IT is wrong to assume that the Greens are luddites and in particular anti-technology.
This is a criticism often levelled against them because, as a group, they tend to oppose many new technologies, for example, the genetic modification of crops and nuclear energy.
However, the Greens are passionately pro solar technology.
The only problem with this technology is that it tends to be uneconomical without massive government subsidies which I understand are not a problem for the Greens – subsidies that is.
Consider the Solar New England project which aims to install 400 solar power systems in households in the New England region of NSW, Australia, by the end of the 2010 financial year: for a one-off outlay of A$2,440 residents receive a A$14,600 fully-installed one megawatt kilowatt solar power system that hooks straight into the power grid.
Households only have to pay a fraction of the cost because the systems will be provided in bulk and because of all the government subsidies for solar power.
The project has been described as “strengthening the sustainability of the region” and showing “collective and individual leadership” – but I’m not sure how. Then again, while I consider myself an environmentalist, I am perhaps not a Green.
*******************
Notes
The Greens are defined here in the broadest sense as one might refer to any group with particular unique characteristics for example farmers or Protestants.
Information on the Solar New England project from ‘Solar Simplicity Sells’ Matthew Cawood pg. 25 The Land, April 23, 2009.
The image of the solar panel is from http://www.germes-online.com/catalog/3/127/page2/209248/solar_panel.html
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Err.
Shouldn’t that be one kilo-watt system.
Jennifer, you are right on this one. we should stick to technology, that doesn t require any subsidies.
like nuclear power.
This solar power connected to the grid business is total BS.
Let’s get a few things straight.
A one megawatt solar power unit. – is that one megawatt output or is it “generates 1 megawatt in a year”?
The largest solar panel on the market is around 175watts. It costs $1,400. so a mega watt system (i.e megawatt output) would require 5,714 panels at a cost of $8 million.
Ok – so it must be 1 megawatt output over a year.
3 panels @ 175 watts = 525watts. Cost: $4,200.
The sun is only out for 6 hours so that’s 3,150 watts per day!! or 365 x 3,150 = 1.15 megawatts per year.
My last power bill stated I was using 11.72Kw per day, so I’m 8.5kw short.
What is even more ridiculous is believing that the power providers need your damn solar power back in the grid!! do you honestly believe they say – hey Mr Jones’s solar panels have come on line now the suns up, we’d better back off a couple of shovels of coal into the furnace!
It’s a joke – living with solar means storing it yourself and getting OFF the grid. I’ve done it and lived that way for 5 years. After a week of rain you have to turn on the generator, you also have no hot water so it’s cold showers.
I have done the figures and to have a system that produces 12kw per day (that’s using a gas stove as electric would increase usage by another 25% at least) AND stores it and feeds it back would cost at least $50,000.
I appear to have copied a mistake from The Land. It should, be one kilo-watt. I will correct the post. Much thanks Peter.
http://www.ausenergy.com.au/pr/pr_ne_faq.html#three_hundred
Thanks Janama. So I shouldn’t feel so bad that I’m told it is not worth me getting solar installed. I’m told the roof of my house is totally shaded for the best part of the day – its the fault of the biggest and tallest tree in the neighborhood. I guess that is why my home is so cool even in summer.
yes – that was going to be my next question – what if you can’t get 6 hours of sun?
“The only problem with this technology is that it tends to be uneconomical without massive government subsidies which I understand are not a problem for the Greens – subsidies that is.”
I little undignified.
I spent easter on teh wurray river in SA, we stayed on a property that was pwoered by solar alone. They spent 75000 on teh panels an dreceived a rebate of 30%, so about 50,000 for teh solar. He also bought a 15,000 generator as back up. So to be self sufficient in power costs him 65,000…….if you had to borrow this money it ould be a far from viable solution..probably cost a minimum of 5,000 in interest..and you need to repay some capital.
If you have the money you could probably only earn 5% today so its would be costing around 3250 per year…expensive but not as bad. Unfortuantely not many of us have a spare 65k hanging around…..
I understand, and I hope I have the following detail correct, that Neil Hewett spent A$40,000 to make his retreat in the Daintree Rainforest sustainable for it only to be knocked out by a lightening strike soon after installation. He assumed he could get it repaired at least in part from the insurance, only to find the installation was not covered by insurance for lightening strikes. I gather he is now back to relying on his diesel generator – and $40,000 poorer. He can’t get mains electricity because some Greens want the Daintree to stay quaint and without electricity.
I love solar power. It was a novelty in my electrical set as a child, “cool” on calculators and it remains an expensive novelty in power generation.
Some basics of power generation – power is not stored – it is generated on demand. I turn on my light bulb and somewhere in the country, a (most likely coal fired) generator cranks up a bit to supply the demand. If demand exceeds supply we get brown outs and the system shuts down parts of the network to reduce demand resulting in blackouts. Most power grids run on a base load of thermal power (fueled by coal or nuclear). These generators don’t like to be turned on or off quickly (it is a heat/expansion thing). Daily variations or peaks in demand require either more flexible generators like hydro power (just open the valve) or gas turbines that can be started and stopped quickly or by having base load capacity running on idle. It is possible to store energy in Pumped Storage schemes that actually use more power than they generate but they utilise base load power when consumer demand is low and this avoids shutting down the base load generators. Power companies also offer off peak power by installing ripple relays on your switchboard to power your hot water system.
