Prospects for climate change policy
December 3rd, 2009 by Brian | Published in Climate change | 166 Comments
I’ve been out today, and was framing a post in my mind about what’s been discussed on this thread. Rather than plonk a very long comment there I’ve done a new post. Some of it repeats material from the commentary on that thread.
Labor
Labor had a policy of targets of 5 to 25% emissions reduction by 2020, with 5% definite, but more depending on the form at Copenhagen. I canvassed the form in this post. The main one I forgot was Japan who reckon 25% depending on what others do.
Countries have been urged by the UN to bring their target commitments along, so it wasn’t just for Rudd’s ego. Stern, when asked, said we matter. And so we do as one of the major emitters in absolute terms and the highest per capita in the OECD.
Garnaut in his Hawke Lecture (p.10) quotes the Climate Institute as saying that according to Copenhagen form we should be going for about 15%.
So it will be interesting to see whether Labor varies it’s target in February in the light of Copenhagen. I’m betting they won’t, largely because they now have to counter the ‘big tax’ scare. So when Greg Combet says:
But Mr Combet signalled the policy shift yesterday under the cover of Liberal Party turmoil, saying it would be Government policy ”from here on in”.
He said the negotiated agreement endorsed by the shadow cabinet and the Coalition party room, and ”which the Liberal extremists have now undermined – that deal is now our policy that we will take forward”.
Very likely he means it quite literally. If so their only chance of getting it through is in a double dissolution. When that might be is beyond me.
I don’t think Labor will move away from a ETS type solution.
Liberals
Apart from contemplating nukes (which would take time) Abbott has ruled out an ETS and a carbon tax, although he did say that a price on carbon could be a possibility when all our competitors did the same.
He has settled on the 5% as a target, whereas Turnbull had accepted Labor’s 5-25%
This leaves essentially an eclectic approach, a swag of different initiatives. As John D observes @ 117 you could go close to 25%, but for a couple of problems. It’s likely that the Libs are allergic to too much regulation and they might need a bit of money. After blathering so much nonsense about Labor’s debt they won’t have any.
Also we need to consider the effect of the anti-AGW mob, who Judy Moylan reckons amount to a third of Libs, to which you can add all the Nats. It depends on how many are sceptics and how many are denialists. The former may accept the need for risk management, the latter will only put up with action that doesn’t cost.
The Nationals
They think they’ve won a great victory, but they are left with a big gamble. If the Coalition wins the next election, they’ll be fine. Other than that they should be hoping for a DD with Labor being able to push through the deal they’ve already got without depending on the Greens.
Business
Business reactions vary, but I found this comment from Nathan Fabian of the Investors Group on Climate Change interesting:
Our members represent half a trillion dollars of investment money and so they need a price on carbon. They, and we were comfortable, we could’ve worked with the emissions trading scheme as it was negotiated, a way to price that carbon risk so they can factor it in.
Unfortunately just information on climate change isn’t going to get us there. We know it’s a risk, we know it’s an issue. We just need practical, regulatory tools that help us deal with it in our day jobs. And unfortunately that opportunity has been taken away for the time being.
The Greens
Given that Labor dealt them out their honour is intact and might be invited into the sandpit if Labor goes full term and wins.
Back in June I had a look at the Greens’ climate vision as portrayed in Christine Milne’s National Press Club speech, coming to this conclusion:
Paul Gilding reckons that the world economy, which is already using 1.2 planets if we look at sustainability, is a giant Ponzi scheme paying out capital as dividends. The Chinese specifically, he says, may get to be rich for about 10 years before civilisation collapses around them.
But he thinks we are so addicted to the Ponzi scheme (we are planning to treble it in world per capita GDP terms while we increase the population by 50%) that it is going to have to fail before we break the addiction.
I think the Greens vision with perhaps a tweak here and there represents the most ambitious strategy I know of by a serious political party. If they went more ambitious they would risk being written off as nutters. But seriously we are not going to have prime minister Brown or Milne before 2020. And our present players are so enjoying the Ponzi scheme that they will to join forces rather than allow the Greens any leverage.
That’s sad and our progeny will pay.
There needs to be some kind of carbon taxation disincentive, whatever you call it.
Grassroots activism is good, too. For instance: Opt-Out of Phonebook distribution
http://www.about.sensis.com.au/community/environment.php
Nobody needs these damn things anymore.
Australia’s Chief Scientist Prof. Sackett on ABC2 Breakfast News scotches the dingbats climate bullshit.
“We matter .. as one of the major emitters in absolute terms and the highest per capita in the OECD … our progeny will pay”
I note the stats coming out that we have overtaken the States to be world’s most profligate in the housing footprint stakes. Theirs has reduced over the last decade while ours went up 10%, accompanied by a .05 person per home increase to 2.56 pph. Victorians are the world champs with 224.5 sq metres the average new construction. Nationally the average is 214.6 sq metres, and if you just count the freestanding McMansions, they average out at a whopping 245.3 sq mtrs.
Meanwhile the Brits make do with an average home size of 76 sq mtrs, a mere third of what it takes to shelter the average GirtBy4WDs homesteader. Hey, you have to be able to do donuts in the pool rooom, right?
What reasonable hope can there be of getting globally sustainable environmental policies out of parties that have to electorally pander to such an unconscienably FU-jack exceptionalist population as that?
Looking forward to the amazing gymnastics of climate deniers as they all follow the lead of Abbott and Barney Rubble..sorry Barnaby Joyce and become believers but only of a little bit of the warming. This will follow Bolt’s closing down of earlier blogs and one line phrases hidden among denialist rants claiming to only need convincing. In other words the same denial dressed up to appease the 67% who have no problems with AGW.
Abbott has started to glow in the dark already because the only plausible carbon reduction policy that doesn’t involve some form of tax (ETS, straight carbon tax) is nuclear power generation. This argument has legs but it will grow more than a radiated octopus.
The coming debate:
i) discount the views of anyone who cannot pronounce nuclear;
ii) point to the issue of power station management as the key factor in a long history of accidents and ask does anyone really think that the culture of Australian management is adequate to the task;
iii) in relation to ii) refer to australia’s hopeless history of failure on improving occupational health and safety;
iv) note that Ziggy Switktowski, currently spruikng for ANSTO, was the CEO for that much loved company TELSTRA;
v) argue that locating a nuke in anywhere other than a wealthy one is an act of ecological racism/classism because it externalises the risks onto the less well off and least powerful.
That ought to do it.
Brian said on the previous thread “You’d have to think that Wong/Rudd are keen to do as little as possible.”
I have thought this for some time now but it didn’t crystallise until Labour’s announcement that it would not go to a DD over the ETS and indeed would put it up for a third vote.
Call me a bit thick if you like with all the evidence, coal exports, big Australia, fossil fuel subsidies, handouts to big polluters, growth fetish, refusal to talk with the Greens, but I guess there was always the possibility that they were serious about reducing emissions but had their own strange little process to follow.
I think it is now blindingly clear that Labour intends to do as little as possible for as long as possible while putting the blame elswhere where possible and obfuscating the issue with Green rhetoric.
And now we have – the nuclear alternative. There are moments in my life that become continually recurring. Years and years ago I was stopped and charged by a copper on the way home from an ant-uranium demo in Armidale at which I’d read an anti-uranium poem. Years ago almost everybody I knew was anti nuclear. Years ago I joined that Nuclear Disarmament Party in Canberra and handed out fliers for them at the federal election, greatly annoying ALP friends. And here it is, all coming around again. When will it ever end?
for not wearing a seat belt in 7. Distracted by some-one at front door.
This just in, Liberals to offer a Climate Change fridge magnet as centrepiece of AGW policy.
It’s a pain, for sure, Paul @7.
Julie Bishop loves to talk of selling uranium to India who have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but no media tackle her on it. The obvious question to ask her and Tony is whether they would withdraw Australia from that commitment if they do not actively support it in spirit.
Paul Burns
I suspect I was at many of the same anti-nuke rallies in the early 1980s but the world has moved on from then.
It’s a question of risk management and timelines — and today, nuclear power is the easiest way to lower CO2 intensity in ways that are politically acceptable.
This past week has demonstrated how difficult it will be politically to punish voters for using energy. It will be every bit as difficult, if not more so, to get Waxman-Markey through in the US. In China they don’t need to worry about voters, but they do need to worry about social cohesion, and I doubt they want to artificially raise energy prices when they are trying to engineer a consumption-led economic recovery.
As much as I hate to admit it, Abbott is right that we need to find ways to combat climate change without a “Great Big Tax”. Its such an easy political target, most politicians from the left or right find it impossible to resist (apart from Malcolm Turnbull and the extreme green-left). Remember Keating pushing “Option C” in 1985 and then his merciless attack on the Hewson’s GST in 1993?
Politicians just can’t help themselves.
We need to throw away the sticks and concentrate on the carrots. At the consumer level we need to make energy conservation irresistibly attractive with generous rebates and tax concessions. Two star appliances should never be cheaper than six-star appliances. Gas guzzling cars should never be cheaper than fuel-efficient cars.
At the investment level we need to engineer a clean energy bubble with irresistible tax rorts. How about zero CGT tax on clean tech investments? Negative gearing for clean tech investments? A “first investors grant” for new first time clean energy investors? I mean, there’s one thing we’ve proven we can do well in recent years, and that’s create a speculative bubble. Why not do it for something useful?
