Archive for the 'Energy' Category

Killing solar PV softly

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 day, 12 hours ago
in Budget 2008, Climate change, Energy and Politics
. 63 Comments

Possum’s analysis of the broad policy objectives being played out in a subtle, piecewise fashion shows the political strategy of the Rudd government in the large. Be that as it may, there’s plenty of evidence of raw political cunning as well; I’d just like to point to a little policy announcement in the budget that demonstrates it. The policy in question isone that directly impacts my own upcoming spending plans - that is, to put some grid-connected solar panels on my roof, subsidised by the Photovoltaic Rebate Programme, which gives a subsidy of up to $8000 on such systems.

As discussed on a couple of previous LP threads, the rebate, while great for the beneficiaries, is in my opinion woeful public policy. To summarise, solar cells are currently way more expensive than just about any other renewable option, including wind, utility-scale solar thermal and CSP, small-scale hydropower, biomass, possibly geothermal and especially energy efficiency - you name it, it’s better value. But even if you specifically want to subsidise solar panels on roofs, it’s dumb policy, because it encourages them on the wrong roofs. For the same amount of money, you can put a lot more solar panels (and the extra support gear required) on the roofs of factories, schools, and offices, and generate a lot more power, than you can with domestic-size installations. Furthermore, if you look at what other forms of generation rooftop solar is likely to displace, it’s not coal or gas. It’s those other, arguably more promising, forms of renewable generation, because of the vagaries of the real, substantial incentive in place for renewable energy, the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target.

Whether you personally agree with that or not, it seems that there are plenty in the government who do, and decided they’d like to spike the program. But - as any thread on the topic at LP reveals - there are plenty of people who like solar energy, and like the idea of incentives to see it deployed on rooftops. So how to square the desire to stop this perceived waste of resources, with the desire not to have the supporters of solar panels - many of whom inhabit the political territory between Labor and the Greens - get too publicly upset?

Continue reading ‘Killing solar PV softly’

LPG and money on the footpath

Published
by
Robert Merkel
3 days, 9 hours ago
in Budget 2008, Economics, Energy and Transport
. 45 Comments

Flicking through the Fin Review at lunch today, there was all manner of interesting tidbits about the budget. For instance, the means testing of the baby bonus will scrape back a lot less revenue than the scrapping of an obscure tax exemption on the byproducts from natural gas production - a form of light crude oil called condensate. And disappointingly, the FBT concession for company cars stayed, so we’ll continue to have the spectacle of people driving around in circles, burning fuel and releasing CO2, just to collect a tax rebate.

But there’s one little program that was rumoured to get the axe, but didn’t - the LPG vehicle scheme. This scheme provides a rebate of $2000 to get your car converted to run on LPG, and $1000 if you buy a pre-converted vehicle from a manufacturer. Even without the rebate, if you drive a reasonable-sized car around the average distance, it pays for itself in a couple of years. With the rebate, it seems to be a complete no-brainer - it pays for the remaining cost of the conversion within a year, and saves around $1000 per year, every year after that.

Which brings me to a simple question, which relates to adapting to higher energy prices. If LPG is such a no-brainer - particularly after the government bribe - why isn’t everybody installing it?
In my case, the answer’s simple - I commute on a motor scooter, which not only saves me fuel but even more on parking, and Rex is a high-powered indulgence which gets driven relatively little. But, LP readers, why aren’t you? Do you all drive very little? Worried about the effect on the reliability and resale value of the car? Think that the lower fuel economy will take away all the advantage of the cheaper fuel (from all reports, it does use substantially more fuel, but the costs aren’t that bad). Don’t want to lose any engine power? Or is it simply not worth the hassle of doing the conversion for you?

Oil marches on…

Published
by
Robert Merkel
5 days, 9 hours ago
in Energy and Markets
. 34 Comments

The price of oil continues to set records - it’s now reached nearly $126 US Dollars. While some of that can be attributed to the Pacific Peso-ization of the greenback, by most measures the oil price has reached a record. Against the Euro, it’s still a record. Inflation-adjusted, it’s still a record.