So what does this have to do with solar? Well, generating energy during the day when it is sunny doesn’t help the overall power supply and leaves a shortage at night. The same applies to wind power and other occasionally operating renewables. This means that we still need to run the base load systems (coal) to have capacity available when it is needed. So not only do we now have to pay more taxes to subsidise inefficient renewable solar or wind power installations, we need to pay higher power bills for under utilised base load stations and cost subsidies to buy power from the new solar generators. Current studies in Denmark, Spain and Ireland (google it) suggest that installed capacity of intermittent generators (wind, solar etc) over 10% destabilises the power system (read blackouts) and results in no savings on greenhouse emissions due to base load required on idle mode.
Now solar hot water systems that actually store hot water for use at night … now that’s something I support.
I don’t support paying additional taxes and power costs for novelties and unproven technologies that do nothing but massage support and buy votes from the “greens”.
For those who love their solar power panels – disconnect from all those nasty coal fired power stations and pay your way!
Jennifer has labeled the Greens as persons that are opposed to new technology. Nothing could be more wrong.
The Greens strongly favour technology that is more enegy efficent and want technological solvations to many environmental problems. For the fishing industry , for example , bottom trawler nets that don’t destroy the sea bottom are under constuction etc etc…..
The latest issue of National Geographic runs this month on the theme ” ENERGY FOR TOMORROW”—repowering the planet.
Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Chu is quoted :” About 6 years ago, I got increasingly CONCERNED ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE. The more I followed what we were learning , the more ominous it got. Just like during WWII , when a lot of the best physicists went to work on radar and the atomic bomb , the world needs scientists to work on this issue. We’re in a war to save our planet.
In any given hour , more energy from the sun reseaches Earth than is used by the whole human population in any given year.
Jen
Yep pretty sure you’re not a Green
But you’d have to convince me you were an environmentalist though.
As for most of the time your enduring theme is that there is nothing wrong with the natural environment or that modifying it heaps is a good thing.
Anti-environmentalist perhaps ?
Luke,
You might be right.
But I do have a strong affinity with ‘nature’ – that is why my favourite subject at school was biology, why I graduate from uni with a botany and entomology double major, and went on to do a PhD in insect behaviour, and now live in the Blue Mountains with favourite pasttimes birdwatching and bushwalking.
Perhaps I am just a naturalist – perplexed that noone cares what we think?
*******
In this one thread Sod has agreed with Jen and Jen has agreed with Luke!
This is great Jennifer, I am so glad that the post series on this subject are progressing in the right direction. People who spent their lives trying to promote renewables will be very happy to learn of such efforts to put so many concepts (which are not so simple to understand!) in the right perspective. Yes any one can be an environmentalist but not necessarily green (in the sence of belonging to a political party) but every green MUST be an environmentalist with full understanding of how each ecosystem within the natural eco-sphere would have to function to preserve our natural heritage.
It would be a pitty for the next generations to be confined to live in man-made ecosystems (huge cities packed with people importing non-renewable energy for survival and having their own primary production and decomposition industries) which I call man-made non-natural ecosystems overwhelmed by greed and all sorts of destructive competiton.
There is some mixup in the comments between power and energy. The KW unit is a measure of electric power (similar to horse power in cars). The unit for electric energy is the KWH (kilowatt hour) which we buy for our homes. It is similar to the kilo-calorie which we are used to (because we associate it with our food!). One KWH = 860 kcal. It is convinient to change other units of energy to kcal units for comparison purposes (otherwise get an electrical engineer to help out). This is how I understood how energy wastefull (especially in non-renewables) some countries are, not aware that by spending so much energy, all they are doing is increasing the level of entropy(chaos and disorder) which creates further need for energy in concentrated form (mostly non-renewable) to fix the mess.
On subsidies:
I would assert that a subsidy at the point of consumption actually retards the development of a technology. The PV subsidy is a case in point, the cost structures have hardly altered even with 10 years of massive subsidy. The same problem afflicts nuclear power where the subsidies applied to nuclear power station construction have been equally retarding.
On units: The basic unit of power in electrical systems is kW (small k big W). Energy (kWh) is small k big W small h. (Not kilo-watt but kilo-Watt) However when you get to millions of Watts the first M goes to MW or MWh this is because small m is for milli (one thousandth) May seem petty but the incorrect use of units sort of says you don’t even understand the basics or that you are too lazy to read up on the subject.
All new technologies cost heaps when they are first introduced; the first motor vehicles were very much toys for the very rich. it took many years and the marketing genius of the fascist Henry Ford before they became affordable to the masses. No=body suggested that you get a subsidy for your Model T back then.