Please note: I am not advocating such silliness as a superior policy to putting a price on carbon. I am advocating it as the only politically feasible policy.
The Australian had this to say about Abbot’s latest on climate action. It is amazing to see that the conservatives have rejected Labors clumsy market based approach in favour of direct action. It should also be noted that Abbot has now aligned himself with Labor’s emission reduction targets and has said that nuclear is a long term issue (not part of the 10 yr plan? So far, what he is talking about would allow us to meet the 25% target without too much trouble.
Wong and Rudd should take a deep breath and have a hard look at what Abbot is proposing. There is a good chance that what Abbot will end up with will be a better, lower cost and simpler way of achieving our 2020 targets than any version of CPRS or carbon taxing.
Paul, that copper was doing you a favour, intentional or not.
I marched against uranium in the 70′s but I don’t think it very likely we will have to do it again. More important to Walk Against Warming on Dec 12th, and there are several other issues more immediately threatening than nuclear power which could warrant a protest march.
John D, the CPRS would not have achieved any targets by 2020 so yes, even the Libs could do better. Wong and Rudd have been too clever by half.
The science demands 40% which the Greens have a plan to achieve without an ETS or Carbon tax.
CS Said:
In about ten minutes such a policy would get the WA Inc redux. Every rort, every fudge and every snafu would be down to the government “thinking it can invest better than the market”. So even in the short run, it’s not politically feasible.
As Heather Ridout from AIG noted today, the policy Abbott is winking at is going to cause ruptures in its base which the ALP will exploit, in concert with the fact that “half the party doesn’t believe in MMGW”. When Waxman Markey does get through, probably in early 2010 and the US can start putting a tariff on Australian lamb exports, for example then they will be able to quote Abbott and Bishop on the ETS timetable and trigger and their policy will look even more adhoc and on the run. Barnaby’s discomfiture on Lateline last night gave it away — and his last lines to TJ were virtually a temper tantrum.
Paul B #7:
No doubt the ALP friends were from the party’s Left and were displeased that you weren’t joining with them to assist in The Great Inner-Party Struggle.
In fairness, at least back in those days the ALP Left was genuinely waging an inner-party struggle for decent policies, and would have been sincerely mortified by the thought that 25 years later Jenny Macklin would be driving in the thin end of the wedge of a return to the Susso system for the poor, Anna Bligh would be presiding over the prosecution of Tegan Leach and Sergey Brennan under abortion laws enacted when women didn’t have the vote, and Penny Wong and Greg Combet would be hawking an environmental policy which considerably enriched the top end of town whilst making only marginal inroads into the gravest problem facing the planet.
“today, nuclear power is the easiest way to lower CO2 intensity in ways that are politically acceptable.”
This is obviously some new meanings of the words “easiest” and “politically acceptable” that I was unaware of.
d
Indeed, Darryl. Mining the stuff, transporting it to the power stations and building the power stations are all emissions intensive, and it will be quite some time before we would have enough nuke plants up and running to replace a large percentage of the carbon-fired plants.
I should add that my comment #17 is, by my standards, uncharacteristically sectarian towards the ALP Left. I will plead in mitigation that all the fatuous anti-Green sectarian snark on the open thread from people who are obviously ALP Lefties got my back up to the point where I could only get it back down again by releasing a bit of cathartic return fire.
Daryl Rosin@18
You may have missed this salient point, but “Australia” and “the world” are different. Australia is one of a handful of advanced economies that don’t use nuclear power and/or where the subject remains a shibboleth. You might note that Obama, for example, supports nuclear power.
Just as importantly, if we are to ask, as we surely must, developing countries to refrain from approaching per capita emissions comparable with those we are going to reduce ours to by 2020, we have to hope that most of the energy supporting their growth in GDP derives from nuclear power.
We have all heard the denier talking point that Australia’s emissions are irrelevant because “China is building a new coal fired power station every week” (actually it’s closer to one every ten days, but anyway …). If instead of doing that, every GW of what would have been new installed coal capacity were nuclear, should we be happy? I’d say so, because at a scale like that not only would the projections for GHG concentrations by 2020 be far lower, but the cost of nuclear everywhere else would drop dramatically. The chances for stabilising at 450ppmv and maybe lower would go way up. There is simply no way that any combination of renewables could have an impact on global GHG outcomes that would be comparable with such a development. The real pity is that this is unlikely to happen and China by 2020 is looking to go from 2% to 4% nuclear in this time.
I suspect that a developpment of nuclear power on the scale above would transform the debate here too in fairly short order.
I agree with John D @ 13, that Rudd and Wong should take a deep breath. Greg Hunt was emphasising “direct action” this morning and the Coalition are likely to come up with a whole raft of initiatives which are easy to understand and will make them look busy. Even if labor are doing all those things too, which is probable, they will be vulnerable to the big tax scare campaign.
Labor’s scare campaign will focus on AGW deniers, and as Tim Flannery said this morning the question of whether we can trust a bunch who have changed tack so many times.
I’d also agree with John D that considerable reductions are possible without an ETS or carbon tax. I’m just not sure whether it will involve regulation and funding that will be beyond the scope of what the Coalition will do.
What makes you so confident? The US economy is still a basketcase, support for the Democrats is falling fast, and they’re facing mid-term elections in less than 12 months. It will be sooooo easy for the Republicans to run a “Great Big Tax” scare campaign leading up to the mid-terms.
Ute Man’s back of the envelope calculation sez that even if we did start a nuke program right now, it would take too long and there isn’t enough fissionable material to replace coal anyway. It would be cheaper and more sensible to go geothermal / solar base load with molten salt as the link in the article says.
Unfortunately, both require clean water and lots of it, which we are also running out of. The cupboard is bare ETS or no ETS.
(although Ute Man also thinks that if nukes are the only way we’re going to appease mining companies and “rock hard intellects” like People Skills, we have little choice but to try it).
Paul N @ 20, back in the 70s we would have said that they had absorbed dominant class values. Line them up against the wall as class traitors, I say!
Paul above: how’s this for irony? Years ago, before the coal miner’s union had crawled into the pockets of the mine owners, for a period their paper “Common Cause” had a banner that read ‘The Purpose of the Labor Party is to Advance the Interests of the Working Class: One by One’. Poor Labor left at least in NSW. No chance for them with the Sussex St bullies running the show.
Fran: and would we all send the nuclear waste to Russia, like the French do with theirs? Or would we store the world’s waste in those nominated areas in the NT? You know, the ones where no-one lives. In fact the same no-ones who didn’t live at Maralinga.
Anthony
I’d be for storing it here, possibly in the Pilbara somewhere near a rail hub. I’d also favour accepting hazmat from
a) all states we sold uranium to and
b) any state which declared it had less feasible means for storing it securely than us
It’s the responsible thing to do. It would also mean that if we went with IFRs or thorium that we’d have plenty of ready-to-use Pu as the fissile material.
Anthony, I think you’re being a little bit hard on the current stance of the coal miners’ union. Their policy on climate change and the CPRS isn’t as green as I’d like, but it’s substantially different from and better than that of the mine owners.
Also, they’re coming at the climate change issue from a difficult position. Some other blue collar unions with a strong tradition of social unionism (such as the AMWU in Australia and the Canadian Auto Workers) are in a position where arguing for strong climate change policies is unproblematic in terms of their members’ interests, as the necessary structural adjustments will entail renewal of manufacturing industries and development of new manufacturing industries which can provide lots of good jobs for their members. In the case of coal mining unions, the dilemma they face is that (a) any adequate climate change mitigation policy will probably require the serious curtailment, not just the reform, of the industry that employs them and (b) retraining and re-employment of coal mining workers on a basis which compares financially with their current wages and conditions is arguably more challenging than for other categories of workers. The second point is acknowledged by US environmental economist Eban Goodstein in his book The Trade-Off Myth.
Looking at the policy instruments available to achieve emmission reduction they are: a carbaon tax, cap and trade market based system and regulation. Regulation, in whatever form tends to hide the costs of adjustment, is less transparent and is not generally comprehensive in reach.
Tony has ruled out the first two so is left with a policy instrument that involves central decisionmaking by government – sounds like stalinism to me. what a paradox – the only question is whether the government will take him on on this front.
On the nuclear power front – this is only likely to be economically feasible with a substantial carbon price – something he has ruled out.
The Coalition must be dumber than I thought.
I support leaving the nuclear option open for Australia, but ignoring externalities it’s going to be considerably more expensive than coal and gas in Australia for some time to come (whether it’s going to be cheaper than renewables is a complex question which is irrelevant to the point I’m about to make).
So, if the conservatives want nuclear power plants built here instead of coal or gas, they’re either going to have to:
a) put a price on carbon.
b) directly subsidize the construction of nuclear power stations, or
c) go into the electricity market and build them themselves.
They’ve just tied themselves in knots over a), and by the same principles b) should be anathema. As for c), would Nick Minchin and co like to go down in history as the government that created a federal version of the State Electricity Commission?
Ute man, there is no shortage of fissionable material to replace coal. There just isn’t. Nor are the energy costs of mining the stuff a significant issue. Nor does nuclear power require lots of fresh water. Amongst other options, you can cool them with seawater perfectly well; conveniently, the vast majority of Australia’s population lives on the coast. The reason why we don’t do this for our coal-fired power is because it’s cheaper to build power stations on top of coal mines. Nuclear fuel is so compact that transportation costs (and energy costs of transportation) are essentially lost in the noise.
