1. tripling our energy costs
2. not making meaningful cuts in emissions
3. nukes

2. is not an actual option.

So your choice is between cheap nuclear and expensive renewables.

I don’t buy the premise that geothermal, wind, passive solar, PV solar etc etc are more expensive than nuclear. But even if they were – and always remained more expensive – we’d still pay for it.

We pay a lot of money for our petrol already. We’d pay a lot more than we do now for our electricity. We don’t notice our electricity bills. They are in the salad roll and milkshake territory. We don’t economise. We run ridiculous levels of air-conditioning; we don’t turn off endless gadgets in the home and workplace; we light our bldgs all night long; we flood our environment with unnecessary lighting; we heat outdoor dining tables; we run huge mostly empty coke dispensing fridges; plasma screens in every public space we can find; we ain’t begun to even look at our excessive consumption.

CSIRO do research into computer modelling of “granular media” with the aim of improving the efficiency of mining and other industrial processes. Obviously with the current Australian mining boom, a lot of ore is being crushed into small pieces. According to a recent CSIRO talk I attended, rock crushers operate at about 1% efficiency, and a large rock crusher (e.g. at Olympic dam) consumes the same amount of electricity as a large regional centre (e.g. Ballarat). Yet the detailed mathematics/physics of rock crushing is poorly understood.

CSIRO Particulate Dynamics

I’m yet to be convinced that people’s ickiness about nuclear power extends to being are willing to pay in the order of 40 cents a kilowatt hour for the alternative. And, unless energy storage starts improving, that’s what we might end up paying. And even if householders are, I very much doubt industry will wear it when there is a cheaper alternative.

Nuclear will not fly in this country. So put that out of your head. And move on.

The trouble with most renewables is that the technology for storing energy and releasing when we need it (demand management can help to some extent, but it’s not a panacea) is way, way, way behind the renewables tech; and even ignoring that renewables are in my view currently a lot dearer than the alternatives. Geosequestration is unproven and the costs are highly uncertain. That’s why I think that ruling out nuclear is unrealistic. Yes, I’ve thought a lot about the downsides as well; I don’t have the time or space to go into details here, but my conclusion is that some of them are flat-out wrong, some are highly exaggerated, and what’s left is acceptable when you look at other things we live with without any great concern.

I would still argue that PV does not yet encapsulate the full benefits because most retailers do not buy your PV power at peak rates where appropriate (often just providing a flat rate) – peak wholesale power rates can be significantly higher because that’s when your gas turbines/peaking plants need to kick in. Yet we continue to compare PV prices to essentially baseload power rates.

Nor do they take into account the fact that you just saved the elec company the cost of upgrading/maintaining transmission lines from latrobe valley (say) to Melb and having to add capacity to existing peaking plants.

I do take your point though that the hype of PV has tended to mask the much cheaper and easier gains to be had through energy efficiency.

After energy efficiency – what do you see as the next best/most sensible way of reducing emissions? (Please just point me to another thread if you’ve covered it there…)

m

It’s not about doing the stitching and sewing here, it’s about design, brand development, product development within the brand and management setting up the supply and distribution networks etc. – mainly brain work.

In industry development policy we need to look at how we can set the right environment so that Australia is the best place in the world to do the brain work for clusters of industries and then manage the commercialisation. What this means in renewable energy is for people smarter than I am to work out.

And the “full benefits” of solar are fully encapsulated by the fact they’re competing against retail electricity, not wholesale. They’re still multiple times dearer than power off the grid. Maybe this will change over the next few years. Maybe not. We’ve been promised cost reductions for years, but they’re not happening.

I don’t have anything against solar panels, per se. I just want to see us put our efforts into reducing emissions as much as possible, as cheaply as possible. And solar panels, for the medium term at least, will only be able to deliver minimal emissions reductions at a very high price. What really shits me, however, is the fact that relentless campaigning by various environmental organizations has left the general public with the mistaken belief that solar panels are a sensible short-term solution to the problem.