Jen – so a threshold test is how much development or modifications of the Blue Mountains you would agree with before lying in front of a bulldozer?
Major mining? New freeways and railways? What would it take?
Grading huge firebreaks?
Do you have a threshold in your own beautiful backyard whereby “despoiling nature” or “ruining the view” starts to bite? How about a bit of neon advertising on those Picnic Point cliffs? Mega cable cars?
Or is everything for sale and negotiation? And humans come first.
Care to share? (we promise not to use it against you later 🙂 )
Hey Luke,
Now Brisbane needs new freeways, railways and I supported the proposed building of all those tunnels – when I lived there.
But the Blue Mountains is a different place all together – we don’t even have a McDonald in the Upper Mountains (where I live) by choice of the local community.
It is when those external to a community come in and tell the locals what to do that I most object – so Melbournian’s Green shouldn’t stop logging in the Central Murray Valley and Rosia Montana shouldn’t have been denied its gold mine because of some woman in Bucharest.
See where I am coming from?
And I am not into ‘stuff’, so I object to Prime Ministers giving people money to buy stuff to stimulate the economy and I also object to Prime Ministers telling me I must pay more for my electricity because of AGW.
See where I am coming from?
People realised a long time ago that some form of collective action was necessary for civilisation. There is no way around it.
Jen you almost sound like an independent person when the truth is that you’re an industry shill.
For example I have heard that the Japanese have paid your consultancy to make prowhaling posts.
SJT,
Civilisation only needs a few institutions that provide secure and recognised property rights.
Birdie,
People say all sorts of things about me that are plain wrong. I am not a consultant and I don’t run a consultancy and I have never received any money from any whalers.
“Civilisation only needs a few institutions that provide secure and recognised property rights.”
I don’t recall property rights being the only collective institutions needed to win WWII.
There may not have been a WWII if someone wasn’t so keen on the misguided idea of a collective.
Craigo wrote:
“Current studies in Denmark, Spain and Ireland (google it) suggest that installed capacity of intermittent generators (wind, solar etc) over 10% destabilises the power system (read blackouts) and results in no savings on greenhouse emissions due to base load required on idle mode.”
I’m assuming that that’s accurate. You’ve highlighted an important issue in renewable energy field: storage. Suppose that you manage a solar-thermal ‘farm’ in Southern California’s Mojave Desert, and that you supply ALL of the electric power for a nearby community. How do you deliver electricity to your customers at night?
A variety of different energy storage technologies are under investigation. The most obvious one: During the day when the sun is shining, pump water into storage tanks 100 m off the ground. At night, let that water flow downhill, and generate hydro power. Although the water strategy solves the technical problem, it increases the 24-hour electricity-generating cost appreciably.
At the moment, we can’t make solar or wind competitive with coal-fired power generation, without generous government subsidies. But that’s not a good reason for abandoning government involvement in solar and wind entirely. Although the U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal, even we will eventually run out of easily-mined coal. Taking baby-steps in the direction of 100% renewable energy is a reasonable thing to do.
We need pure research. We need to get more practical experience integrating renewables with conventional power generation–even if solar plus wind only contribute 5% of the total. And we need more ambitious demonstration projects.
I realize that it’s fashionable for risk managers to discount the future, but few of them would be willing to write it off entirely. We’re dealing with a QUANTITATIVE question, rather than with a qualitative one. How much money should we spend on gradually greening our power generation? As is the case with many environmental issues, that’s largely a political decision, because we don’t have enough information for an optimal scientific solution. But the answer is not zero dollars.
On a side-note, California has recently outlawed the construction of new coal-fired power plants, in favor of natural-gas-powered ones, because of the New Age superstition about the CO2 Monster. I think that we’re shooting ourselves in the foot. Natural gas prices are going to increase a lot faster than coal prices. We should use the scarcer resource, natural gas, sparingly, and use more coal instead. Then we’ll save money in the long run.
Bear in mind SJT, that the English-Speaking world really only SURVIVED World War II. Its going a bit far to say we won. Stalin started the war, and was the only unambiguous winner, thanks to leftists who stayed home in Washington and did not themselves fight.
“There may not have been a WWII if someone wasn’t so keen on the misguided idea of a collective.”
That’s not really a logical response. You can wish WWII never happened, but it did.
I’ll defend Jen – she’s not a shill. She doesn’t need to be paid to express her views. Indeed her work role is totally compatible with her views. She hasn’t “sold out” as a shill would just for the money.
But to your reply Jen – wasn’t a trap question. You obviously have high affection for your local bush region and enjoy getting out amongst it.
Indeed why can’t I enjoy a Maccas at picnic point with a huge Maccas sign visible to Sydney at night. Surely the proceeds to local charities and employment would be worth it? Are Katoomba-ite some sort of elitists? 🙂
We’re all visitors in the sense of time. 200 odd years for Europeans. So the “locals” bit doesn’t really wash.
I’m tring to “interview” you as an environmentalist running/representing an alternative environmental organisation to see at what point you would object to modification of your local bush enviroment? Surely a nice 8 lane freeway through the Blue Mtns park would be convenient for those pilgrimages to Bathurst in October?