Fran Barlow, the traditional owners might have a few thoughts about appropriate storage areas.
I think the debate should have always concentrated on renewables. As soon as the Greens were out of the frame of negotiations the ETS was simply a political ball for the government (which is what they wanted). And as has been said before there was no need because this PM has so much political capital. He could tax beer in workers clubs across the country and probably only drop a point, and probably even within the MOE.
Additionally, I think we should actually have a look at what Copenhagen is discussing. ETS mechanisms are a fairly minor part of those negotiations. As for Nuclear, it is now firming as a major part of Copenhagen discussions with India obviously keen to take part.
Uteman@24
Actually the main problem is not lack of water — since you don’t need potable standard water to do geoethermal or solar thermal anyway.
The real problem is the back end — how do we convey this power from the solar thermal or geothermal site to the grid? HVDC lines cost about $2m dollars per Km if Liddell is any indication. Prohibitive.
Geoethermal does have the advantage of not requiring substantial redundant capacity, but solar thermal is going to need considerable back up, which adds further to the cost.
It is true that nuclear is not going to be built here in a hurry, but you are wrong on there not being adequate fissionable material. In addition to our substantial RARs of uranium, we also have about 20% of the world’s Th-232, so no problem there.
Robert Merkel wrote:
The good burghers of the Oil Drum disagree Robert – sure, they’re doomers, but mining uranium requires energy in and of itself and the proven deposits won’t last as long as people think if you assume our energy needs continue to grow the same way as they have been for the last 50 years.
Rob @ 32: Politically the Coalition doesn’t need to directly build nukes to be have a climate change policy that’s acceptable to the public. The public wants the government to “do something” about climate change, that’s all. That something could be subsidised domestic solar PV, more wind farms, demonstration solar thermal, demonstration CCS, demonstration geothermal etc etc etc. It doesn’t have to be an effective policy to counter “Labor’s Great Big Tax”, it just needs to sound like they’re taking the problem seriously.
Fran,
My apologies for assuming that in a thread about Australia’s climate change policies that you would be writing about the prospects for nuclear in Australia.
The global trend for nuclear is that “even if Finland and France each builds a reactor or two, China goes for an additional 20 plants and Japan, Korea or Eastern Europe add a few units, the overall worldwide trend will most likely be downwards over the next two decades”
I’ll refrain from pontificating about the internal politics of other countries (for a change) beyond noting that the decline of nuclear power over the last two decades has been politically driven.
As for the ease of developing nuclear power, particularly in the developing world:
The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2009, http://www.bmu.de/english/nuclear_safety/downloads/doc/44832.php
I’ve got to go out, but a couple of things before I do.
First, we will have to wait and see how effective the coal lobby will be on Abbott’s policy.
Secondly, Labor can’t change tack from an ETS approach, because a carbon tax is now off limits and an eclectic approach has been collared by the other mob. What else is there?
PN @ 17,
was the Right, actually. They swore they’d never talk to me again. And that they would remember. As if I gave a flying F.
The good burghers of the Oil Drum are flat wrong on this one, Ute Man.
They assume (wrongly) that there’s no way to improve the fuel efficiency of nuclear reactors, they assume that uranium is the only thing that reactors can be run on, and they assume that current proven deposits have anything to do with the amount of uranium which can ultimately be extracted economically.
They are wrong on all three counts.
I have a question for Robert Merkel if I may?
On the “Andrew Murray Sez” Thread you said
I accept the argument but was wondering if you could provide any links to source materials that drew that conclusion? Thanks.
Brian Toohey on policy issues: http://inside.org.au/an-exotic-answer-to-a-real-world-problem/
Paul: the Miner’s fed would be a key ally for common sense but they really are going to have to come to grips with their position. They once had a strong tradition of solidarity and self help and my own preference would be to send a lot of money currently designed for the mine owners in the direction of mine workers as a big sweetener. Miners are skilled workers and trained to work safe. Consequently they are perfectly capable of understanding the seriousness of the situation. It would be good if they took a clear position but so far so little.
Fran: the Pilbara. Good. Cyclones and Aboriginal workers. Oh, wait a minute. They don’t employ Aborigines in the mines much there at all anyway. But what the hey?
Did I miss something? I was under the impression the Greens were in favour of a Garnaut-style ETS.
By “politically acceptable”, presumably you’re meaning “without unacceptable increases energy costs”. Trouble is, nuclear isn’t immune to this. All options, except improving efficiency, require increases in energy costs.
So instead of a “great big tax”, we’d have “a bunch of little taxes”. Or, we could just go with the “great big tax”.
It seems to me that once you look at the problem this way, it starts to become apparent why there was something of a policy consensus that economic instruments like an ETS or carbon tax were the way to go.
John D was right when he said we could go close to a 25% cut by replacing the coal-fired power stations, except for the bit where he said “simple”. That’s actually the question we’re dealing with: how do you do it? An ETS is one way, with pros and cons – the cons are more apparent right now. But if you’re promoting some other approach, you need to show how it will work, in detail. If we’re going to replace all the coal-fired power stations, how should we go about doing it? Will there be a mandated phase-out? Will the replacement technologies be chosen by the utilities or mandated by government? Or will government buy out all the utilities and roll out new technologies according to some legislated plan? How will the technologies be chosen? How much will it cost? What about compensation, “stranded assets”, etc (i.e. the same problems you have to deal with when you’re using an ETS)? An ETS is one way to answer all these questions. Maybe it’s not the best way. But just saying “we’ll just replace all the coal-fired power stations” is not a policy.
I hope so Robert, but the article from the oil drum makes some pretty clear points about the falling production of Uranium and the rather stunning gap between the assumed proven reserves Uranium and the actual production before decline of old uranium deposits:
Gail the actuary sez ouch
She also pokes a couple of holes in the “we might magically find MOAR” argument. The oil industry already failed with that one.
Overall, assuming Abbott is sincere in his support of nuclear energy (which as others have pointed out, will require nothing other than massive state intervention) it may end up being a dead end. We already know that Abbott is capable of enormous cognitive dissonance, so perhaps he isn’t being as “wedge cunning” as Howard was when this was first proposed, just stupid. I hope not.
Abbott’s emerging climate policy reminds me of Turnbull and Hunt’s “Green Carbon Initiative” from January 2009, but with the addition of nuclear power. He’s certainly thrown down the gauntlet by saying there will be no carbon price.
I’m also wondering if the gap which emerged between Liberals and Nationals over the need for climate action is still there, and is actually now politically convenient for the Liberals. People who think it’s all just a fraud and a nonsense can go with the Nationals, leaving Abbott free to affirm the need for action but in a non-Labor way.
Daryl@38
Apology accepted. bear in mind though that CO2 is not a respecter of national frontiers, and so climate change policy has to be one in which our policy is part of the whole. We don’t get to say we hate nukes on principle if we want others to take this up, so that we can benefit from the reductions in CO2 concentration that result.
Your broader objections to the development of nuclear power in the developing world are a statement of current trends and associated constraints, but it’s possible that in the course of the next decade that many of these will be overcome. However this may be, if China, Russia, Brazil, Soeth Afrcia, the US and India were to substantially decarbonise using nuclear power, then the cost of this would be lower than by resort to any other means and the effect would be significant. Were they to do so, many other places would find ways of following suit since the installed cost of nuclear power would fall radically.
It may also be that the rollout of “mini nukes” (UH3 devices) may address some of the problems of scaleability of nuclear power. Hyperion is apparently producing 25MW versions of their nuclear battery which are hands-off systems.
That might just do the trick.
The punters clearly don’t understand the CPRS (beyond the fear that its a “Great Big Tax”) but they do understand that solar panels and wind farms are clean energy sources. All the Coalition needs to do is put out some fridge magnet saying their spending $X billion dollars of other people’s money on lots of solar and wind and they’ll convince enough people that they’re serious about climate change.
If you were a swinging voter struggling to pay the bills, with only a superficial knowledge of climate change issues, what would you prefer — a “Great Big Tax” or solar panels in the desert?
Most voters are far more interested in Celebrity Master Chef than global warming.
Have a look at Section 9.2 of the Garnaut review for a start, Senexx.
Tim Macknay@45
That, and the ability to parry scare campaigns around brownouts/blackouts and living in caves.
As to the stranded assets question, that’s a benefit since it allows the state to acquire assets more cheaply than would be the case if the market context tneded to underpin the value of the asset. That’s where an ETS comes in. We can shield those we deem deserving from the losses but leave the others to come to us as supplicants.
Anthony Nolan@45 said:
Sorry, you will need to develop this claim if you think it salient. What point are you making, precisely? How are cyclones or Aboriginal workers a problem for hazmat storage?
Ute Man, Gail the Actuary knows nothing about these things and is not a reliable source of information. The Oil Drum might be a fun read, but if you’re looking for accurate information on energy issues you need to look elsewhere. Everything on the Oil Drum is skewed by their dogmatic belief that civilisation will collapse once oil production starts declining. And plus most of them have no relevant technical knowledge. Even the ones who do only understand the oil industry, not the broader energy industry.
And for those who want to see why a carbon tax is preferred to an ETS by the enemies of mitigation …
Business leader criticises ETS but wants carbon tax
Straight from the horse’s mouth. The filth merchants want a system they can whiteant and eventually overthrow, and they know an ETS will leave them wedged.
