/08/13/wind-and-carbon-emissions-peter-lang-responds/
Professor Gary Willgooses’s details are here;
http://www.newcastle.edu.au/school-old/engineering/our_staff/profiles/willgoose_garry.html
Professor Willgoose made his comments about solar panels in an ABC interview on the 19/8/09 morning session in Newcastle.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
It might be pointed out that the state governments own the coal in Australia and “licence” it’s mining and extraction to privately owned mining companies. The revenue state governments get from mining is significant and essentially finances health and a few other areas of government spending.
If the ALP was really serious about AGW, then it would have acted on this earlier. That they have not means another game is in play or, faced with the economic reality of loss of income from coal mining and petroleum extraction, then those industries would collapse, as would the mining industry, and then based on an agrarian base, government then needs to find revenue to fund itself.
It is nothing less than a return to feudalism and authoritarian rule with all the diseases and an other malignancies and environmental pollution pre-industrial humanity experienced.
The only other potentially viable source of energy is the solar electrical circuit using the Plasma Model as a foundation. Except that as JP Morgan discovered when Tesla hit on this idea, one cannot easily put a meter on this energy and charge users for it.
This suggests we might still be in a feudal state except that the robber barons are a tad more amiable than the ones of the past.
But the coal industry had better make up its mind – oppose the ETS and the AGW religion, or go belly up.
Solar panels are the answer to a lot of problems i.e. power bills . Don’t start me on State Govt involvement in that .
China is producung all the panels . Why ?
A man in Albury wanted a colourbond fence in front of his business. Est cost $800 . After legal letters to all neighbours , including the Council ,(and indiginous council) asking for objections, $1300.
i am told by prominent buyers of an Aussie commodity , that they process in China because it is a TAX FREE AREA.
Wait for the carbon tax regime, they will be making the application forms to import the application forms.
The recent protest in Victoria against the Hazelwood Power Station demonstrated how deeply religious and ignorant these people are.
The lead letter to the editor of the SMH was from a passionate protester claiming that Spain has solar power stations using molten salt so they run 24/7 and provide base load power. We should be building them.
The paper published this letter as a lead.
The reality is that Spain has an experimental 15MW power station using solar and salt. Hazelwood is 1500MW! Exactly where would the protesters against Hazelwood like them to put the other 100 x 15MW solar power stations?
If wind and solar are so great how come “solar Germany” plans to build 26 new coal based power stations.
As it’s now perfectly clear there is no correlation between CO2 and catastrophe, not even a teensee bit, why can’t we just carry on as normal. We’ve got heaps of coal and electric is the way to go.
Yes janama and the Spanish solar ‘garden’ barely works, but the top story for renewbubbles is Denmark with its cornicopa of wind power;
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjVmNmNhYWM0ZWQwNmRhMjIyYjFmNzg4ZGE0Y2IwYTQ
Is there anywhere the greens would like to hold up as being an exemplar for renewbubbles which can sustain more than the tummy-tickling analysis the idiots in the mssm give?
Welcome to socialist economics – it doesn’t make sense.
😉
Spain and Germany have both invested in solar power and now have high unemployment and national debt. Both countries are continuing to invest in fossil fuels and Germany in particular is investing in nuclear power. A similar situation exists in Denmark which had invested heavily in wind power.
the all of this is simply fasle.
currently (and this is arare event!) unemployment rates in Germany are LOWER than in the USA. (8.3% in comparison to 9.7%)
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4616402,00.html
http://hiring.monster.com/hr/hr-best-practices/market-intelligence/labor-statistics-trends/USA-unemployment.aspx
the idea that unemployment and national debt are caused by alternative energy is simply false.
Germany is NOT investing in nuclear energy. no new nuclear power plants are being build and nuclear power is phasing out.
Denamrk is running on 20% wind energy. it is an example, of how easy and how much can be done.
Denmark is NOT running on 20% wind energy Sod – it’s exporting cheap discounted electricity to it’s neighbours when the wind blows. As a consequence the Danish people have the highest electric rates of any industrialized nation, an average of about $.38 per kWh compared to $.08 in the United States and the $0.16 in Australia.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/tech-mainmenu-30/energy/1890-danish-wind-power-overblown
Germany has decided that nuclear has dangerous side effects, like increased cancer rates and childhood leukemia but it is planning to build 26 new coal fired power stations using coal from Poland. Surely if it’s solar and wind experiments were as good as you say they are they’d increase solar and wind.