Clearly I’m not advocating these things really – but what would make you object Jen?
Luke , I can see that you’re defending Jen ( nothing wrong with that) but now you better have to switch sides and join Motty and co ! What else could you do without Jen the whole days , without a kindergarten for adults . It’s amazing that Jen’s job is running a site for solely Luke and some other dudes….
Good point Birdie – but as I always say to Motty “I’m on your side” – he really likes me I think but he’s playing hard to get. And Louis is my friend too.
But yes it’s sad – I just sit here all day. No friends, no family, nothing else to do. So Jen does provide a good home for us wayward souls.
BTW do you have a Daddy or Mommy that looks after you too?
Luke
The current freeway/Great Western Highway is being enlarged – just to 4 lanes. I wouldn’t object to 8 though.
And I wouldn’t consider us elitist, it is much cheaper living here than in Brissie which is part of the reason I moved.
Which brings me to Birdie’s question –
Birdie
This site is mine, and no one pays me to work Saturday nights or answer your questions. Though I am starting to turn a slight profit from the advertising here – I don’t choose what is advertised though, it is all handled by an agency and I hope they are uploading what will give the best $ return to me.
“I would assert that a subsidy at the point of consumption actually retards the development of a technology.”
Yes of course. Compare that to a 30 year tax exemption on any reinvestment. Not just for a firm but for a broad industry and competitors. In the former situation you, as a businessman, are arm-twisted into putting disproportionately more of your resources into putting out more units for direct consumption. You are over-investing in current production. But business reinvestment is investing for greater future productive power and spending now to reduce recurring costs. So there is no doubt about what you are saying. The latter tax exemption will be 10 times more effective if placed on an industry entire and competitors.
Subsidies are always misguided. Only long-term tax exemptions make sense. And why we don’t hear this enough is that the Keynesian dummies are mentally biased towards consumption. They are one-eye-blind towards business-to-business spending. They abstractly recognise some sort of net investment but are blind to the totality of business spending.
Worse our allegedly free enterprise NeoClassical types have this bonehead static-equilibrium view of matters that assumes that everyone has to be persecuted equally or there will be a mysterious “distortion”. So for example to suggest that the disaster of overfishing could be mitigated a bit, by making aqua-culture tax exempt, the idiots will accuse you of advocating subsidies (a straight lie, but they cannot tell the difference) or they will make it like if you cannot make the cuts for everyone at the same time you ought not make any cuts. Which is just plain economic ignorance.
The problem is that both of these economic tribes do not understand economics. There is not substitute for actually learnng the result. You can see that what you are saying is dead right because while technological development is imbedded in capital update, technological development is really a very long-term undertaking. Or developing it as an output shows a long-run motivation. Whereas putting out a lot of units to pick up a subsidy puts a more medium-run focus on the whole “business DNA” as it were. Naturally enough after the subsidy is ended the industry is just as likely to crash and muct of what has gone before will be rendered a waste of resources.
Jen
Didn’t even take the provocative Maccas bait eh? drat.
OK how about clear felling the whole Mountains Park for a golf course and Disney World ? Motty can drive the D9.
Is there no level at which you’d lie in front of the bulldozer?
Surely if you like hiking around in it and observing the critters – there is some point where you want to keep it from development?
Is there? Jen?
SJT. Is your claim, that if you could prove a need for national defense, that this would mean no holds barred stealing, compulsion and abuse, by distant elites, is just fine? That would appear to be the bonehead case you are attempting to make here. Plus I go to the same sites as you do, so I happen to know that you’re latest silliness has been inspired by a cartoon quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes (anti-Constitutionalist, anti-hard-money, progressive jerk-off) over at the Deltoid Dwarfs blog.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Corrections to my last post.
“There is not substitute for actually learning the result” for learning the MATERIAL.
“muct” much.
Luke why would anyone do such a thing, if it were the case that everywhere else, in Sydney and down the coast, there had never been any height restrictions on buildings? If there is no restriction on vertical development and no debasement of your fully-backed currency there is not going to be the same pressures on horizontal development. Or the same buying of land for capital gains. You environmentalist nazis are tripping if you imagine that you are holistic thinkers.
Last time I flew out of Sydney there were just rolling mountains for miles and miles that we have no access to. It seems a real waste. Its no great tragedy if they don’t allocate private property rights to every square metre at the blue mountains. Nor is it a big deal if they let some homesteading go on in some of these national parks. What is the real tragedy is if you have private property and you have jerks restricting what you can do on it.
“A variety of different energy storage technologies are under investigation. The most obvious one: During the day when the sun is shining, pump water into storage tanks 100 m off the ground. At night, let that water flow downhill, and generate hydro power. Although the water strategy solves the technical problem, it increases the 24-hour electricity-generating cost appreciably.”
Thats all fine but the problem is we know whats going on here. Whereas people appear to be discussing promising potential energy technologies that isn’t usually the case. What they are usually doing is something quite different. They are usually obstructing nuclear fission and synthetic diesel investments that could hit paydirt in 4 years minimum if only leftists would get off our backs.
