The UK initiative is great news! I wish the Rudd government would do something similar here.

Actually, I don’t, having had exposure to such a thing in a couple of different situations. Firstly we had the road toll for the Melbourne bridge to Altona. I had to cross that bridge on the way to and from work every day, as did many people who worked on that side of town. It also cost the poorer people who lived on that side of town and worked in the city.

It was rediculously expensive, but the alternative was to make a long round trip via the suburbs north of Altona. Some tried the long detour for a while, but eventually gave up in favour of the bridge. People don’t have a lot of spare time, especially if they are working 10 hour days.

We all hated the imposition enormously, but we weren’t a large enough proportion of the electorate to do something about it.

When I worked in Stavanger, Norway, they put a road toll on the road between the industrial area and the centre of town (in Tananger). Same story. You had to have a radar activating box on the roof of your car, or you had to have correct change and get out of the car to feed the meter. At peak hour it was a disaster. Even the honorable upright Norwegian citizens hated it like the plague, and resorted to all sorts of manoevres to circumvent and sabotage the system. I understand it was decommissioned in the end (the last time I went through it didn’t charge me). They couldn’t get compliance with their rooftop box payment system (why buy a box, if you only go there occasionally), and the traffic jams were causing extreme irritation.

If your proposal went ahead and all roads were tolled, I agree with BilB @63 that the offending government would be out on their ears.

Fran, you are being too simplistic there. We had the GFC remember, and a stockmarket crash as well.

Everyone was feeling poorer in many ways, not just oil prices.

They cut back on all expenses, with many people thinking a Great Depression was just around the corner.

You should not attribute the effect to a single root cause. The collapse in demand had many fathers.

If you don’t believe this, then look at US demand today – oil prices have dropped, so demand should have picked up again by your argument. The demand is down for other reasons than oil prices.

Elise, don’t listen to him/her, some have noticed you’ve been thinking and writing about such things, especially the BlueGen scenario.

I’m sure you’ll welcome the news, that: The Brits have come up trumps , (maybe our own Garett/Wong gnomes might see the light now Their Betters have), they’ve got beyond the blinkered view that only strictly renewable technelogies are worthy of ‘incentivising’ in feedin tarriff terms. They’ve come to understand that Bluegen type technologies ( referred to as MicroCHP in the linked document) offer a better efficiency dividend in terms of max electricity (and heating ) utility for minimum CO2 produced.

From April 2011 a Brit householder with a 2 kW Bluegen unit will be entitled to 10p/kwh for the excess power they export to the grid ( compare to 30-40p for PV).

Oh BilB, if you haven’t, you might like to give an ear to this morning’s Inside Business interview with the managing director of TRUEnergy which operates the Yallourn brown coal power station in Victoria

RICHARD MCINDOE: Well we last year completed construction of a 450 megawatt gas fired power station near Wollongong and that cost us around $700, 750 million to build that… emissions intensity of that gas fired power station is a quarter of the emissions intensity of an equivalent brown coal fired power station. So you’re emitting 75 per cent less CO2 through that gas fired power station…in order to make it a viable commercial investment power prices would have to come up by around 20 per cent to justify wholesale roll-out of gas fire generation to replace that coal fire generation.”

There’s your levy, and there’s your CO2 savings, from the horse’s mouth.

You’re the first commentator to think through the incremental transition process with relation to electricity costs.

I also can’t see John how your idea can work without passing on massive cost increases, given that clean electricity is a lot more expensive than dirty electricity.

The cost of actually building and operating a specific clean electricity plant will be the same whether the investment is driven by direct action or putting a price on carbon. The important difference is that the average price of electricity will be very different, particularly at the start of the clean up process. Under direct action, the average price of electricity will gradually increase as the percentage of clean electricity increases (say a few percent/year). By contrast, under ETS (or other systems that depends on putting a price on carbon) the average price has to jump high enough to justify the investment in clean electricity. This might mean a sudden, economy destabilizing doubling of the price of electricity. (=all the pain before the gain.) Then there are the high admin costs and profit skimming associated with emission trading. (It is worth noting that investment large scale clean electricity has stalled because the MRET credit price has dropped too far – Europe has experienced the same problem with their ETS.)
This is not to say that Abbot’s has a realistic, properly costed plan to meet his targets. He hasn’t even considered the effect of growing population. For example, at the current growth rate of 2.1% /yr per capita emissions would have to be reduced by 23% just to keep our emissions at their current level.