But there’s still one measure by which the oil price isn’t a record - against the purchasing power of the average Western consumer, apparently. According to today’s Fin, it would have to reach somewhere around $135 per barrel to match the peak price of oil by that measure. But it seems like there’s every possibility it might continue to go up in the short term. Indeed, some guy from Goldman Sachs is predicting that oil will reach $200 per barrel in a few months’ time. Continue reading ‘Oil marches on…’

Climate Policy Salad

Published
by
dk.au
1 week, 1 day ago
in Climate change, Energy, Environment, Policy and Technology
. 31 Comments

Fresh updates from the world of emissions trading:

    * GetUp has a new petition: Climate Need Not Corporate Greed. The premise is simple: call a spade a spade and make emissions trading actually impact emissions rather than just transfer $$$ to polluting industries. Also worth signing because it may be leverage against a tendency to overallocate that has been a consistent problem that previous cap and trade schemes such as US Markets in SO2, BP’s internal scheme and the EU ETS have had to come to terms with.

    * The BBC Reports that a plan for national Personal Carbon Trading for the UK, arguably one of the most ambitious, complex and comprehensive Neoliberal projects in recent times, has been shelved. DEFRA research into the proposals to give every adult in the UK a personal ‘allowance’ included interviews with 92 people. The money quote is one for all the national psycho-social historians, “Just straight away it reminds me of going back to the war and rationing.”

    * NSW Govt has announced it plans to join HSBC, NAB, Coldplay et al by becoming carbon neutral by 2020. The plan will include state-run operations like police, hospitals, schools, and power-stations. It looks like most of the emissions reductions will be made by eating koala buying carbon offsets rather than making significant changes to BAU.

    * PhD Comics has some sustainability tips

Energy roundup - cars vs trucks, better biofuel

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 week, 5 days ago
in Climate change, Economics, Energy, Markets, Transport and USA
. 17 Comments

While everyone’s heard the jokes about the USA being the land of the monster truck, it’s not until you actually go there and wander round a shopping mall carpark that you appreciate just how gargantuan the average American family vehicle is. The typical American car isn’t a car at all, it’s a Ford F-150 SuperCrew, a 2500 kg behemoth. They’re terrible to drive, by all reports, and get about 13mpg - or, if you like, use 18 litres for every 100 kilometres driven. But, since 2001, sales of “light-duty trucks” of this ilk have exceeded total sales of passenger cars in the United States, helped not only by cheap fuel but a collection of tax write-offs that encouraged their purchase.
Continue reading ‘Energy roundup - cars vs trucks, better biofuel’

Murdoch’s Madrassas

Published
by
Kim
2 weeks, 1 day ago
in Education, Energy, International, Media and Religion
. 31 Comments

As something of a follow up to my two posts on the brouhaha over the Griffith University Islamic Research Unit in The Australian, I noticed in today’s Crikey Irfan Yusuf had an interesting point to make:

Continue reading ‘Murdoch’s Madrassas’

Efficiency over the decades

Published
by
Robert Merkel
2 weeks, 2 days ago
in Climate change, Economics, Energy, Environment and Transport
. 36 Comments

Planning academic Paul Mees has been a tireless advocate for Melbourne’s public transport system for a long time. And, while his views on various topics are often disputed by other experts, they’re always worth a read. Ditto his latest research, which makes the observation that the average fuel economy of the Australian vehicle fleet has essentially stayed the same for 45 years:

In research for the Garnaut Climate Change Review, Melbourne University’s Dr Paul Mees has used Australian Bureau of Statistics figures to show that fuel efficiency has remained practically unchanged since 1963.

In that year — the first date efficiency was recorded by the Federal Government — the average Australian car used 11.4 litres of petrol to travel 100 kilometres.

In 2006, according to the ABS’s Survey of Motor Vehicle Use, it remained identical.