Energy economics really is different. It ought to be standard economics 101 that energy sources are, or ought to be, MORE COMPLIMENTS THAN COMPETITORS. Having ubiquitous nuclear fission available will actually make a lot of other energy sources far more economic. Nuclear fission could make deuterium fusion more doable since left-over fuel can be a source of neutrons. Synthetic diesel can use 1. straight heat 2. hot water 3. steam 4. electricity and 5. hydrogen produced by off-peak electricity in various stages of its production. All five of these could easily be supplied via nuclear fissioin. Nuclear energy can help produce the capital goods necessary to solarise some roads, or some of the built environment, where appropriate, if people still want this on the other side of the energy crisis. Wind power can cut costs in some places but you cannot industrially produce wind turbines on the power that wind turbines produce. So fission is helpful for the long-run development of wind power. Wind power could directly produce fixed nitrogen in the form of ammonia. Because this process can be done intermittently I’ve been lead to believe. And thus this could save energy from elsewhere.
With nuclear heat and electricity we can easily turn any organic material, including household rubbish and excessive wood-fuel into diesel. As soon as we start thinking of energy sources as competitors we have gone down the wrong path. And in 2009 there is just no substitute for nuclear fission. There is a great urgency about nuclear fission. Pretty much everything comes third after fission and synthetic diesel.
I don;t notice any major political parties promoting a strong nuclear future for Australia. By my reading of the scene the Greens are probably the closest:)
Also Jen, could you tell us if the worlds energy supply converted to conventional nuclear how many years the supply of economically viable uranium would last?
Let us say I am really concerned about emissions and want to cover my CO2 foot print. First I need to determine the average energy usage of each Australian since that is where I live. Now Australia uses about 274 Tera Watt hours per annum. I can forget about how much my houshold uses that is absolutely nowhere as important as the energy used in industry, transport, farming and large buildings. I must considered these because everyone in Australia gains benefit. The figure is about 27 Kilo Watt Hours per day per individual. So at the moment there are four people in my house that means I need to generate 108 Kilo Watt hours in 5 hours every day. In Canberra the expected hours of generation per day is 5. A 22 Kilo Watt array would cover it. As mentioned above adequate power generation from a solar source must be stored. I will be generating for 5 hours so batteries to store 88 Kilo Watt hours are needed. Go and price such a unit, the generation part is about $250,000 the storage??? I know only a very rich delusional sort of person would do this.
I guess government would then be asked to step in. I think this is totally beyond us. I do not know of any storage that will hold even one Tera Watt hour and that is what is needed. A sobering fact is that a square metre of array receives 200 to 300 watts of energy so the areas of collection no matter how you do it is very large with obvious other problems. I think we need about 32 Giga Watts of generation capacity. If you calculate what would be needed it is very large. The biggest engineering task the country has ever taken by a long shot. Perhaps Jennifer we could just cover the Blue Mountains in solar collecters. Now that would be enviromentally friendly!
Even Havelock (of Gaia fame) has gone nuclear but Monbiot is not having a bar of it, windmills for him. The Greens are opposed and isn’t there a clause in the Kyoto agreement saying solutions cannot be nuclear? Is the building a large number of fast breeder reactors the answer to our fears?
Suppose by some miracle Aaustralia produce all its energy needs from nuclear. Then we need to look at our coal exports and the expansion of coal usage in other countries. China is expanding at the rate of 100 Giga Watts of capacity per annum. That is they increase by the entire Australian capacity every 4 months.
Birdie is the Steven Chu you refer to part of the Obama government? I think there is someone called Chu who is proposing tarifs be put on imports that are responsible for carbon emissions. Quite senior people in the Chinese government are getting hostile about the issue.
MattB
Can’t answer your question – but perhaps you could write something for the blog, for me to post as a new thread.
You might cover the topic of nuclear, pros and cons and position of the Greens on this issue.
I’ve had a go at solar today.
“There may not have been a WWII if someone wasn’t so keen on the misguided idea of a collective.”
Hmmmmmmmmm. Jennifer I must pass that by my jewish sister in law next time I see her and I also thought it was because Germany invaded Poland and the UK had a security agreement with Poland (your above comment prompted me to start huming Mel Brook’s, “Springtime for Hitler”) and the dominions followed suit.
Can anybody give me an example (referenced) of an energy supply system that DOESN’T receive subsidies e.g. would people here regard building a new coal loader in Newcastle as a subsidy or non subsidy and if so why?
I also want to know why the denialists are lagging behind the nuclear greens wrt to technology e.g. the greens who have accepted nuclear are all talking about IFR or Gen IV. And anybody who tries to tell me that PV is not high technology is just ignorant (or they don’t want to exploit free fusion power).
BTW can anybody here give me an end to end analysis of wind with compressed air storage and the various systems being trialled to make use of that compressed air.