Just remember that you said that, Fran.

You cannot change a culture without there being an available alternative behaviour.

I never suggested otherwise. It is possible for people to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles, drive less frequently and avoid the peaks, or car pool, and if we provide it, live in better and more sensibly located housing. It is possible to put people in touch with the consequences of their choices at the time they are making them and to change the way people value things.

If government wants to increase the rate of change then they have to promote a greater pace of change of hardware. Taxing the hell out of everything is not the way to best way to achieve a transition. The most probable result of universal road usage billing is consumer/voter revolt and a change of government.

If government wants to increase the rate of change then they have to promote a greater pace of change of hardware.

I agree, which is why I proposed phasing this stuff in.

Taxing the hell out of everything is not the way to best way to achieve a transition. The most probable result of universal road usage billing is consumer/voter revolt and a change of government.

I think it depends. Marginal charging is much fairer than having a bulk rate. Look at that AAMI commercial. People get the concept of collective action problems and of adverse selection. Shouldn’t people who are a greater cost and risk to the commons be charged more than those who aren’t? Imagine if every time you exceeded the speed limit or ran a red light you could expect a (minor) on the spot fine and loss of points. You wouldn’t do it would you? You wouldn’t even think about it. Imagine if there were an immobiliser in your car that stopped you driving while over PCA. You would simply make sure that you didn’t go over the limit or would make other arrangements. How quickly would out brain trauma units empty out?

I think this is something that could be sold to the public quite easily, especially if it were packaged up with greater security for vehicles (since they’d be being tracked) and if the vehicles could be remotely immobilised. Suddenly, everyone’s vehicle insurance costs decline because the risk profile improves.

I am now predicting something that I previously thought impossible, and that is that by 2040 60% of Australia’s electricity will come from private roof top solar electricity generation systems

I find that utterly improbable. On current figures the combined households of Australia would have to be outputting about 388.8GWhe per day (based on a three person household about 51Kwh per household per day) all of which was stored or used efficiently somewhere at zero round-trip cost. The sheer cost (not to mention the landfill disposal costs) of that many solar panels is terrifying.

In 2040 of course I hope we will have the bulk of our transport on the electric grid rather than on liquid fuels … so the numbers will have to be greater still.

There’s actually a fellow at Monash who favours something along these lines. I wish I could recall his name …

You cannot change a culture without there being an and available alternative behaviour. Making endless rules for others to live by is what my 12 year old daughter does. I was listening to Carlos _______ the head of Renault Nissan on the radio as I drove around like a mad thing for my eldest daughter (off to University in Melbourne in another week thank goodness), and this clearly extremely clever guy was saying that Renault Nissan are committed to manufacturing 10% of their vehicles as zero emission electric vehicles by 2020. When challenged about the demand for greater range than the current 160 Klm/charge he pointed out that 80% of drivers travel less than 100klms per day. Renault Nissan are targeting 10% of those 80% of drivers over the next 10 years. It is a very safe bet he says, but they could do more.

If government wants to increase the rate of change then they have to promote a greater pace of change of hardware. Taxing the hell out of everything is not the way to best way to achieve a transition. The most probable result of universal road useage billing is consumer/voter revolt and a change of government.

In early tv debates on Extreme Climate Risk the building industry was saying “we need guidence” from government for direction, otherwise they have no option other than to keep building bigger, but flimsier, houses that the market is demanding simply because they look good. Houses that look good but are energy disasters and prone to excessive damage from extreme weather.

On the energy front, I am now predicting something that I previously thought impossible, and that is that by 2040 60% of Australia’s electricity will come from private roof top solar electricity generation systems, paid for by the consumers themselves and without subsidy or the need for emission limit driven excessive pricing for grid electricity. I now see this as being the most probable outcome from the technologies available even today. Whatever form the balance of the system takes it will have to be able to cope with this most probable reality.

When people are massed together as our civilisation demands then “hardware” takes a dominant role in the way we perform. So addressing the suitability of the available hardware, along with the necessary operation medium, is the most important driver of change.