I thought the Deal on the ETS was for one week only??
What happended?
Is that in the same bin with “delay is denial”?
Razor has a point. (well not really but I’m going to run with it.) Rudd said it must happen now. If that’s not true he is guilty of misleading the parliament. This could lead to (wait for it) the Governer General dismissing him. (There…got it in.)
Fran: as of 31-05-05 the following:
“Pilbara Aboriginal Meeting Condemns Rio Tinto. Media Release of Yamatji Marlpa Barna Baba Maaja Aboriginal Corporation, Yamatji Land and Sea Council, Pilbara Native Title Service, Native Title Representative Body
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
More than 750 Aboriginal People representing traditional owners organisations in the Pilbara region of Western Australia have called on mining giant Rio Tinto to improve its business standards in its dealings with Indigenous traditional owners.
The call was made at a meeting held on the weekend at the Herbert Parker Rest Area on the Yule River, some 60 kilometres south of Port Hedland, Western Australia.
Rio Tinto s local subsidiary, Pilbara Iron, was condemned for failing to engage genuinely with traditional owners in its native title negotiations and for not meeting its own social responsibility standards. In its current negotiations, Pilbara Iron is attempting to lower standards now being accepted by other major companies in the region and accepted elsewhere in Australia by other Rio Tinto companies.
Pilbara Iron says one thing in its public relations, but does another said Gladys Walker, of the Guruma and Innawonga People.
Pilbara Iron claims to act to the highest standards when dealing with traditional owners, but we have not seen much to demonstrate this, said Roy Tommy, of the Innawonga people.
We have been genuine when we have dealt with this company, but they have not been straight with us, said Mr Tommy.
The meeting was organised to discuss the impact on the Pilbara of the regions massive resources boom, resulting from the enormous demand for iron ore to meet economic growth in China.
More than ten percent of the adult Indigenous population of the Pilbara a region bigger than Spain and France combined attended the meeting, as wells as members of native title claims from the Murchison, Gascoyne and the Western Desert.
The Native Title Act has made it necessary for Rio Tinto to negotiate with traditional owners regarding future mining activity. However, the right to negotiate is not retrospective even in cases like this, where the company is still conducting mining operations established before the Native Title Act commenced. Despite this, recent industry standards in Australia have seen companies seek to reach fair agreement about past and present mining activities.”
You are proposing to dump radioctive waste on Aboriginal land. Have you asked them yet? Is that explanation enough? See my earlier comment re. environmental racism. BTW: cyclones are an additional hazard when storing toxic waste above ground; ground water contamination is a problem when storing below.
Still having trouble taking you seriously, tssk. Every time you post it seems you are about to make a serious point, then you come out with something ludicrous.
Obviously, it is now impossible to get the CRPS Bill passed before the Copenhagen Conference, and Australia will have to go to Copenhagen without legislation in place. So that particular deadline has passed, reducing the urgency somewhat.
anthony @ 57 – what do you think of Twiggy’s efforts to get Aboriginals into mining employment?
Tim Mackney wrote:
I hope you’re right Tim. Which still leaves the question open as to whether a nuclear based carbon reduction strategy is practical without either a carbon tax to make coal too expensive to use, or an emission trading scheme (ditto) or massive state intervention. None of them fit the “new liberal” ideology or stated positions. It is, fundamentally, as incoherent as any ETS scheme that isn’t floated with a change to our national laws regarding nuclear power. The rodent was right (for the wrong reasons) – it’s got to be on the table before the horse trading starts in earnest.
I’m proposing that it be considered. Presumably, that would include consultation. Sidebar though, on which indigenous lands is the effluent from coal and gas plants currently “stored”?
You think I’m proposing to leave it lying about in 44 gallon drums? Hmmm
Not if it’s done properly.
We should have a full asset-cycle nuclear industry in Australia – dig the shit up, process it export, import, reprossessing and storage/disposal. As part of that we should have at least one ot two nuc power stations (to power the re/processing), and applied and theoretical research facilities attached (including making the shit go bang).
The fact that we don’t is testament to the effectiveness of the anti-nuke scare campaigns.
I’m just getting stuck into the egg nog Tim. I’m hoping like nuts the denialists are totally right and us warministas are totally wrong.. Because if Abbott gets back in Workchoices Redux is going to have me too busy to worry about the environment. Speaking of which…what about a topic to discuss Workchoices Redux? Abbott must be pretty damn sure of his chances.
Ute Man @60, Yep. Nuclear isn’t an option without either some form of carbon price (ETS or tax) or a centrally-planned phase-in which, as you say, doesn’t sit well with what is normally thought of as Liberal Party beliefs (although with Abbott, who knows?). FWIW, it’s also far from clear that nuclear would be cheaper than any of the huge range of other possible policy responses (efficiency, changes in transport mode, gas, increased wind build, etc, etc).
How long a lead time do we need for nukes? I’m guessing it’s too late for solar unless we end up with some sort of tech breakthrough. And if we can’t rely on a tech breakthrough anywhere else we can’t assume solar will get better.
And more importantly, cheap coal.
Bugger
Bugger me – it worked.
Tim – I agree with you in the market based sense that coal is cheaper and I don’t have a problem with that. However we haven’t utilised the full potential of our uranium resources or our geologically old and stable continent to it’s fullest because of the effective negative campaign.
Not to mention the very substantial thorium-232 which we keep ignoring too, Razor.
Fran – hot beer, cold beer or free beer – it’s all beer to me.
If they send me a fridge magnet I’ll do exactly what I did with the last one. Address it return to sender and post it back.
Poor old Hansen’s getting cranky. He, James Lovelock and Carbonsink must be members of the same bowls club. ;)
Ssems to me Kevin is making a very big mistake spending so much time overseas at the moment here. We need him here to bag the Mad Monk and his very dangerous ideas. What kind of PM is he? A one-term Scullin? (who also spent too much time overseas instead of looking to the domestic politics at home.)
Fran, the thorium isn’t really worth much right now, ‘cos there’s no market for thorium based nuclear fuel. There’s no point wasting money and energy digging the stuff up unless someone wants to buy it.
Tim Macknay @45, From the Greens ‘Notes from National’ August 2009.
“There are 4 things we could begin today that would cut
our greenhouse gas pollution by over 40%, ten times the minimum measly
targets envisaged by Labor.
First, stop logging native forests.
Second,
introduce feed-in tariff legislation modelled on Germany’s as well as
decent renewable energy targets and watch a solar and renewable energy
industry take off and create new jobs.
Third, redirect the billions of
dollars from the recent stimulus packages away from roads and coal
mine-supporting infrastructure, and into sustainable public transport.
Fourthly, a job-creating package of nationwide home and office energy
efficiency and retrofitting would itself cut our greenhouse gas emissions
by 10%.”
Measure (1) could reduce our emissions by 15-20%. None of this requires an ETS nor does it exclude an ETS from the Greens’ climate change policy.
http://greens.org.au/node/764
Tim Macknay@75
Now you are nobody’s fool Tim, but since you are being obtuse …
Suppose we built these thorium plants … and we offered to take radioactive hazmat off the hands of Westinghouse in the US that would have been headed for Yucca Mountain but which was a huge political problem, and suppose they … like … paid us this money to take it off their hands … like … and then we totally used that as the … err … fissile material for the reaction … I’ll bet we could generate some power with only low level hazmat and we could actually reduce existing stores of higher level hazmat elsewhere
Razor “He added that the world must be prepared to abandon coal unless its emissions are captured and embrace a new generation of nuclear power.”
That debate has been far too slow. It must be at least had.
Salient Green @76, thanks for that info. At first run, your figures seem a bit dodgy though. According to the National Greenhouse Inventory, Australia’s net emissions from land use, land use change and forestry in 2007 (most recent reliable data) were 56 MT CO2e, or around 9-10% of total emissions.
I don’t have any data for the emissions of old growth forestry, but on its face, forestry activities would amount to a fraction of that NGI figure, and old-growth forest logging a smaller fraction yet. So, it would appear, on the basis of the NGI figures, at least, that an emissions reduction of 15-20% purely by ending old-growth logging would be hopelessly optimistic. Of course, I’m open to be persuaded by new data.
Yeah. All just an irrational anti-nuke scare campaign. The world’s first fatal atomic accident occurred on January 3, 1961 when a small, 3MW experimental BWR called SL-1 (Stationary Low-Power Plant No. 1) in Idaho was destroyed after a control rod was removed manually. One account states:
“3 January 1961: A reactor explosion (attributed by a Nuclear Regulatory Commission source to sabotage) at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho Falls, Idaho, killed one navy technician and two army technicians, and released radioactivity “largely confined” (words of John A. McCone, Director of the Atomic Energy Commission) to the reactor building. The three men were killed as they moved fuel rods in a “routine” preparation for the reactor start-up. One technician was blown to the ceiling of the containment dome and impaled on a control rod. His body remained there until it was taken down six days later. The men were so heavily exposed to radiation that their hands had to be buried separately with other radioactive waste, and their bodies were interred in lead coffins.”
But I’m sure this sort of thing wouldn’t happen in the 21st century would it?
Everybody here has a good laugh about the Federal Libs playing murder in the dark.
I get a lot of personal entertainment reading about the mung beans and lefties turning themselves into ethical pretzels over nuclear.