It seems to me denialists are so against their perceived ideological enemies that they just end up being against everything while the broad church that are the greens have moved on long ago and because they don’t regard their various ideologies as theology they can disagree and debate on things like nuclear.
“I don;t notice any major political parties promoting a strong nuclear future for Australia. By my reading of the scene the Greens are probably the closest:)”
Don’t be an idiot man. No-ones going to believe your idiotic lies.
“Also Jen, could you tell us if the worlds energy supply converted to conventional nuclear how many years the supply of economically viable uranium would last?”
Why is that a relevant question? Being as it has to last long enough to find other sources and for the length of the capital investments made. The answer is thousands of years, meaning easily enough time to bring in Thorium, deuterium, helium 3, boron and so forth.
You don’t get it do you? These are compliments. Compliments. The long-term feasibility of any and all of them is no excuse to exclude even one of them. Uranium fission is the critical one right now. Because its the only one of these we know we can put together in about 4 years after the date that leftist obstruction is defeated and the right policies are followed.
I would really appreciate some more information i.e. some evidence that shows the Greens are in favour of nuclear energy … Jeremy and MattB? Perhaps some links. Please.
“Can anybody give me an example (referenced) of an energy supply system that DOESN’T receive subsidies e.g. would people here regard building a new coal loader in Newcastle as a subsidy or non subsidy and if so why?”
Coal isn’t a subsidised industry. You are lying.
“I would really appreciate some more information i.e. some evidence that shows the Greens are in favour of nuclear energy … Jeremy and MattB? Perhaps some links. Please.”
They are lying Jennifer. You know that. Barry Brooks if he is a green. A tiny minority might put it out as a cover story for their CO2-bedwetting. Lovelock if he is a green but he’s always been a good fellow.
What Matts particular lie will be about this time is he will have decided he’s in favour of Cold Fusion now that there’s been some positive press on the idea after 20 years of people like Matt abusing the two guys who made the initial announcement.
The strategy is to push any alternative to ones that will actually work. So if Matts pushing cold fusion now he’s not actually pushing cold fusion. He’s obstructing uranium fission. He hasn’t said why he hates nuclear fission. But the reason his movement hates it is because it works.
The positive results people seem to have been getting with deuterium fusion lately (misleadingly called Cold Fusion) in Israel and the US hasn’t got to the stage where they can even get consistently repeatable results. Its all a bit of a mystery and the reasons it appears to be working are still speculative.
Furthermore these experiments seem to have Platinum and Palladium as critical components. If this doesn’t change then the industry would be subject to cost blowouts even though heavy water is relatively cheap.
For an whole industry to build up around this allegedly successful reaction, will take a very long time and would be far more likely to succeed if we have a vibrant nuclear fission energy, to build the expertise and capital goods, to support a complimentary deuterium-reaction growth industry. In fact if we fail in energy provision now NO industry could be built up successfully. Since energy provision and capital development are two sides of the same coin. You need capital goods to gather and distribute energy and you need energy to produce and use capital goods. Hence if we cannot expand energy in a hurry then any of these alternative sources cannot get off the ground.
Jennifer,
You asked about for some Greenies (smellies) supporting nuclear power. Have a look at the following
E.g.
The late Hugh Montifore
James Lovelock
Stephen Brand
Patrick Moore
George Monbiot thinks it should be considered (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw1D_btARdo&feature=related)
David King
Simone Weiss
Stephen Tindale
Chris Goodall
Mark Lynas
Chris Smith the Chair of the UK’s Environmenta Agency
Thats for starters
Does this sit with your theology?
A more interesting question is why are various greens are supporting and debating nuclear. Is it perhaps because they have been listening to you……………………………?????
I’ll make a prediction that denialists will soon start to oppose nuclear power because of this support by various/some Greenies plus reasons these Greenies are supporting it.
OK Graeme,
So the proposed coal loader in Newcastle is going to be built entirely from private funds, including all the services connecting to it for its exclusive use?
And how is asking for evidence a lie?
You cannot rope Patrick Moore in as a Green. For goodness sakes man. Thats like the UN roping in scientists that have already resigned from the IPCC in disgust. And no doubt that would go for a lot of the people on your list.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
No but its a lie to say that coal is a subsidised industry. Thats an outrageous lie. Think of all the money you taxeating vipers steal off the coal industry every year. In personal and company income tax, leases and royalties. And some other taxeaters spend some money on these guys somewhere in the country and from that you conclude what? Whoever the idiot was was concluding that there was no difference and it was jokers wild. Let all their useless pet projects be subsidised on the grounds that somewhere in the country the coal industry, carrying thousands of you leeches on its back, is getting a freebie given to it by some vampire or other.
Graeme, you really are quite, quite mad.
So Bird – how do we know that you’re not a secret tax-eater in disguise – prove it !
We have our reservations already – such as wasting the people’s time in a non-serious election attempt. Maybe you’re a whopping big tax-eater.
Perhaps even a recession creater. A toxic debt generator. You look like one.
Prove you’re not.
