Via Bloomie: The answer to the renewable energy industry’s biggest challenge is emerging in the Australian outback. Early next year, one of the first power projects that combine solar and wind generation with battery storage is planning to start up in northern Queensland state. The Kennedy Energy Park, just outside the sleepy town of Hughendon,
Every modern nation needs good billionaires to fight evil ones. I have my issues with Mike Cannon-Brookes and the Atlassian cheap labour arbitrage model but on climate change he’s excellent, via David Crowe: “The people protesting over climate change are not quiet Australians. They are being loud because the government is quiet on the climate,”
Some nice examples of belting sheilas around the face so that they can no longer terrosise billion dollar miner conglomerates, via Crikey: Attempts by protesters to blockade the International Mining and Resources Conference (IMARC) in Melbourne have been met by a… let’s call it a heavy-handed police response. Videos of cops shoving, hitting and unleashing
Look out below, at The Guardian: They were meant to be futuristic marvels, allowing thrill-seeking tourists to feel like they were walking on air. But China’s growing obsession with glass bridges may be coming to an abrupt end, after a series of accidents led one province to close down all its glass-bottomed attractions. Hebei, a
Via Sinocism today: The Fourth Plenum has concluded, there was no announcement of any personnel changes other than the automatic ascension to full membership of the two alternate Central Committee members discussed yesterday. Sinocism readers were right to be very skeptical of the rumors going around, though the lack of any public sign of pressure
It just keeps getting weirder, via The Australian: An extra $1bn will be pumped into the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to turbocharge development of next-generation electricity production and upgrade the transmission network to future-proof the grid and drive down prices. The first new capital provided to the CEFC since it was established in 2012 will
How the narrative has turned, via the ABC: Climate change protesters have clashed with police in violent scenes outside an international mining conference in Melbourne. Police arrested 47 people outside the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre, where the International Mining and Resources Conference (IMARC) is being held this week. About 250 demonstrators were met by
Neither. It’s going to stagnate. Some links from Sinocism as we head into the Fourth Plenum: China Braces for Sub-6% Economic Growth in Key Policy Meetings – Bloomberg Data released Friday showed an economy expanding at just 6.0%, the slowest in almost three decades, and with broad investment growth too tepid to rely on an
Via Wood Mackenzie: International gas and LNG prices have collapsed. For most of 2019, the global market has seen improving gas supply and intense supplier competition result in lower prices. In August 2019, Asian spot LNG prices went below U.S.$4 per million British thermal unit (mmBtu) (A$5.70 per gigajoule (GJ)), two and a half times
Every day it is the same now. Chris Kenny: The extent of daily political deception in the global warming debate is extraordinary. The most obvious and relevant facts go unreported and the most pressing questions are not asked. It is an unspoken conspiracy of misinformation perpetrated by large elements of the media whose starting point
He did nothing all of the time and when goaded into movement did stupid, via the ABC: The promised Snowy Hydro 2.0 project will be an expensive white elephant according to a leading energy expert. “Here is a project that is likely to cost five times more than the then prime minister [Malcolm Turnbull] said
Via Domain: Australia would fail to meet its Paris Agreement commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions even with a $US75 carbon tax that would drive up Australia’s electricity prices by 75 per cent over the next decade. Research by the International Monetary Fund, released on Friday, shows Australia is still so dependent on coal and
Bloomberg just published another stark reminder of the shifting landscape for energy generation – fossil fuels have a limited time as viable sources of energy. And I’m not talking about saving the planet or carbon taxes, simply economics. Coal, gas, oil, all have economics based on a scarcity curve: the more we use, the deeper
What could possible go wrong? Via the ABC: It’s 2029 and every merchant ship in the world is fertilising the ocean with iron — a last-ditch effort to draw carbon dioxide from the air as global emissions near the point of no return. This global attempt to remove CO2 from the atmosphere has been 11
MB has been a great admirer of Andrew Bolt’s exposure of Gladys Liu and his longer term fight to bring rationality to population growth. But in another area, Bolt’s stubbornness refuses to adapt to changing circumstances. For many years, Bolt denied that there were rising temperatures globally. Time has proven him comprehensively wrong: These days