My position is that Nuclear has place in the world if it is cost competitive or if the Governemnt sees a worthwhile reason for subsidising/operating it – e.g to support the establsihment and operation of a mine-to-disposal nuclear industry with substantial private sector involvement.
That would be “establishment” after two hours of sleep (missed the final table by “that” much.)
The bowls club at the end of the world? :)
Good on Hansen for cutting through the crap (again). After all, Kyoto was such a thumping success at, you know, reducing emissions, obviously more of the same (Copenhagen) is the way to go!
Lets mitigate slavery. Love it.
Sorry Tim for not being clear. The policy actually includes reforestation which was not quoted in those ‘notes’ and the 15-20% was from another statement, which does sound ambitious in a practical sense but theoretically one could achieve 100% by revegetating anything and everything, just don’t stand still for too long.
Sure. lets see what p[eople who actually live downwind from Three Mile Island have to say. From the Baltimore Sun November 2009:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.nuclear25nov25,0,810881.story
Special note to Fran: “And there are disturbing questions about EDF’s safety record. Last month, it was accused of dumping more than 1,500 tons of spent fuel near a town in Siberia, where the waste was discovered in metal cans.”. Yep. Lying above ground in 44 gallon drums. You drop those suckers and run like hell.
Anthony Nolan – and we kill thousands in this country every year in road accidents. Life is a risk and we weigh the risk-reward trade-offs all the time.
Japan is the only country attacked by nukes and yet they have abotu 55 operating nuke power plants. Explain that to me?? Maybe they should close them so we can ship them some more coal? Doesn’t bother me.
I’m no fan of nuclear power and think that it should only be a last ditch option, but i have to point out that only a small fraction, I’ve been quoted 10%, of mainland Australia has been effectively surveyed. for minerals that is. The rest, ie aprox 90%, of Australia is covered by regolith, and there is little indication of what is beneath it. So all estimates of Australia’s mineral reserves are based on that 10%. I heard a geologist once joke that sub regolith prospecting was geology’s fusion power, 10 years away for the last 50 years.
anthony nolan wrote:
Plenty of people die in coal mines too anthony, especially in China and other places where there is poor worker representation.
Fran, OK I was a little obtuse. ;)
But my point was, the thorium thing is a bit of a distraction, because, unless we’re talking 20 years down the track, any nuclear power industry we introduce will be uranium based.
Ute man: agreed. No unions equalls horrible oh+s results. But I’m not advocating here for an improvement in the conditions in Chinses coal mines. I am saying that nuclear power is not an option.
Razor: I haven’t killed anyone by any means let alone by motor vehicle death. I suppose if I had then your point would be valid but as it stands it is not. If you think the risk of nukes is ok then advocate that it operate near you and that the waste is stored under your house, eh?
Carbonsink @83, all in good fun, of course, but you have to admit you do a good line in doomerism. :)
I understand Hansen’s impatience, but his arguing for a carbon tax as against an ETS strikes me as a little simplistic, since it wouldn’t work all that differently from an ETS and would face the same sorts of political obstacles.
Salient Green @84, I agree reafforestation can play a significant role in cutting carbon emissions. Of course, it’s not inconsistent with using economic instruments like an ETS or carbon tax. An economic instrument is one way to encourage reafforestation.
It seems that Barry Brook is a member of the same bowls club.
And another nice quote from “grumpy” Jim Hansen:
Good to see Australia get a mention as a tier #1 climate hypocrite.
This thread illustrates why we must stick with an ETS and why the Greens blocking approach has been wrong: it is *extremely difficult* to agree on an appropriate policy approach to mitigating carbon emissions, whether cap and trade, a carbon tax, subsidies for various clean forms of energy, or appeals to nuclear power in ignorance of the need for one of the above policies to enable it to compete with our existing forms of generation. Even in this thread, even crossing out the trolls and just sticking to the loyal LPers, there is little agreement.
The ETS has been worked on solidly in both federal and State (at least NSW and VIC) govts for the better part of the past decade. It has been discussed by academics and policy wonks for longer than that. It has been an absolutely huge undertaking to even get us to the point where there was a vote on it. Huge. Years of work, lots of discussion, lots of stakeholders, lots of compromise.
Progress on such a contentious, wide-ranging issue is only ever going to be incremental, not revolutionary, because we live in the democracy we do.
For this reason, the only way progress will be made – even if slow – is with baby steps that will hopefully become cumulative and eventually reach the finish line.
Debating carbon tax vs ETS is another decade of debate. Trying carbonsinks idea of subsidies and handouts to develop cleantech has already been tried – under the Howard Government. They championed the bucket o money approach to supporting renewable energy technologies, and from most people’s view it was a lot of money for little gain, though the politicians got to cut an ample amount of ribbons and get their picture taken.
We need to recognise the work that goes into developing such policies as the ETS, and the slow progress that is made, take the small wins that we can, and once they are bedded down, move onto the next goal.
We should have taken the ETS with lame targets and handouts, locked it in, and then made next goal increasing the targets and phasing out the handouts. It was (hopefully still is) the only way forward that has a hope of surviving the fire of compromise between the many interest groups working on this issue, and generating some forward momentum to actually reduce our emissions.
I skipped reading the comments after I hit the start of the ‘what do we do with the nuke waste’ topic and someone essentially said ‘dump it in the desert’.
Boy that pisses me off.
Keep your grubby radiaoactive hands of my desert.
The desert was where I was born and bred and I love it because its beautiful.
If you want your dangerous filthy expensive GHG emitting nuke power stations at least have the common politeness and decency not to dump the resultant shit in someones elses backyard.
Put it in your own if you must have it.
Find out the residences of the share holders of the nuke facilities and let them look after it, no weaseling out a few centuries down the track, but for the life of the toxicity. Hand it down irrevocably in wills, let the polluters, and their descendants, wallow in the stuff for millenia.
Nice barrels with nuke radioactivity signs on it in the recreational room of the mansion next to the pool table, use it for racking the pool cues whatever.
But if you made it its yours, not mine.
I mean after all, its supposed to be ‘perfectly safe’ isn’t it?
Ahhh! I feel better now.
I really hate to talk nuclear again, but the most fundamental problem with it – forgetting ethical etc. objections – is that it simply can’t be built and got running in the critical time window we have left to act before we face locking in climate change in the catastrophic range, ie above 2 degrees.
This is certainly the case for Australia – even Ziggy with all the rigging in his report couldn’t get it to happen faster. Overseas would be more arguable on a case by case (ie country) basis.
The low hanging fruit without an ETS to get the necessary level of action in the next 10 years are energy efficiency, ending deforestation and having a real MRET.
as for the politics, at this stage wot Salient Green said @ 6.
Penny Wong just put out a brief press release which I find to be dryly humorous, on the new Liberal climate policy.
hannah’s dad – I wasn’t born in the desert but I have spent a fair bit of time out there – especially around Woomera makingthings go bang and runnign over fences in the middle of the night.
Love it – amazing landscape. Shed loads of room to put in storage facilities.
Why do you talk about barrels – are you ignoring storage solutions like Synroc etc.
I also like the sound of dropping the stuff once it is in synroc type form or similar into the continental shelf subsidence zone of the Mariannas Trench.
Hannah’s Dad 94, nuclear power stations don’t emit GHGs. That is the whole point.
myriad wrote:
That’s right. It’s also why having it on the table would actually help the case for renewables, not hinder them.
Barrels is a symbol of the fact that this shit is dangerous for yonks where yonks is on a time scale for which we have no comprehension and if the people who want it get it they are going to have to ‘safely’ [sic] store it, at someone elses expense for millenia somewhere else outa sight outa mind until the polluters are dead and don’t have any responsibility anymore.
Pity about their descendeants and mine.
We have had all sorts of fantasy solutions mooted by the polluters.
Shoot it into space, dump it in the ocean deeps, bury it in dry mines, dump it on the moon, put it into a mountain and so on.
The sheer effrontery and mindless ignorance of the so called ‘solutions’ is absurdity itself writ large.
I’m sick to death of reading about wonderful schemes and projects that emanate from the nuke lobby and disappear in a puff of smoke when anything more than a superficial nod of the head is the reaction.
Some time ago we had a thread here where variety Mark #18 of the ‘most wonderful form of nuke power facility’ would solve all our problems and even make strawberry jam to boot.
But the thingy under discussion didn’t even exist, an apparently immaterial fact that escaped the attention of the urgers who kept telling us how wonderful it was [present tense].
There is more male bovine exreta emanating from the nuke lobby than all the methane emitting cattle in the world.
We are constantly told how beautifully safe the nuke stations are.
Yet complete national nuke power systems have had to be shut down several times in several countries in recent years because of, and please excuse me I am going to use a dirty word, “accidents’.
Google to find out the examples which somehow seemed to have eascaped he attention of our mass media and the nuke lobby.
Nobody hurt of course in any of those several ‘accidents’ we are assured by professional public relations officers of the companies involved.
In one case in Sweden the bloody nuke facility had been leaking radioactive gas for 3 years …undetected!!!
She be right, don’t you worry about that, trust us.
NO!
Which bit of “existential crisis” didn’t you understand, hannah’s dad?
Hannah’s dad is gettin’ it on.
Abbott is sunk on this because too many people know how to smell a shite argument. We need to forget nukes and decommission coal. I propose that coal miners be offered the sort of ‘golden parachute’ that many CEO’s have enjoyed. Told to put their feet up. Then they could just quit leaving no-one to work the mines. The owners get nix because they have already had their cut. Wouldn’t cost too much really when you look at the subsidies that Rudd was offering king coal to cap out carbon.