Sorry Jen – It’s a vibe thing. Personally I’d listen to nuclear as part of a commitment to slash emissions by 60%+ but I’m technology neutral, and have amazing confidence that we’ve the nouse in science and public policy and economics to get the reductions we need. I’m often surprised how little faith in our own abilities the sceptical side of the fence has. Lets face it if you thought nuclear as we know it would work turnbull would offer to back the ETS on the condition that nuclear power was given the green light – allowed to stand and fight on its own two feet.
Cold Fusion? Are they a new rock band Birdy? Coal not subsidised you do make me larf!
Jeremy C, Thanks for the that list. Also the info about Christopher Monckton.
“and have amazing confidence that we’ve the nouse in science and public policy and economics to get the reductions we need. ”
What are you talking about you dirty pig????
We need more higher CO2 levels and obviously so. What a prick you are. Clearly you are in favour of famine and the destruction of the natural environment.
Why are you claiming that we need CO2 reductions.
I’d whack you one if I could get hold of you. Why are you making such a filthy dirty lying anti-scientific claim?
Back your claim up slime-ball.
Why just up and lie like that all over again. Why not take a break from just lying all the time.
Lets make this very clear. We want higher CO2 levels. To help both man and nature out during the falling temperatures. This is what the science tells us. And it does not tell us anything else. The science is totally one-way and conclusive on this matter. Since CO2 helps plants cope with both drought and frost. And cold times means dry times.
How about lets go with what the scientific evidence says AND JUST STOP LYING ABOUT IT. Also skeptics must stop compromising with this lying filth about what the scientific evidence says. If any of you SKEPTICS can contradict me about what the scientific evidence says DO SO. But stop compromising with what it does say. We have to tell the truth about this clearly.
Hi Graeme,
Like you, I’m tired of all the lies coming from public officials and scientific prostitutes about climate change. But there are a lot more people, with minimal analytical skills, who have quaffed the AGW Disasterism kool-aid, on the basis of some classical propaganda techniques: appeal to authority, appeal to fear, bandwagon, and ad hominems.
But please tone down your rhetoric a bit. That amount of vitriol is not helpful. If this is how you behave online, I don’t think that I’d like to be around when you’re drunk.
“It seems to me denialists are so against their perceived ideological enemies that they just end up being against everything while the broad church that are the greens have moved on long ago and because they don’t regard their various ideologies as theology they can disagree and debate on things like nuclear.”
Surely you jest!
Or to borrow a line from Hamlet, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”
The IEA and the EIA, with a global view of energy, came up with the following busbar costs (in $US) of energy from various new-construction sources scheduled for completion between 2010 and 2015. I have added the federal subsidies currently provided in the US for each energy source. A 5% discount rate is assumed throughout. All of this is based on delivered energy, for that is what matters to the customer. As a reminder, electricity generated by existing nuclear plants in the US had a busbar cost in 2007 of $17/MWhr, or 1.7 cents/kWhr. That was the cheapest source of electricity in the U.S. in 2007.
Source………$/MWh….%capital….%fuel..%O&M…..gov’t subsidies($/MWh)
Coal…………$25-50……35%…..45%…..20%……..$0.44
Gas………….$37-60……15%…..80%…..5%……….$0.25
Nuclear………$21-31…..50%…..20%…..30%……..$1.59
Wind………..$35-95…..60-85%..0%…..15-40%…$23.30
u-hydro……..$40-80…..90%……0%…..10%………$0.67
Solar………..$150-300…90%…..0%…..10………..$24.30
Note the huge subsidies for wind and solar compared with other energy sources.
Intermittent sources like wind and solar need spinning reserves to keep the lights on, as previous posters have stated. Those costs are not included here.
Typical next-day scheduled wind in Texas is 8% of nameplate capacity. A 1.5 MW wind turbine can be scheduled for delivery of 0.12 MW.
The numbers above assume unscheduled wind farms (opportune energy sources), with availability from 18% – 45%, depending on location.
It is apparent that utilities have solid fiscal reasons for continuing to invest in new coal, gas, hydro and nuclear. They are happy to negotiate busbar rates they will pay to solar farm and wind farm owners. The utilities minimize their financial risk, have someone to blame when power interruptions increase, and maximize the PR value of such projects.
Without generous government subsidies, wind and solar markets collapse.
Until generous government subsidies sunset, the cost of wind and solar will not dramatically drop.
Manufacturers and contractors/distributors are simply capturing the extra profit as production and installation costs drop. For example, the cost of solar PV panels in 2003 in the U.S. was $4.40/Watt peak. The price in the U.S. at the end of 2008 was $4.80/Watt peak. In the meantime, solar panel manufacturers have continued to brag about manufacturing cost reductions of 15%- 20% per year.
Jeremy C
I watched the youtube clip it would seem George was having a scitzo moment Look at this http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/31/george-monbiot-wind-farms-renewable.