Spain, national debt and unemployment;
http://www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf
Germany, national debt;
http://business.globaltimes.cn/world/2009-07/449702.html
And the fat lady still hasn’t sung in respect of nuclear power in Germany;
http://www.nuclearpowerdaily.com/reports/Anti-nuclear_protest_march_against_German_U-turn_999.html
Maybe you can lead some of those anti-nuclear demos sod; if you bother to read my link on Denmark and wind power you’d realise that’s the only wind power going to be generated.
The problem with the RE crowd is that they always seem to advocate the “next generation” tech – as soon as any of these technologies become usuable, they are no longer “the go”.
We had greenies protesting about hydro power in Tasmania, demanding that Tas import power from Victorian coal plants instead in order to “save the environment”, and now the answer to intermittent wind power and other renewables is pumped water storage – the very techniques that we were told were destroying the environment 20 years ago!
If I wanted to build a 50km x 50km solar thermal power station in the outback desert, I have no doubt that these people would claim that my plans would destroy a pristine ecosystem and perhaps make extinct some unique species of spider or something.
If I wanted to actually build several GW of windmill power plants, I am sure I would find people protesting that it was “visual pollution” or that they “kill birds” or some other objection.
If I wanted to use tidal power systems, I am sure they would complain that it would destroy a reef ecosystem or coastal wetlands or…
It seems to me the only time these things are “OK”, is when they are on a small scale – once they are scaled up to any reasonable size suitable for real base-load, they become “monstrosities” and “ruinous to the environment”.
So here is the challange for the RE fans: next time you advocate any particular technology, just remember that we need to suppy enough power to not only supply peoples homes, but also to power industries such as manufacturing, mining (including smelting aluminium), farming and so on. And it’ll also have to supply the equivilent energy to all the petrol, diesel, LPG and CNG we use for transport; it’ll have to replace all the LPG and CNG we use for heating as well as the electricity we use for heating and cooling. It won’t just be a windmill here and there, it will be millions of them; it won’t just be 2 or 3 hectares of solar collectors, it’ll be multiple square kilometers of them; it won’t just be a single valley in Tasmania flooded for pumped water storage, it’ll be hundreds of them all over the country. Do some simple back-of-the-envelope calculations and realise just what you’re asking for before you say “it can be done”.
Very good read cohenite, thanks.
I don’t think sod will be impressed though, even if he reads it, too steeped into his religion.
It makes you think, there is no way Denmark could get away with it without the base load system Sweden and Norway have.
And if those base load systems were coal fired slow response system it just couldn’t work.
What it means is that we in OZ or the States still would have to keep all the base load stations, and still work out a way to handle the enormous swings of wind power input.
Good luck to the engineers with that
Cohenite said: “Wind power is intermittent and to replace the twenty per cent or six mega watt of coal power with RE will necessitate the construction of twenty mega watt of wind capacity.”
You mean 6 gigawatts (GW) and 20 GW, not megawatts (this would be 6000 MW and 20,000 MW).
Well done Cohers,
And economists like John Quggin have the hide to call sceptics delusionist.
Great post Cohenite, a bit of reality and common sense would go down well! A quick look at the Californian economy is also potentially an example of what happens when you go down the RE route and start trying to control co2.
Unemployment in August was nearly 12%, well above the US rate of 9.7%
http://www.edd.ca.gov/About_EDD/pdf/urate200908.pdf
No nuclear QED No Climate change problem, if there was and we really had to take action it is the only current solution available to reduce our co2 in the forseeable future.
What’s perplexing for me is that the wind/solar proponents argue strenuously that technology advances will quickly make up the leeway in performance deficiencies for base load, but they deny that the same technology advances have rendered nuclear power generation as safe as civilisation could ever want.
And it works!
Talk about closed minds, and denialism!
Spain, national debt and unemployment;
http://www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf
i simply love that text. the best part is this one:
When we spend money to build a fast food restaurant instead of solar panels, the cost
of this course of action is all of the panels that were never built and all of the jobs in
that industry that were never created. Similarly, if the government decides to spend
taxpayer money on windmills or solar panels, their unseen cost would be all the
hamburgers not cooked or any other productive activity that would no longer take
place as a result of the state directing resources to windmills or solar panels.
Policymakers must recognize that because of government action, other jobs are not
created.
fast food restaurants= good
solar panels =bad
this must be one of the most shallow economical analysis that i ever saw. externalities? absent.
what will happen tu nuclear power, depends on the election in two weeks. the conservatives want to reintroduce it. (mostly by extending the run time of the old reactors that are supposed to phase out).
calling this Germany in particular is investing in nuclear power.” is simply making a false statement!
SOD,
you really think that the gubmint in Spain invests in primarily fast food restaurants instead of infrastructure, healthcare, and other Socialist necessities???