Go for it, Hannah’s Dad.
Nervetheless, Hannah’s Dad, your concerns notwithstanding, perhaps you will point us to the comparative figures on deaths or lives shortened per unit of energy output of all sources of energy over the last 20 years.
Here’s a heads up though. All the other sources of energy on which one could operate an economy such as ours at industrial scale are much larger than the figures for nuclear power. Leave coal out if you like. I know I’d prefer to. Compare with NG, or hydro. Nuclear is still way ahead, even if you zero rate GHG emissions for their impact on human life chances.
Clive Spash has resigned from the CSIRO in protest.
Fran: anyone with the time to think that formula up may actually have the time to complete the research. Eagerly await yr conclusion. The bit you left out was calculus of lives lost into the future – remember half life?
I lost connection for half an hour, dunno why, its a common occurrence.
Re the Marianas trench, a really good place to dump nuke toxicity apparently.
From Wiki
“Part of the Izu-Bonin-Mariana Arc system, the trench forms the boundary between two tectonic plates, where the western edge of the Pacific Plate is subducted beneath the small Mariana Plate….. subducted (is forced down beneath the other). This deep area is the Mariana trench proper. The movement of these plates is also responsible for the formation of the Mariana Islands.”
Now do I really truly have to spell out why the concept of dumping radioactive stuff there is an absurdity?
Really truly?
So why the hell does it [and its ilk] ever rate a mention?
Next.
Someone above is implying that the only alternative to GHG meltdown is nuke power.
False dichotomy.
Next.
Then there is the infamously and deliberately deceptive ‘clean and green’ claim.
Paraphrased above as nuke power stations don’t emit GHGs.
Well they do you know.
You can’t have omelettes without eggs.
And the mining of uranium [and other minerals at that site] in South Australia not far from where I was born generates about 40% of all GHGs produced in that state.
Ponder that a sec or two.
And lets not worry about construction GHGs at nuke sites eg concrete, hey?
Why is this claim, clean and green, made?
Next.
A common comment that I see is that the new nuke plants won’t fail like those old ones at 3 Mile Island, Windscale, Chernobyl etc.
Modern ones are, will be, safe.
Yep sure.
The fact is that nuke plants are frequently shut down in entire countries because they fail. Commonly. Recently.
Advanced countries like Japan, Sweden, France.
Like the one in Japan a couple of years ago which suffered earthquake damage cos they built it on a fault line FFS!
On a fault line!
And did I notice that 3 Mile Island got a passing reference in the news recently?
Wonder why?
But of course all those coal stations etc kill people with accidents and emissions don’t they so, the only dichotomous answer is to build nukes instead.
Obviously.
Cos nuke doesn’t kill does it?
Take for example all those nuke subs wandering around the globe.
The sailors on board them next to nuke piles suffer no more from radioactivity related diseases than anyone else.
So nuke is safe isn’t it?
Well maybe not.
Check this out:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/h948002p3n4xp51x/fulltext.pdf?page=1
A US health study found nuke submariners had ‘normal’ rates of nuke diseases.
But when their study was subjected to analysis the exact opposite was found to be true.
Strange.
How many people died or will die as a result of the 3 year undetected radiation leak in Sweden?
What impact has mining in SA had?
{Hint, you can’t begin to find the answer cos its subject to legal confidentiality by parliamentary law].
And to finish off here is a refernce to the infamous CSIRO scientific report of 3 plus years ago which stated:
“Solar thermal technology is capable of producing Australia’s entire electricity demand and is the only renewable energy capable of making deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, a confidential coal research report obtained by The Canberra Times says …… written by five CSIRO Energy Technology division scientists, was submitted to the CRC in August last year but has not been published.”
OMG! There IS an alternative [or several] to nuke power!
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/environment/solar-is-a-real-option-csiro-report-says-sun-will-soon-match-coal/666801.aspx?storypage=0
So please can we ignore the smelly red herring of nuke from now on.
Nuclear waste and proliferation are serious problems. The fiendishly difficult calculation to be made is whether those dangers are less than those posed by tipping the climate into the runaway zone.
Plenty of scientists in the area of climate change advocate nuclear power as our only hope. Depending on the time of day I agree with them.
This is better than Foxtel and Free to Air!
Better than the Green fight last night.
hannah’s dad @ 107:
Agree with all of that. Problem is, we’ve left it too late. As Barry Brook says, we won’t act until there’s a catastrophe, and by then the only alternative left to us is mass rollout of nukes and some geoengineering craziness.
None of this is desirable, but we’re simply not going to build those solar thermal power stations you speak of. We’re going to argue, debate and delay for a few more decades until the crisis hits.
hannah’s dad wrote:
No, unfortunately, we can’t, because C02 emissions are on track to do far worse things to us than nuclear accidents. Pie in the sky plans for solar thermal or the laughable clean coal are just that, until we get a workable framework for getting the costs on the table. Without nuclear being considered as well, you might as well advocate a dyson sphere as your preferred mitigation strategy.
So Carbonsink how does nuke power help when it takes 10+ years to roll out as well?
Razor:
“Better than the Green fight last night”.
The fight was a crock. Call that a knockout? Mundine whupped Danny boy’s ass and he is still reeling.
Anthony … lives lost “into the future” from operation of plants are likely to be much the same as lives lost over the last 20 years. The “half-life” thing is silly. Unlike other forms of thermal energy waste, all the waste from nuclear can be 100% sequestered from humans.
The bulk of the hazmat from nuclear plants will be innocuous within 500-1000 years, and in the case of something like the GenIV IFR plants the net addition to existing hazmat can be as little as zero, since existing hazmat can be the feedstock.
Compare this with CO2, 93% of which which will be present in the biosphere for 50,000 years. (See CO2′s “long tail” at Real Climate). Compare this with any of the toxins (neurological or otherwise) released by your average coal plant, and the actinides as well. Were I living within the footprint of Hazelwood, I know what I’d prefer to be pumping out the power. And let’s not talk about emissions of methane from coal mines, or the morbidity associated with digging up and transporting the stuff.
You don’t like coal either — and I get that but the hard reality is that coal or gas is what we will have as a matter of practice in all industrial societies absent nuclear. And gas too has higher morbidity per unit of output than does nuclear power. It’s also limited and if all coal were replaced by gas, we’d soon be running up against the limits of that resource. On 2% growth, even coal won’t last out the century. And neither in any combination will foreclose as much Co2 as nuclear power.
Would it be better if there were some cheap easy quick way for everyone to make use of solar thermal or wave or wind. Of course it would. But there isn’t, and we just have to accept that until we can make it so..
From the unpublished [at the time, I think it became available some time later] CSIRO report referred to above:
“The report, by the Cooperative Research Centre for Coal in Sustainable Development, claims solar thermal technology “is poised to play a significant role in baseload generation for Australia” and will be cost-competitive with coal within seven years.”
Look at the last few words.
Do people actually read links posted here?
Genuine question.
I usually, not always, do.
But if they bothered to read the report they would also have seen this:
” The CRC’s report claims a 35sqkm area with high levels of sunlight and low cloud cover “could produce Australia’s entire current power demand” using solar thermal technology”.
There is a fair chunk of such land in Oz, probably more than anywhere else in the world.
Remember that report was written over 3 years ago.
Whilst many are chasing nuclear chimeras we could have been well advanced towards solving the GHG problem in Oz.
Sad.
Myriad74 – they are being rolled out all the time. Another one started operation in India today.
Fran:
“All the waste from nuclear can be 100% sequestered from humans”
How?
“The bulk of the hazmat from nuclear plants will be innocuous within 500-1000 years”.
Pleased you think so but I don’t believe it.
Before you start to discount the future let me add that my usual response to those who argue that it don’t matter coz they won’t be here is to invite them to hasten the process a.s.a.p.
anthonynolan – climate change affects the future too – which is sort of the point – there a massive future dangers with both.
How will China’s 1.5 billion power themselves? There will be another 3 billion people along for the ride globally in coming years. These are not trivial numbers – we are pushing shit up hill to combat climate change even with increased nuclear generation.
There is no safe option. It is not an ideal world. We have to work at every angle. I can’t see the world turning its back on nuclear power. Not now. Not when we can’t even get a piddling little ETS established.
anthony – re Green fight – yes, it was pretty lame but in this day the Ref can’t stand back and let a boxer go on if he isn’t able to retaliate.
As for the Mundine defeat – Green shouldn’t have tried to fight at such a light weight.
wbb: re Chinese – nothing wrong with pedals and water buffs. Progress doesn’t always mean going ‘forward’. Even Abbott rides a bike. In short, not everyone in the world can aspire to, and nor should they be mislead into aspiring to, the wealth and lifestyle of the American working classes of the post war boom. Ditto India. As for us – public transport and shank’s pony as the major means of transport. It is austere but will be necessary.
hannah’s dad @115: ” The CRC’s report claims a 35sqkm area with high levels of sunlight and low cloud cover “could produce Australia’s entire current power demand” using solar thermal technology”.
The WA government has announced that it will be developing several towns in the north west (Pilbara) region, thanks to “Royalties for Regions”. Here is a golden opportunity – I hope they don’t let it go begging.
When “Royalties for Regions” was first agreed, it looked like a political game to get the national party to play ball. However, in retrospect it is a great idea, with the potential to be truely innovative.
