The rank hypocrisy displayed by former Greens leader, Bob Brown, over his opposition to the proposed Robbins Island wind farm in Tasmania has mushroomed, with Brown likening the project to poker machines. From SBS News: Former Greens leader Bob Brown has defended his opposition to a proposed wind farm in Tasmania’s north west, comparing the
Former Greens leader Bob Brown is campaigning against the proposed Robbins Island wind farm in Tasmania. The $1.6 billion project will be one of the world’s biggest wind farms if it goes ahead, and a new undersea cable would be built to take the electricity it produces to the Australian mainland. Brown claims that the
Nice podcast here from Grants discussing the significance of the recent Baoshang Bank default in China with Carl E. Walter, a former bank executive, coauthor of Red Capitalism: “(Baoshang) is scaring everybody because they’re not the only one. They’re the one that couldn’t hold it together in the end, but… I’ve been trying… to figure out
by Chris Becker While the latest new car sales figure highlighted a systemic underyling economic weakness in Australia, there is a glimmer of hope: electric! From the VFACTS data by Jason Murphy at The New Daily comes this interesting chart: Electric-only car sales have nearly doubled from barely nothing to something to talk about, while
Via Global energy Monitor: Through a massive increase in portside infrastructure, floating offshore terminals, and oceangoing LNG vessels, the natural gas industry is seeking to restructure itself from a collection of regional markets into a wider and more integrated global system. If successful, this transformation would lock in much higher levels of natural gas production
Via the ABC: Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have reached record highs in many sectors, continuing an upward trend that began in 2013, according to official Government figures released on Thursday. The Federal Government’s Quarterly Update of the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory for the three months to December 2018 shows emissions increased by 0.8 per cent
The Australian energy carcass is being torn apart by hyenas today. Leading off are the dying manufacturers: Australia’s big energy users will hold urgent talks with the federal government requesting emergency gas market measures to ensure heavy industry can stay afloat amid opposition from top producers to government intervention in the sector. The country’s largest
Is it an asteroid? Is it a plague? No, it’s The Guardian Australia: Australia’s major political parties are facing calls to explain what role they will play in securing a global deal to save nature after a major scientific report warned a million species across the world face extinction. The assessment by an international scientific panel
By Leith van Onselen The Economist ran an interesting article on how overpopulation and climate change are straining the world’s water supplies, with Australia likely to experience a “severe water shortage” by mid-century: Last year Cape Town in South Africa averted only narrowly the unwanted prize for being the first of the world’s big cities
There’s one at Domain: The key economist cited in the election row on climate change has doused fears of a major blow to growth from deeper cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, saying the impact would be a “small fraction” of the economy by 2030. Australian National University Professor Warwick McKibbin said federal government policy to
Via the FT comes Martin Wolf: Will China emerge as a high-income country still ruled by a communist party state? If China were to achieve this, it would transform a world in which all large, high-income countries are currently democratic. It would reshape the global balance of power, not just economically and militarily, but also
Crikey sums it up: Taylor far from electrifying. There was considerable fun to be had on the weekend with the government’s and News Corp’s attempts to attack Labor’s electric car plan. Bill Shorten’s claim that electric cars could be charged in 10 minutes was seized on by News Corp to attack him, while Scott Morrison accused Shorten of wanting
Via The Australian: Energy Networks Australia warned in a submission to the Senate’s recent electric vehicle inquiry that growing numbers of EVs, combined with the nation’s flat energy pricing structure, could worsen energy peaks and exceed the capacity of low-voltage networks. “Australia’s distribution networks were not designed for any significant uptake of electric vehicles and
God save me from the AEMO: The Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) latest analysis finds that supply from existing and committed gas developments is expected to provide sufficient resources to meet demand in southern and south-eastern Australia until 2023. However, additional sources of gas supply are required to address a forecast gap in meeting long-term
Via the AFR: The centrepiece of Labor’s plan to reduce carbon emissions – a baseline and credit scheme for the nation’s top 250 emitters – appears doomed with the Coalition opposed to the entire policy and the Greens hostile towards several elements, including letting companies offset emissions by buying international carbon permits. If Labor wins