Continue reading ‘Efficiency over the decades’

Greens Coalition propose national solar feed-in tariff

Published
by
Robert Merkel
2 weeks, 4 days ago
in Economics, Energy, Environment and Politics
. 107 Comments

It may just be that Greg Hunt knows he’s never actually going to have to justify his policy ideas to Treasury or the Productivity Commission. But, at the moment, you’d swear he was the Greens environment spokesperson, not the Liberal Party’s. He’s proposing a whole raft of measures to promote the development of solar energy in Australia.

Of most direct short-term interest is the proposal for a national “feed-in tariff” scheme. To explain this, first some background. If you’ve got access to grid electricity, solar panels are currently financial lunacy. The solar system I’m currently being quoted on (thanks to commenter wilful for the tip) costs about $12,000, and generates about $225 worth of electricity every year. By contrast, if I left that $12,000 in the bank, I’d get at least double that after tax. If I put the money into a share fund, over the course of a decade I’d probably do much better again. I’d be able to pay for GreenPower from my electricity supplier, and have a considerable pile of money left over.

So why am I looking at solar cells? Because of the massive government rort known as the Photovoltaic Rebate Programme. Essentially, the government will pay $8000 towards the cost of my 1 kilowatt installation. I only have to pay somewhere around $4000, and it works out pretty close to cost effective.

Continue reading ‘Greens Coalition propose national solar feed-in tariff’

Molitor@UNSW

Published
by
dk.au
3 weeks, 2 days ago
in Climate change, Energy, Environment, Government, Markets and Technology
. 11 Comments

Michael Molitor gave a public lecture last night at UNSW, where he now holds an adjunct professorship with the Climate Change Research Centre between appointments as a ‘Carbon Manager’ for PriceWaterhouseCooper. The talk was entitled Climate Change: ‘Show Me The Money’, which is the famous line from Tom Cruise’s character in Jerry Maguire - so when Molitor spoke passionately of the ‘Governor of NSW’, I was thankful that there were no couches onstage. Though, to be fair, the event showcased a fascinating, eclectic and sometimes contradictory mix of bravado-filled insights on the problem of climate change from someone on the inner circle of business elites. The message was familiar enough - that we aren’t moving quickly enough for the scale of the problem - his analysis, however, was somewhat less conventional.

The ‘good news’ began with the observation that our ‘carbon productivity’, that is, our economic outputs from machines relative to their spewing waste into the global carbon dump has actually been increasing over time. Continue reading ‘Molitor@UNSW’

Annals of Naive Science, Episode 12938/WWF

Published
by
dk.au
1 month ago
in Disasters, Energy, Environment, Science, Sociology and Technology
. 44 Comments

SMH Reports that the WWF and Climate Institute will join the CFMEU and Coal Industry to promote clean coal funding by governments

“If it’s going to work we need to know quickly. If it’s not going to work we need to know even more quickly,” Mr Bourne said. “If it’s never tested we are have deep problems on a world wide basis.”

As an aside, it’s hard to know whether there is actually a World Wildlife Fund funding, y’know, Wildlife behind the hyper-managed brand these days. They seem more concerned with planting vacuous stories in The Age about vacuous people publicising that they’ll be switching their lights off or getting photo ops with Telstra’s fanciful, Futurist exercises in potential reality-displacement.

What’s immediately concerning about Bourne’s statement is the implicitly Whiggish invocation of a ‘test’ that will resolve disputes about the place of carbon sequestration in the policy mix, presumably by speaking for Nature itself. If the last four decades of Science Studies research have taught us anything, it’s that testing does not magically resolve hypotheses. The best you can hope for on the boundaries of technoscience is some kind of closure. Continue reading ‘Annals of Naive Science, Episode 12938/WWF’

A linked list - the 2020 participants Googled!