Try to understand a little economics. If the gubmint takes more money from the people to build boondoggles, not only won’t the people have the necessary power to run the Hospitals, Schools, and businesses, they won’t have the money to spend at fast food restaurants or anywhere else, to run businesses, or to pay the high prices of those boondoggle RE plants power!! Fortunately Spain has mild weather so they can forget air conditioning and heating without too much impact!!
I also like the way you totally ignore the FACT that Germany is planning on building Coal powerplants because they can’t afford the losses from insufficient, inconsistent WIND POWER. I mean, they can buy it discounted from Denmark, RIGHT, so, maybe you can explain to us how the evil coal industry has subverted them away from the Danish subsidised wind power?????
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Cohenite,
“Spain, national debt and unemployment;
http://www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf”
Being an Spaniard myself, and having been involved in the past with the RE sector, I have to say that the report is demolishing. Thank you very much for the hint.
A deal has just been signed with Rolls-Royce to build four more nuclear power stations in the UK.
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/Articles/Article.aspx?liArticleID=313163
This is reasonable for them, but for Australia its a ‘no brainer’. Remember Coey, we are trying to convince the AGW zealots that they are deluded about which way the climate is heading and I refuse to get on the Brook, Morgan, Lambert trolly offering baseload sweeteners to a gullible public.
Prof Barry Brook is quite right in saying that no way can Oz generate 20% of electricity from renewables, and therefore we must move towards nuclear power. The same message comes from Ziggy, chairman of ANSTO.
The recent passing of Labor’s RET bill is an exercise in futility that we will live to regret, ditto the ETS if it ever gets off the ground.
We should forget about renewables and put the money saved into establishing the nuclear power industry.
For the RE fans there is now hope for solar farms. The problem is electricity generation at night time (no sun). It has been suggested they be linked up to 10 million hamsters each turning mini-generator treadmills. Apparently hamsters only tread their mills at night time. This would open up the possibility of hamster farming and hamster-burger production in the region of solar farms. I think Premier Brumby is considering the idea for NW Victoria.
The only people pushing nukes are the stock market parasites who have invested in uranium.
Who is going to pick up the cost of managing nuke waste for a million years? Will that be built into the cost to the consumer? Or, do you just dump another environmental, economic and security nightmare onto your kids?
Yeah, Chinese solar panels. If only we’d invested in out own intellectual capital?
What carbon emission reductions can be achieved solely through focusing on efficiency measures?
Then there’s all potential sources of baseload energy that remain undeveloped because billions of taxpayers dough is being pumped into propping up big coal and oil.
Hazelwood could be shut down tomorrow with a minimum of fuss. Between solar panels on the roof and domestic ceramic fuel cell generators producing hot water and electricity when the sun doesn’t shine we could close almost all our coal fired power stations. Then convert our cars to gas and our domestic carbon emissions would be negligible.
But ah, it’s all too hard for money grasping, blinkered monkeys.
Barry Brook; the 6 and 20 MW come from the Tom Quirk paper linked to under the post; Tom’s reference is in his paper.
cohenite, then is it referring to a single town??
Australia’s baseload demand is about 25 GW, and peak demand can reach 45 GW. In my home state of South Australia alone, which is 8% of the nation’s population, the baseload demand is 1.5 GW and peak at 3.5 GW — that’s 1,500 MW and 3,500 MW respectively.
I just checked the quirk paper, he says 6,000 MW and 20,000 MW, which is correct, and what I’d said earlier in this thread.
You need to change ‘mega watt’ to ‘gigawatt’ (or GW) in a few places to make your above posting correct.
To get some perspective to these figures the full output of the whole Snowy scheme is 3.756GW
Jennifer; Barry is right; in the 6th paragraph the words “mega watt” appears twice; it needs to be replaced with “gigawatt”; thanks.
Sunny Side up
Nuclear waste for a million years? Where do you get those numbers from – nuclear waste isn’t a problem. The French and Japanese have been using this power for decades and I don’t the Greenies protesting over France and Japan’s “waste”.
“nuclear waste isn’t a problem.”
What kind of nuff nuff would say that?
http://www.nwtrb.gov/
And if you “don’t (see?) the Greenies protesting over France and Japan’s “waste””, pull your head out of the sand a second and google “protests over french and japanese nuclear waste”.
have you folks noticed, that cohenite has not brought up a single fact, supporting his claim that “Germany in particular is investing in nuclear power”?
Sunny side up,
Googling the phrase gets Greenpeace links – so what – that’s normal Greenpeace hyperbole.
But it’s not very newsworthy – and linking to one US department about nuclear waste – how splendidly Lukian.
Mind you the Google search did highlight the issue of reprocessing plutonium waste – interesting.