This is one for Betoota: In just five hours, those living in the coastal town of Stockton Beach watched in horror as the heart and soul of their community was washed away. “It’s a crisis, a complete crisis,” Lucas Gresham, a local of five generations, told news.com.au. “We’ve lost our suburb, because that beach is
I’ve given him a mighty serve on a foreign labour arbitrage business model and mass immigration hypocrisy but Mike Cannon-Brookes has some kick-arse ideas, via AFR: Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes will invest part of his personal wealth in an audacious $25 billion project to create the world’s biggest solar farm, its biggest power storage system,
Via The Guardian: Scott Morrison is increasingly seen as running a “denialist government” that is not serious about finding a global climate solution and uses “greenwash” to meet its emissions commitments, analysts and former diplomats say. Australian observers in New York said Morrison’s failure to attend a UN climate action summit on Monday despite being
Via the ABC: Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg has captured the world’s attention in a fierce and passionate speech at the United Nations headquarters, accusing world leaders of failing to act on climate change. The UN event was aimed at mobilising government and business to break international paralysis over carbon emissions, which hit record highs
Via New Daily: Global warming is already eroding Earth’s ecosystem in ways that will release misery on a global scale if it is not mitigated soon, a landmark UN report has revealed. The past five years were the hottest since global temperature records began, the report – compiled by the world’s leading scientists for the
Via Crikey comes a nice wrap of QLD troglodyte responses to the worst fires in 130 years: Campbell Newman Naturally, in the face of the calamity afflicting his beloved home state, former premier Campbell Newman did what any great statesman would do: he went searching through the archives to prove it really wasn’t that big a
Via The Guardian: A new snapshot of Australia’s clean energy sector warns new investment committed in the first half of 2019 has fallen back to 2016 levels, when Tony Abbott invited an investment strike when he tried to abolish the renewable energy target. While the Morrison government has been trumpeting record recent investment in renewable energy
Via The Guardian: Beijing has condemned Australia for acting like a “condescending master” towards Pacific countries, insulting climate-vulnerable nations and “spreading the China threat fallacy among island countries”. In excoriating remarks, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Pacific island leaders do not share Australia’s fear of Chinese influence in the Pacific, and accused Australian
Via AFR today: In late February Peter Coates, Glencore’s non-executive director, appeared at an event in Sydney to make a rare intervention from a mining leader — a full-throated defence of the coal industry, whose very existence is under threat because of its role in global warming. …Six months later, the industry decided to take
China is out with its 70-city new house prices measure for July at 0.6 month and month a 9.7% year on year: Top tiers are still struggling but below that is strong: And strength remains quite broad based: Here they are: Stable gains.
China’s July data dump is out and there is no hiding the pain now. Industrial production hit the lowest level in living memory at 4.8%, retail sales retraced sharply to 7.6% and fixed asset investment slowed to 5.8%: Under the bonnet, real estate sales continue to fall: With developer land purchases signalling much worse ahead
Chinese inflation is out and it’s firm for consumers at 2.8%: But it’s all about pork as the epidemic of African swine fever slaughters supply and will thus pass: Meanwhile, and more importantly for Australia and the world, producer inflation is cooked and is about to plunge as the trade war hammers industry: Just wait
Via FTAlphaville comes the next phase in the fight against climate change: Edoardo Saravalle previously worked on sanctions and economic statecraft matters at the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think-tank. In this guest post, he proposes a different approach to tackling climate
Some amusing stuff today on US/China trade talks. They’re going nowhere, via Reuters: U.S. and Chinese negotiators wrapped up a round of trade talks on Wednesday without visible signs of progress and put off their next meeting until September, extending an uneasy truce between the world’s two largest economies for at least a month. …The
From the IEA: Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Electric Generator Report and Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory Between 2010 and the first quarter of 2019, U.S. power companies announced the retirement of more than 546 coal-fired power units, totaling about 102 gigawatts (GW) of generating capacity. Plant owners intend to retire another 17 GW of coal-fired capacity by
