Tag Archive for 'brown coal'

Victoria gets on the coal truck to escape the Pacific Peso

Published
by
Robert Merkel
5 months ago
in Climate change, Economics, Energy, Environment, Foreign policy and Victoria
. 79 Comments

A proposal to export to dry and export brown coal from Victoria’s Latrobe valley (discussed in this earlier LP post) is still up for consideration, along with a variety of other proposals to turn the stuff into everything from diesel to fertilizer.

As Mark Wakeham from Environment Victoria puts it:

The fact is, because brown coal is more polluting than other fuels, exporting it to developing countries will increase their emissions and lock them (and the world) into a dangerous emissions trajectory, thereby destroying attempts to negotiate a safe climate deal globally.”

So why is the Victorian government so anxious to have coal leaving the Port of Hastings? Ross Gittins’ recent column hints as to one reason – the Australian dollar seems to be on the up-and-up for a good while:

Continue reading ‘Victoria gets on the coal truck to escape the Pacific Peso’

Nukes: a necessary part of our future?

Published
by
Brian
8 months ago
in Climate change, Energy and Environment
. 81 Comments

I think that nuclear power is a sufficiently sustainable source of power to provide all of the growth in our energy demands that are going to come in the next million years or so. (Emphasis added)

Yes, I checked the audio to make sure the ABC transcribers got it right and that’s exactly what he said. That was Barry Brook talking on Counterpoint last week.

In a recent post Steve Kirsch describes Brook’s conversion to nuclear:

Prominent Australian climate scientist Barry Brook admitted that he spent months educating himself on fourth generation nuclear before he came to the same conclusion Hansen did. In fact, before Brook heard about fourth generation nuclear, he thought the global warming problem was intractable because his own calculations confirmed the observations of many others (including Energy Secretary Steven Chu, MIT President Susan Hockfield and US Senator Lamar Alexander) regarding the necessity of nuclear power due to the problems with renewables being able to scale to meet our energy needs. (Emphasis added)

Continue reading ‘Nukes: a necessary part of our future?’

Loy Yang Power buys carbon offsets

Published
by
dk.au
10 months, 3 weeks ago
in Energy, Environment and Markets
. 12 Comments

Here’s an interesting sign of things to come. Loy Yang Power has bought 100 000 Certified Emissions Reductions in a pre-emptive strike on regulation of the electricity market under the CPRS. Two points worth making: this is a drop in the ocean (no pun intended) compared to the annual emissions of the power stations of ~14m tonnes. Also, the US Waxman Bill would only credit 4 from every 5 international offset credits imported into the country to cover compliance. This is largely because independent analyses of the CDM have come up with figures ranging from 20% to 50% of all projects approved being ‘non-additional’ – they would have happened anyway without funding. Continue reading ‘Loy Yang Power buys carbon offsets’