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 month, 2 weeks ago
in Australia 2020 summit, Energy, Environment, Transport and Water
. 70 Comments

Well, Mark might not be picking apart the 2020 list, as it’s too obvious, I’m an obvious kind of person…A few hours Googling later, and we have a horribly superficial, uninformed commentary on the 100 (well, 86 actually) listed delegates to the sustainability sub-summit.

Discussion and the annotated, commentated list over the fold.

Continue reading ‘A linked list - the 2020 participants Googled!’

Policy ditchings

Published
by
Robert Merkel
2 months, 2 weeks ago
in Climate change, Developing world, Energy, Environment, Howardia, International, Nuclear and Politics
. 16 Comments

Tim Dunlop notes that the Coalition has quietly ditched its support for nuclear power in Australia - sort of.

The new policy does not explicitly oppose nuclear-generated electricity, but goes close. The Coalition will no longer advocate nuclear power, recognising that its introduction would only be possible with bipartisan political support and widespread community support.

Tim’s a little bit disappointed they didn’t stick to their guns. Guy Beres (formerly of Polemica is quite contemptuous of the politics of the ditching:

The message from the Coalition seems to be that they are interested in investigating the possibility of nuclear energy, but no, of course they would never actually pursue the development of a nuclear power industry in this country. No, sir. They are just interested in investigating it. Unless of course, the Rudd Government decides to embrace nuclear power, in which case they would be happy to hop on board for the ride

Continue reading ‘Policy ditchings’

Grand engineering challenges

Published
by
Robert Merkel
2 months, 3 weeks ago
in Energy, Environment, Philosophy, Science, Technology, USA and Water
. 66 Comments

The aphorism “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” may have (apparently) been the coinage of one Bernard Baruch, a stock trader and later adviser to Woodrow Wilson and FDR. It’s such a favourite amongst computer geeks I’d assumed that it was coined by one, as it neatly pigeonholes the tendency of people to assume that the tools and skills which they themselves possess are the best ways to tackle the problem at hand.

Given that, it’s surprising to see the US’s National Academy of Engineering has identified as its 14 Grand Challenges For Engineering for the (still-new, I suppose) century. While there’s certainly some worthy challenges amongst them, whether many of them are primarily, or even in large part, the domain of engineers seems kind of doubtful.

Continue reading ‘Grand engineering challenges’

Garnaut gets it

Published
by
Robert Merkel
2 months, 3 weeks ago
in Climate change, Developing world, Economics, Energy, Environment, Foreign policy and Policy
. 44 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, Greens Senator Christine Milne argued that Ross Garnaut, the economist conducting the climate change review for the government, was treating climate change “in purely economic or political terms” and ignoring the seriousness of the warnings coming from the science - and some of his musings about short-term and long-term targets were kind of worrying.

But in his most recent speech (PDF) at the Solar Cities Convention in Adelaide, he clearly articulates the urgency of the issue, and - without saying so explicitly, nails the “60% by 2050″ target from Labor’s election campaign as utterly inadequate.
Continue reading ‘Garnaut gets it’

The 1-lakh car

Published
by
Robert Merkel
4 months ago
in Climate change, Developing world, Energy, Environment, Foreign policy and Imperialism
. 40 Comments

The Tata Nano has received more publicity than any car launch I can recall. Still, it’s not surprising. A fully-functional car for the equivalent of about 3000 Australian dollars is big news. While a number of writers have pointed out the similarity between the Nano and the Mercedes “Smart”, I reckon a closer analogy is another ultra-cheap car of another age, the Volkswagen Beetle.

Unsurprisingly, there’s been a fair bit of commentary from green groups that the explosion in third-world motoring that cars like the Nano will bring is environmentally unsustainable. Christian Kerr from Crikey (behind their paywall) has used this as an opportunity to indulge in some left-bashing:

The left in the west used to support the aspirations of people in developing nations to a better qualify of life, including better transport…if activists in the West try to deny these people their aspirations, they are guilty of a new eco-imperialism

Continue reading ‘The 1-lakh car’