The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread

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[member=153]LP[/member]

Thanks for all the insights LP, but it sounds a bit technical for me at my stage of increasing senility. I'm pretty happy with my HP W10 laptop so I don't really feel inclined to drag out the old Dell and start tinkering.

[DJC]

Where did that figure come from DJC?  It's over 20%.

That was the figure I heard with the closure announcement but I think they meant “one fifth” rather than 5%.  Yallourn currently produces 1,450 megawatts and supplies 22% of Victoria's electricity.

Given the additional 5,000 megawatts of clean energy coming on line in the next 7 years, it’s easy to see why Energy Australia has decided to close Yallourn earlier than scheduled.

[DJC]

The EU is about to hit Australian imports with a tariff for inadequate action on reducing fossil fuel emissions.

[Mav]

Look at how far clean energy and battery technology has come in the last 20 years and imagine how far it will advance in the next 20 years. I wouldn’t be surprised if  upgrading batteries will be worthwhile in 5-10 year cycles from an efficiency and safety point of view. I don’t see too many laptop owners wanting to ditch LiPo batteries and revert to NiMH batteries.

On the other hand, how much has coal-fired electricity generation improved over the last 50 years and how much Improvement can we expect in the next 50 years in reducing pollutants? And I mean real improvements rather than the white whale of “clean coal” which just seems to be a shiny object to deflect criticism or justify lobbying for government handouts.

[LP]

Australia is a global leader in all the key areas, solar cells, hydrogen, emissions reduction and battery technology. But our local researchers get so poorly funded by the government the inventions are immediately sold off by the parent institutions to foreign investors, then Australia has to buy the technology back as just another ordinary consumer.

If we were serious about Australia's two biggest long term issues, energy and water, we'd have built a nuclear plant next door to a desalination plant decades ago, and right now we'd be planning it's redundancy in the next 20 to 30 years while emitting near zero carbon in the interim!

[kruddler]

Australia is a global leader in all the key areas, solar cells, hydrogen, emissions reduction and battery technology. But our local researchers get so poorly funded by the government the inventions are immediately sold off by the parent institutions to foreign investors, then Australia has to buy the technology back as just another ordinary consumer.

If we were serious about Australia's two biggest long term issues, energy and water, we'd have built a nuclear plant next door to a desalination plant decades ago, and right now we'd be planning it's redundancy in the next 20 to 30 years while emitting near zero carbon in the interim!

Nuclear is so far advanced anything else in terms of power output its ridiculous. It's all about the environment with nuclear power....but coal is probably worse for the environment. Call it a marketing exercise to change the thinking and be done with it already.

In terms of Aussies selling ideas overseas....this really needs to be looke at.
Pony up the dollars for proper research and development now and see the benefits for generations.

We have the brains.
We have the desire.
We have the resources.
We have the technology.
We DONT have the backing.
It's ludicrous.

[LP]

Nuclear is so far advanced anything else in terms of power output its ridiculous. It's all about the environment with nuclear power....but coal is probably worse for the environment. Call it a marketing exercise to change the thinking and be done with it already.

Just an aside, many people in conventional power argue for coal as a safe alternative to nuclear, but the truth is emissions from coal power contain more radioactive isotopic waste than is ever emitted by a nuclear plant even if the nuclear plant fails. It's just that the coal radioactive emissions are trickled out over the lifetime of the facility, distributed evenly through thousands and thousands of cubic kilometres of emissions, in a way it may actually be more insidious!

Green energy initiatives can be even more harmful, relying on very dirty industries to create rare earth elements and engineering metals. It's just that because the processing is NIMBY, people ignore the damage it does and declare what they import as green! btw., Much of those green assessments are based on 25 year lifetimes, we are hearing much about that at the moment. My associate who inspects installations for solar and wind calls it the great green fraud!

[Thryleon]

Whenever anyone asks me about Green energy, I remember the Prius.

Has anyone seen one recently, and do they know anyone that still drives one?

I wonder what they do when they are disposed of?

[LP]

There is so much politics in this, it's almost impossible to make genuine progress or sense of it.

I think I've mentioned this once before, when working in Asia I would come across whole factories that were built to sell green manufacturing into the EU, so that they get a CE tick of approval. But the real factory doing the bulk of the work was a dark dank and dirty sweatshop down the road that would become a wasteland in the future, that was the EU version of a NIMBY moment. Yet now they will place sanctions on Australia for not doing enough, when all the EU has really done historically is move it's waste offshore!

A friend in the UK is particularly sceptical, his side gig is home farmed free range chicken eggs. Under the EU, he wasn't permitted to sell them locally, roadside or direct to the public, the stores nearby his home had to sell eggs trucked in from Belgium, Netherland or some other eastern block country which had the EU approved green stamp! Ignoring thousands of kilometres of diesel fumes for every tray of course!

When it suits it seems that the rules change!

[PaulP]

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/weath...56lya.html

From a couple of months ago. A great explanation of El Niño and La Niña.