But unless you went looking for them, reporting of those protests by the MSM seems somewhat sparse, hence my initial comment.
sod
No, but we noticed, that you did not refute his claim, of Germany building, dirty, nasty, polluting coal fired (spit, spit) power stations!
sod; Germany is reconsidering its phase-out; I have provided one link to that turn-around, here is another;
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93875023
Germany’s current energy supply from nuclear is ~30%; that is going to rise if for no other reason then the renewbubbles are falling like flies despite the empty-headed rhetoric of green support for Germany’s energy policies;
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/greens_demand_the_power_thats_ruining_germany/#commentsmore
So, lets have a little bet sod; I reckon Germany will not only be not phasing out its nuclear power plants but will be building, investing, in more nuclears in the next year.
sod
No, but we noticed, that you did not refute his claim, of Germany building, dirty, nasty, polluting coal fired (spit, spit) power stations!
your attempt to move the goalpost exposes your argument as being: “well cohenite made multiple obviously false claims, but some of the things that he said might be right!”
even for a denialist, that is a pretty low standard.
the situation on coal is more complicated than on nuclear.
global energy demand is still growing.
http://blog.cleveland.com/world_impact/2008/11/large_ENERGY_DEMAND_1.jpg
looking at a new coal power plant alone, is not helpful for an analysis.
germany has been planning a lot of new coal plants. many of these projects have been stopped.
http://www.greenpeace.de/themen/klima/klimapolitik/artikel/grafik_der_geplanten_kohlekraftwerke_in_deutschland_stand_juni_2008/
and the one in datteln has also been stopped for now.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=farmer-deals-blow-to-powe
here is a list of the fight against the coal plants:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLH7784920090917
on the otehr hand, Germany is trying clean coal.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7584151.stm
in short, building coal plants (something i do not support) might make sense under a couple of conditions:
1. implementing new technology.
2. replacing very old, dirty plants.
3. alternative energy not able to replace the plants fast enough.
to see what is happening with coal in Germany, you would need to look at details: is the demand growing? how much of this growth is handled by alternative energy? how old are german power plants? how “green” are the coal plants that are being planned? at what places are those plants planned?
basically only a comparison with other industrialized countries would give any real information about what the meaning of those plants is.
sod
In other words “you got notin”
sod; Germany is reconsidering its phase-out; I have provided one link to that turn-around, here is another;
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93875023
“Anti-Nuclear Sentiment Fading” is something completely different than “Germany in particular is investing in nuclear power”.
your first link says absolutely nothing about investments in nuclear either.
So, lets have a little bet sod; I reckon Germany will not only be not phasing out its nuclear power plants but will be building, investing, in more nuclears in the next year.
another goalshift. “investing in nuclear power” from the past, is transforemd into “WILL BE investing in nuclear power”. great.
this is a bet on the election results next week.
when the current government remains (conservatives CDU and social democrats SPD), there won t be a shift in nuclear power policy. the SPD is campaigning heavily on an anti-nuclear approach. (and might at most agree to some minor shifting of remaining run-time among existing nuclear plants)
a change in government (conservative CDU and market liberals FDP) would bring a change to nuclear power policy. but again, the change would be an expansion of remaining run time among the phasing out reactors. they will not build a new plant next year.
to get an objective criteria for a bet, my proposal is this: Germany will not completely revoke the law about the phase out of nuclear energy before the end of 2010.
alternatively you could find some credible numbers on “investment into nuclear power”. and we could bet over a change against some current average.
sod
In other words “you got notin”
i already thought that a complicated argument would go over your head.
sod
“a complicated argument would go over your head.”
argument NO!
waffle YES!
My point about coal sod, is that the coal industry has been obfuscating and avoiding a direct debate about the legitimacy of AGW by hiding under the skirts of the pipedream of clean coal; IMO this is craven and will in the long run hurt them even if, as it must, AGW is proven to be a bad joke. You also are prevaricating because the preferred renewbubbles of wind and solar are simply not upto the job; Germany is another text-book case for this and the greens’ advocacy in the Australian debate for the ‘success’ of wind and solar in places like Germany is more duplicitous than the coal industry’s advocacy of clean coal.
hey Cohenite, maybe we should use nukes to generate the electricity to compress and store the CO2? We get to keep mining and burning coal, get a nice nuclear power industry and no lack of electricity.
A win,win for everyone!
I’m sure there’s something wrong with that picture.
Eyrie; any plan to accommodate AGW will always have something wrong with it!
Cohenite
you will appreciate this article on nuclear energy
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/hogan3.1.1.html
Good stuff Louis; the author asks; “Or would you rather be a fish?” We know the answer from the greenies.