Via The Australian: Bill Shorten will impose an aggressive pollution cap on industry and business if elected, in a bid to meet Labor’s ambitious climate change targets, and will push for half of all new cars sold in Australia to be electric within a decade. On the eve of the federal budget, the Opposition Leader
There are reasons to be optimistic. More infrastructure is coming. But there are other, more powerful forces, that make it a worry. We know steel demand is being dented by the manufacturing recession and weak car demand. But the big one is realty. It always is, constituting 30-40% of steel consumption. This is a problem
Because that is its plan. The ACCC confirmed yesterday that the gas cartel is still taking the major piss, via The Australian: Gas prices on Australia’s east coast are set to fall this winter, potentially providing some relief to long-suffering manufacturers and heavy industry, according to data from the competition watchdog. Domestic gas prices may
The problem with being insane is that you become self-satirising. You’re own behaviour exits so far outside accepted norms that it becomes a comedic reassertion of the same. We had one recent example of this in the Scummo & Co defense of Paedo Pell. But that it small fry compared to today’s debacle as School Strike
The RBA was out last night discussing climate change and posted the following chart of energy costs which confirms our view that it is game over for coal: These numbers are largely in line with our numbers on electricity costs from various sources and since it has been over a year since I last
Via Damien Boey at Credit Suisse: Overnight, RBA Deputy Governor Debelle delivered a speech about climate change, and its implications for economic policy. Some key points are as follows: Climate change affects the agricultural sector of the economy. While agriculture is becoming less significant from a GDP perspective, food prices are still a major driver
The reason why is obvious at The Australian: Coal-fired power generation would fall by 60 per cent within the next decade to meet Labor’s 45 per cent emissions-reduction target, leading to the likely closure of more than half the existing east coast plants, according to independent expert modelling. The closures would bring an end to
No real surprise. Via The Guardian: The multinational mining giant Glencore spent millions bankrolling a secret, globally coordinated campaign to prop up coal demand by undermining environmental activists, influencing politicians and spreading sophisticated pro-coal messaging on social media. An investigation by Guardian Australia can reveal the covert campaign, dubbed “Project Caesar”, was orchestrated by world-renowned political operatives
By Leith van Onselen The man that once waved a lump of coal around parliament has announced a $2 billion Climate Solutions Fund to reduce Australia’s emissions. From The ABC: Prime Minister Scott Morrison will today launch a new pre-election climate change policy, pledging $2 billion for projects to bring down Australia’s emissions. The Climate
Via EnergyQuest at the AFR: One third of Queensland’s new $84 billion LNG export industry is likely to be forced to close down by 2025 due to shortages of coal seam gas reserves and the need for shipments to be diverted to local users, according to a detailed analysis of the sector. The findings by
by Chris Becker While the headline looks bad at first glance, there’s still a lot of good news for renewable energy investors and energy consumers with the Bloomberg New Energy Finance annual report out this week. Global clean energy investment totaled $332.1 billion in 2018, down 8% on 2017; last year was the fifth in
By Leith van Onselen The impossibility of Australia meeting its emissions target has been laid bare by lecturers at Deakin University. From The Conversation: In signing the Paris Climate Agreement, the Australian government committed to a global goal of zero net emissions by 2050. Australia’s promised reductions to 2030, on a per person and emissions
by Chris Becker Aussie Aussie Aussie! Another record for the ages with the Bureau of Meteorology revealing that 2018 was the third hottest year on record, with global temperatures in 2018 to be the fourth-warmest year on record since 1880 (2015-2017 being the warmest): Drought prevention and relief, plus water security issues have never been more important, but
Via Platts: A total of 16,900 MW of U.S. power generation capacity retired in 2018, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data, far more than the 11,569 MW retired in 2017. Coal-fired capacity made up nearly 70% of the capacity retired in 2018, totaling about 11,800 MW, despite efforts by the Trump administration to ease regulations
Via the AFR: Gas producers are privately voicing reservations about proposals that would require them to report on sales contracts, reserves and export prices, worried that the measures intended to increase transparency in the under-pressure east coast market could put them at a commercial disadvantage. The recommendations, released by the national competition regulator and the