In which he is bitterly critisizing Lovelock for his lack of support for “renewables”. Also look at these
1. Australian Greens http://greens.org.au/taxonomy/term/54
2. Greenpeace http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/nuclear
3. World Wild life Fund http://www.wwf.org.uk/article_search_results.cfm?uNewsID=2163
4. “The Kyoto Protocol does, however, incorporate conditions that effectively exclude nuclear energy”. See Annex I
You can justify your own position which mean you and a few others are having second thoughts not that Green movement is. Only the stupid or ignorant could be convinced of it.
When many more take the plunge and say what Lovelock did you may have a point. A snippet:
“There is no such thing as renewable energy; it belongs as an idea with perpetual motion and other delusions, but politicians and ideologues have become skilled at using enticing words to cover essentially rotten ideas.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/29/lovelock-wind-farms
As I pointed out at length earlier simple maths show what a dumb idea renewables are.
My best guess is that Graeme Bird is right either you renounce the green movement or as he said you are plain and simply lying.
As for nuclear it too has doubts. It may change but world reserves are about enough for forty years unless we go for fast breeder reactors. These will produce a lot of material suitable for making making bombs as well. A pretty scary thought. But will this change anything? I doubt it since coal can produce power at 3 cents per Kilo Watt hour. You have to match that for everyone not just a few Western countries. The long and short of it is no matter what the green movement does eventually all the coal and all the oil will be burnt and the emissions go into the atmosphere.
I say go for it Don Juan! Then he wanted to knock them down not build them.
Jennifer said that she has never received any money from the Japanese for making her blog running a prowhaling line….however I have heard from very prominent whale researchers ( not Greenpeace) that your organisation has received many ….. so its word against word!
And the IPA is known to not publicly disclosure which companies fund its operations.
AEF is also working for weakening environmental laws and weakening the power of unions( for Gordon).
” “Shill” can also be used pejoratively to describe a critic who appears either all-too-eager to heap glowing praise upon mediocre offerings, or who acts as an apologist for glaring flaws. In this sense, they would be an implicit “shill” for the industry at large, as their income is tied to its prosperity” this is to Luke!
Birdie – “…however I have heard from very prominent whale researchers ( not Greenpeace) that your organisation has received many ….. so its word against word!”
Prove it, give us the names of your confidants and the amounts Jennifer has received and from whom.
If you don’t you are confirmed as a slandering liar.
Peter W,
I can very well e-mail privately to Jennifer the names, but then I wait as well that the IPA is as open as well shows the companies that fund her organisation….
Perer W,
Like the blog your statement is very unprofessional. How do you know how the IPA is running? Your statement is pure fantasy and wish thinking. I can only see that ONE person or two can answer my statement and that is Jennifer or somebody from the Japanese whaling industry. You have zero to do with this!
Sorry Peter W….
“But please tone down your rhetoric a bit. That amount of vitriol is not helpful.”
Why are you telling ME this. Have you been around to the Quiggin’s place and bitch-slapped him and his coterie for abusing serious analysts and conscientious scientists? Have you been around to slap Harry Clarke down for his promiscuous use of the word “denialist” which is an open claim of lying and science-whoredom when its the other side? How about Lambert? You been around to his place?
What about Karoly? Have you requested the Where’s Waldo of the climate-unscience-world to tone it down?
These people openly abuse the owner of this blog and others on an almost weekly basis. And its them that are in denial of the science. Its them and not the people they are accusing.
How about you talk to them in a persistent way and then get back to me.
In case anyone missed it, Graeme Bird thinks we are in the middle of a brutal and pulverising ice age, that is without a shadow of a doubt about to get much much worse – I hope not much worse as I got brutally pulverised by a balmy west australian autumn day at the beach myself today. Remember those blokes in the 1970s who thought it was global cooling (I don’t, but apparently they were quite rabid if you believe sceptics)… well Birdy is one of them… just 30 years too late (which on a geological timescale is astoundingly accurate).
” I have never received any money from any whalers” – Jennifer Marohasy
Actually Jen might be right. I recall from an old whaling thread that Rune Frövik from the High North Alliance , Norway, told me in a comment in Norwegian ( see whaling thread) that the discussions on Jen’s site held too loosy quality to make it any interesting to participate in the whaling discussions.
I asked as well John Frizell from Greenpeace International to participate in the discussion but he was not interested….
“Actually Jen might be right.”
NO Jennifer IS right, thankyou.
Birdie – slander confirmed – you have no excuses. You’ve made the big bold accusations so either prove them or appologise. Jennifer replied she has not been paid by your anonymous whalers and you repeated your second hand accusations which compounds your slander. You are typical of the cowards who haunt the web – all mouth and no responsibility.
If it’ll make Birdie happy to have more slander-fodder, I volunteer to accept money from the whalers, but I won’t give them anything in return. That’ll help fund my chocolate Jones. Did you know about the correlation between chocolate and high intelligence?
Just on the greens and nuclear… well as a grassroots organisation it starts at the grass-roots, but I’d wager that the Greens is the 1st out of them, the ALP and the Libs to have a coherent pro-nuclear policy, based upon IFR technology.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2545996.htm (courtesy of Bravenewclimate).