We have a MASSIVE Fly-In-Fly-Out (FIFO) population for the mining operations in the Pilbara. It is not even remotely environmentally effective or sustainable. The carbon emissions for all those long-distance flights is horrendous, and the cost will be horrendous also in the near future, due to the coming oil crunch.
Apart from that, FIFO wrecks havoc with people’s social lives and families. The Pilbara towns are starved of a normal population which might develop them into attractive communities to live in.
On top of all that, the Pilbara has THE HIGHEST levels of sunshine in the world – truely massive insolation numbers. These towns with their new developments could showcase the new solar thermal arrays, and be world leaders as a cluster of solar cities.
A major development program could transform these towns, improve the quality of life for the miners and their families, be environmentally sustainable for the mining industry, and not least be something to be really proud of as a nation.
I really hope that the “Royalties for Regions” guys make the most of this opportunity to create a real legacy for the future.
When TSHTF it won’t take ten years, it will take one. As Barry Brook says: “If society realises that it has to build 10,000 nuclear power plants in a period of 20 years, then it’ll do it”.
Humanity can do amazing things when its scared sh*tless.
hannah’s dad @ 115: Yes I try to read comments, and yes solar thermal may be a faster/cheaper/better option for Australia when we actually wake up and start taking action. However for most of the world there will be no alternative to nukes. They’ll need lots of baseload power fast because they won’t have done the work to make a smart, distributed, heterogeneous grid (with lots of renewables) viable.
@122, old paradigm there, I suspect, carbonsink.
Developing economies are not weighed down by all the sunk capital and switching costs of an existing network.
They can start with a clean slate, and effectively leapfrog our historical development, moving straight to the newest and most effective technological solutions.
As such, they may very well go straight to smart grids and smart power, while we are still faffing around, trying to retrofit aging infrastructure with piecemeal solutions.
HD: you’ll love this – all the nice green geothermal energy produced at paralana (near you ?) is earmarked for the olympic dam mine, that’s their business plan. Talk about less than zero sum ecology gain.
Further to HD’s skepticism about ppl following links: per AN@85′s link on how the nuclear industry plays for real, now, and would presumably here, if ever they are allowed to, as distinct from in the glossy brochure/trade journal version:
The EDF referred to, them what got sprung dumping megatonnes of nuclear waste in the most cavalier fashion out in the Russian boonies, is not some minor fly-by-night Dodgy Bros outfit and a once-off hiccup, rather it’s Electricité de France (EDF), the largest merchant of nuclear power in Europe, and this is what they routinely do with 13% of their spent fuel, the “really dirty stuff”.
This major permanent Dodgy Bros outfit ( who would no doubt be putting in a very competitive tender for any OzNukes) of whom
by the magic rules of Terminal Capitalism can still work with private equity firms to get debt finance to take big stakes in offshore projects, and thus keep major player status, as in lining up to do the first US nuke since 3 mile island, (which BTW a fortnight ago had a leak, and 20 people were irradiated). Thus “EDF’s debt will grow from $42 billion euro to $50 billion euro by 2013, and that EDF might have to raise $27 billion euro to meet its nuclear obligation” That’s $42 billion they owe now, no temptation to cut corners at all.
And yet nucular enthusiasts believe the risk of an industry with price/quality-setting major players like that is going to deliver safer cheaper cleaner sooner power than renewables is less than (the risk of) the reverse? I can’t see it.
I reckon we should just swap Oz’s nucular enthusiasts for France’s Greenies, ‘cept I’m not sure of French beer’s capacity for the mental anasthesia obviously usual to the average Oz nucular enthusiast. But ‘barbeque?’ is a french word n’est-ce pas, they’ll fit in straight away with that single interogative utterence, and all else will follow.
carbonsink: if we have nukes it’ll be over my old hippy corpse.
This blog string is really long, so I may have missed someone wisdom along the way, but I have a question for the here an now.
I understand the views so far and that many didn’t want to see the ETS passed. I also understand that their is little love lost for the Libs or Labor, but putting all of the political leanings aside … what is the plan now?
I am reading a lot of rhetoric across Australian political blogs speculating about the DD and nucs … but it seems to me that everyone is distracted from the immediacy of the situation.
What will our Government actually agree to in Copenhagen? Are we going to be players or passengers in the battle for the future? Have the Libs and Labor both just abdicated responsibility?
Personally, I am not immediately concerned about Rudd approval rating or if Abbott’s agenda will be the Liberal Party’s demise. We will have plenty of time to debate these topics in the months to come. I am alarmed by the here and now.
Does the Rudd Government have a fallback for Copenhagen that will allow us to stand with our face forward, rather than ashamedly staring at our shoes.
If so, what is it?
I’m waiting for Abbott to lick his lips and say “um, if Mr Rudd really were that worried about the environment then one might suggest he not go to Copenhagen, saving a plane trip and um..maybe spending some time here to..um deal with the rising interest rates that um…are hurting those on struggle street.”
Elise @ 123: Looks to me like China and India are very much following our big, centralised, baseload model by building coal-fired power stations en masse. That’s because the much heralded “smart grid” is a completely unproven concept that doesn’t exist anywhere.
How did we get from Tuesday when an ETS was a possibility (albeit a slim one at that stage) until now, when a discussion is happening around the possibility of nuclear power and taking airspace? Todays appearance of Matthias Cormann (one of the Liberal plotters in my opinion),along with a telephone inverview with Ziggy Switkowski on SkyNews Agenda, talking as if it should be an acceptable part of a Liberal position, may well be a red herring playing out to the public to test the waters; presumably with Saturday’s by-elections in mind. This reminded me of a newsitem from around 2007 (?July) when it was revealed that Ron Walker, former Chairman of Fairfax and serious investor, had telephoned John Howard at his home on a Saturday morning to advise him that he had formed the Australian Nuclear Company. Not sure now whether his pal the “Grey Ghost” Hugh Morgan, formerly of Western Mining Co. (and BHP) was lurking somewhere in the background. Wouldn’t be surprised.
If nuclear is now to be publicly discussed, does this represent a double cross on a double cross (a fourfold cross) or is it just an ordinary Liberal double cross with pike?.
Paul Norton@74 – Hope you haven’t really bought into the Liberal line that Kevin Rudd spends too much time overseas. Australia needs to be represented in the various forums and private discussions occurring nowadays. We are no longer a cringing backwater. Count ourselves lucky we now have a Prime Minister who is credible and is literate in so many arenas.
Margi @126: “Does the Rudd Government have a fallback for Copenhagen that will allow us to stand with our face forward, rather than ashamedly staring at our shoes.”
Hell no, Margi!
Rudd will be face forward, front and centre for the photo op.
Lots of motherhood and apple pie declarations from all, about how very important it all is, and how united they are in declaring it, and how good and useful it was that they all got together for this historic occasion.
Actionable commitments, timelines, concrete action plans? Perish the thought!
Margi Prideaux @126: Abbott says he supports the government’s targets. He just objects to an ETS as the mechanism (though he seems willing to envisage an ETS for Australia, if and when the USA adopts one). So on that front, Australia’s negotiating position at Copenhagen is not affected.
Danny
” paralana (near you ?]”
I was born and bred in Whyalla, lived in Port Augusta and Broken Hill, wandered all over the Flinders and areas east and west for yonks/decades.
In my completely unbiased opinion its the most beautiful area in the world.
Well, maybe a little bit biased.
I remember climbing Mt Painter as a kid to check out the ore samples my old fossicker uncle collected there around the late 1800s or early 1900s, not sure when exactly, and passed on to me before he died, autunite and the like.
Ironic isn’t it?
Both that and your reference about sustainable energy to Olympic Dam.
Margi: whatever they were going to agree to in the first place – in essence, the most pissweak target the rest of the world will let them get away with.
Carbonsink @128, they are ALSO building massive production capacity in solar PV, lithium batteries and now electric cars.
What is Australia doing in these areas?
As for “smart power”, we are already on it, feeding into the grid from our solar PV system, and getting paid feed-in tariffs accordingly.
On reflection: there appears to be a longing for a fix to the problem. A technological fix would be best of all…but it isn’t going to happen. We are in for a fight if we want to both save the planet and sustain a world worth inhabiting. Specially for our kids. So it is the fight of our lives and it is going to happen in the next twenty years. People get ready.
Elise @ 134: Please compare new Chinese PV capacity vs new coal capacity, or new petroleum powered cars on the road vs new electric cars. I think infinitesimal is the word for it.
HAHAHA! Feed-in tariffs. That will reduce our emissions by what? 0.00001%?
The first step in coming up with a good plan for cleaning up electricity is to understand the issues that effect the various stakeholders:
1. Customers want a reliable supply and price increases that reflect the changes in AVERAGE costs, not artificial price jumps bloated by the needs of the “put a price on carbon” approach. Price should ramp up slowly as the proportion of clean electricity increases.
2. Existing producers want a plan for ramping down the production of dirty electricity. Important for avoiding dramatic drops in the value of assets and for the planning of major maintenance. (Important too to avoid power cuts due to the premature running down of dirty power capacity.)
3. Governments want to have enough control over what happens to ensure that investment takes account of issues such as power grid capacity, the need to spread wind power over a wide area etc.
4. Potential investors want certainty re future prices and sales. They will also want some assurance that there business is not going to fail because of new, lower cost technology coming on line. (Or alternatively, the investment should be government investment.)
To my mind the best way of achieving this is to issue a series of contracts for the supply of cleaner electricity and the supply of standby capacity. Cleaner may include conversion to gas fired. In addition, regulations would be required to ensure that the use of cleaner electricity would get preference. The contracts would specify a price formula that would last long enough for the investment to be justified. (Both price formula and duration would be negotiated during each contract.)
In addition there needs to be some logical plan that give dirty electricity suppliers some feel for the earliest their plant would shut down unless they converted to gas, solar thermal augmentation or some other cleaner technology.)
Any better ideas?
Umm CS@128, elise@134,: just last week India launched the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission project with declared targets of 20 gwatts of solar power capacity and 20 million sq metres of solar thermal collector capacity by 2022.
The current installed base there is 152 gw, so assuming there will also be a flood of wind power like every where else to combine with the solar, I reckon it’s a pretty ambitious, much better than Kev’s pissy 5%. Of course they plan to use it as a way of creating value in their economy by becoming “a global leader in solar manufacturing, eventually employing at least 100,000 trained workers in the solar industry”.
Unlike us.
India’s power requirements are expected to be 400GW by 2020. 20GW of solar is not 20GW of baseload, and at this time its little more than a political announcement in the lead up to a major climate change conference.
I’m not saying this isn’t a worthy goal, but its not going to make much of a dent in India’s future emissions. They’re still going to grow and grow rapidly.
Carbonsink @136: “HAHAHA! Feed-in tariffs.”
You are missing the point. I was showing you that the smart power system was already here in embryonic form.
Would you also have been the one going HAHAHA when the first few refrigerators were produced? “0.00001%? HAHAHA They’ll never replace ice boxes…”
The difference is, we didn’t need to replace all the ice boxes overnight. We literally need to decarbonise our economy overnight, and that’s not going be achieved by feed-in tariffs. Its a bit of tinkering at the edges that will make bugger all difference even in the medium to long term.
Again I maintain, we won’t act in any meaningful way until there is a catastrophe.
anthony nolan wrote:
Typical hippy – you think you’re the solution when you’re really part of the problem. I don’t want a DD election on climate change but I would welcome a referendum on changing the laws on nukes to allow a state run nuclear energy commission.
Stick that in your tofu and stuff it in your piehole, dirty hippies.
The thing is, Elise, Carbonsink’s a doomer. He’s (?) as convinced that there’s no hope as Barnaby Joyce is convinced of the flatness of the Earth. Nothing you say will change his mind.
I’ve never understood the psychology of doomers, personally. I mean, what’s the point? Maybe it’s true that there’s little chance of serious action before it’s too late, maybe it’s not true. But not being prophets, we can’t actually know the future. Even if there is a slim chance of success, it’s imperative that we do what we can. There’s nothing more paralysing than doomerism.
My brother Gareth (a geologist) is off to Slovakia in a few days to help build geothermal infrastructure, working for Panax Geothermal.
Tim Macknay @143, I suspect that you are totally correct there. A gloomy outlook alright. Paralysing alright.
Admittedly we may be “too little, too late”, but most of us probably don’t want to be castigating ourselves for not making a decent effort.
Besides, it feels better to be busy trying to solve a problem, rather than morosely declaring that it is too hard to solve.
When you read the stories of miraculous survival against the odds, you have to admire the grit and determination of those guys to keep trying and never give up hope. Even the story of how long it took Edison to invent the light globe is testimony for mental toughness in the face of overwhelming negative results.
Most of the rest of us never face such a raw challenge to our mental toughness.
Ah, but there is, Tim Macknay. Dreaming.
wbb@146 – I’d rate doomerism and dreaming as about even in the paralytic stakes.
Tim @ 143: Well, in the real world I do plenty — solar on the roof, 100% GreenPower, ultra-efficient cars, plant hundreds of trees etc etc — so its hardly paralysing, but I don’t kid myself its anything more than tokenism.
If people tell me the problem can be solved by switching lightbulbs, driving a Prius, or feed-in tariffs for rooftop solar, I’ll call them on that. Its greenwash, pure and simple. Real progress is going to require big, painful changes, and its simply not happening anywhere in the world.
Look at a list of countries by CO2 emissions per capita and you’ll notice the standouts in the developed world are France (lotsa nukes) and Sweden (lotsa nukes and hydro). They’re doing a lot better than Denmark with all its windfarms, and Germany with all its wind and solar feed-in tariffs.
I’m more or less in the Barry Brook camp these days. I love his cut-the-crap, no bullsh*t approach. As Barry says:
.
Fair enough, Carbonsink. It actually sounds like your outlook isn’t all that different from mine. But that Barry Brook quote you cite doesn’t sound as pessimistic as the tenor of a lot of your comments, though. You’ll forgive me for thinking you’re more of a doomer than you actually are. I’ll grant you that some of your recent commenting has seemed slightly less relentlessly doomer-ish than a year or two ago.
I tell you what Tim, you show me a country, city, corporation whatever that’s making real progress on reducing its carbon emissions and I’ll be decidedly more cheery.
I can’t find one in that list I linked to, although North Korea seems to be doing ok!
Uteman @ 142: didn’t realise you cared so much. When I referred to myself as an old ‘hippie corpse’ I didn’t mean to excite your imagination so much. I was in fact being ironic but that appears to have escaped you. Live in FNQ do you? Longreach, Utethug? See you at the barricades if your spindly pins can haul your sagging beer gut and neon red neck that far.
You have to help me out here anthony nolan, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but i know when I’m beaten. That utethug crack made me cry.
Well I just gave up again. After a concerted campaign by Speers to lock The Greens out of the initial ETS debate Skynews calls a debate on nuclear and has Bauhaus Corman vs Bob Brown. Lib vs Green. So they lock the Greens out of ETS negotiations then proceed to lock themselves out of the conclusion. I am about to spread this transparent strategy widely unless the ALP team in the PM’s room actually live up to their name of ‘strategists’. ATM they are scared little men.
Utes: oooh. Hugs dude.
Yes Carbonsink, it is kind of funny being called a Doomer when you do the sensible thing, adapt to changing social and natural environment, live within means and keeping ones footprint down. In other words being aware, adaptable and resilient. I am with Barry Brooks, in that I too believe into the resilience of humanity. A few of them anyway, knowing full well there will be a lot of pain around for the rest. Particularly, those in the denier camp, frozen into their stances, unable to move quick when required. As it in deed will be required sooner than later, FGS even Bill Heffernan admitted it.
Personally, having made similar adjustments to yours, I call myself a ‘Smarty’ rather then ‘Doomer’.
Ootz yes and you hit on the mistake of the government. Their political football was paint ‘deniers’ and ‘delay’ and ‘doom’ rather than negotiate with the greens from the start. Very old school politik but what I simply just can’t stand is the fact they have the political capital to do massive reform yet shy away to have a little political kick about game, a game which they could not only be playing but redesigning. It is called reform and at the moment the Rudd government are playing with each other far too much. Weak.
Those ex anti-nuke protestors should think about those who are now their new best friends in support of nuclear power, every Fascist, God Botherer, rabid right wing Journalist and grasping business moron in the land, that’s who.
Huggy
Now this really is Big Oil talking.
Hmm, the Saudi’s. The Wahabist Saudi’s. The hand-chopping, beheading, women-oppressing Saudi’s. The ‘exterminate the Crusader/Zionist’ Saudi’s. Never realised you were on their side, Razor. Somehow it doesn’t surprise me.
Tim – can’t say I support their religious and cultural affectations.
The Saudis are against a price on carbon dioxide emissions????
Get outta here!! Who’d have guessed they’d take that approach?
Not exactly a reliable source of information, though (other than on Quranic hermeneutics, perhaps). But I guess, from your position, finding supportive reliable sources would be difficult. When you’re down to wingnut bloggers, presumably medievalist Islamist fanatics can provide valuable support. ;P
At least Fran can see the humour.
Sorry you can’t see mine. That the Saudi’s oppose a carbon price wasn’t news to me, which is why I didn’t find it funny. Never mind. :)
carbonsink @ 150:
That list, leaving aside Russia and East European countries, shows improvement from 1990 to 2006 in Singapore, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, UK, South Africa, France, Sweden, Switzerland, Mexico. This list is offset by a string of advanced countries were emissions have increased.
Bottom line, I don’t agree with Barry Brook that Copenhagen is an irrelevant sideshow, but I do agree that we are going to need a Pearl Harbour type event to get into the necessary frame of mind.
Beyond that, an interesting thread. Fran’s information about the waste problem of nuclear being overrated was confirmed on another thread by specific information given by Robert M. From a world perspective, my main interest in nuclear is in the potential of 4th Gen technology, which would much reduce the waste problem and change the long term prospect from an energy constrained future to one of energy abundance.
There may be other technologies with similar potential, but if 4th gen nukes come off it changes the kind of future we could have quite substantially.
Reading back over the above thread I note my observation above:
Compare this with CO2, 93% of which which will be present in the biosphere for 50,000 years. (See CO2’s “long tail” at Real Climate).
That is a flat out error. Mea Culpa. I should have said 7% of which will still be present in the biosphere in 50,000 years.
Once again, apologies to all … I had considered structuring the sentence with its complement but changed my mind without changing the figure. 50,000 years is long enough for silicate weathering to take out most of the CO2 added today.