General Discussions

[Mav]

If you include Australia's export of fossil fuels (coal etc) then Australia's contribution to emissions is 5%. And the Australian Govt has been one of the leaders of attempts to undermine global action on climate change.

[Baggers]

If you include Australia's export of fossil fuels (coal etc) then Australia's contribution to emissions is 5%. And the Australian Govt has been one of the leaders of attempts to undermine global action on climate change.

Yep but isn't it almost ironic that this govts present ad campaign saturation is all about how they are supporting 'green power' to meet our 2050 zero emissions and already we're 'supposedly' 20% down over the past few years. Amazing how when an election is looming that the present Govt is doing their utmost to secure a 'green' vote whilst ideologically and philosophically opposed to 'green' energy and enmeshed with a belief of 'no such thing as climate change' or that it is being exaggerated. Real forked tongue stuff.

[ElwoodBlues1]

China love our better quality coal and we love selling it to them and Europe are reliant on Russia for natural gas and wont apply sanctions in that area. Its a strange world of contradictions we live in.....

[LP]

I won't write too much here we have an energy thread.

I understand a large chunk of Australia's export is black coal used for coking not energy, and even when we transition to clean energy that won't change as the demand for coking coal as steel production will not diminish even though steel mills move to greener energy, the coking coal is part of a chemical process to make steel not part of the energy production.

Not sure we export much brown coal, it's is mostly used domestically for energy production.

The coal everybody wants to trade is the black stuff, it sells at a far higher price, so much so there is a lot of R&D going into techniques to turn brown to black. The higher the black coal quality the better the alloys you can make.

Interestingly Japan mostly buys black coal for it's high tech energy production, black coal burns cleaner so it's easier to deal with the waste, Japan's technologies eliminate about 80% of the waste emissions. Protestors will still rally against this but as a short term transitional solution that technology is as good as immediately shutting 80% of your coal fired power plants, actually for Australia it would be equivalent to shutting even more than 80% because the brown coal we burn for energy is not as clean. The only long term viable solution is still nuclear be it fission or fusion, several countries that historically closed nuclear are now reversing the decision, they have become woke to the lobbyist tactics.

Solar, wind and other renewable energy lobbyists tend to just lump coal(pun intended) all in the same basket.

PS; When Australia stops selling black coal or supply is limited, China and India do their best to get it from other sources like Borneo and the Amazon Basin! The lobbyists paint us as vandals, but the truth is far more complicated.

[capcom]

Nuclear.  'Cos wind and solar won't ever do it. 

[Mav]

The best example of the addiction the Morrison Govt has to coal is in the production of hydrogen as a green fuel. This will allow truckers to use a fuel that can be distributed like diesel but burns without emissions.

There are broadly 2 ways of producing hydrogen: using electricity or coal-fired power to provide the energy to split the hydrogen from the oxygen in water. The former can be green if the electricity is produced from solar or other green power but coal is decidedly dirty.

Australian scientists have made a huge leap forward in the efficiency of electrolysers: they've produced 95% efficiency compared to 75% previously: Australian researchers claim ‘giant leap’ in technology to produce affordable renewable hydrogen, The Guardian. Green hydrogen is therefore on track to be competitive with coal-fired hydrogen production by 2025 with costs of under $2 per kilo.

But there's no surprise that the Morrison Govt sees coal-fired hydrogen production as its gift to addressing climate change even though it's dependent on "clean coal" solutions that may be pie in the sky: Coal-based liquid hydrogen pivotal for green energy? The experts doubt it, The Guardian.

A world-first shipment of liquid hydrogen from Australia was declared momentous – a pivotal moment as the world clambers for clean liquid fuels to bring global greenhouse gas emissions to zero.

Prime minister Scott Morrison said the consignment – loaded on to a purpose-built Japanese ship at the Port of Hastings in Victoria – marked the beginning of a new clean energy export industry for Australia.

Despite the celebratory fanfare and two government ministers at the port for a photo-op, the reality is something different.
Experts say the climate credentials of the technology being used to produce the hydrogen – using brown coal – are highly questionable.

“The project’s current configuration is not clean. In fact, it is incredibly dirty,” said Kobad Bhavnagri, head of industrial decarbonisation at Bloomberg NEF.

To bring emissions down, HESC says a commercial operation would capture CO2 released during one of the stages of production (the gasification phase carried out in the Latrobe Valley) and then use the Victorian government’s CarbonNet project to store the CO2.

But the CarbonNet project – which is targeting potential geological formations off the Victorian coast – doesn’t yet exist and, if it does go ahead, the Victorian government says it won’t start operating until the end of this decade.

All of this raises the prospect of coal-based hydrogen – which the Morrison government is happy to describe as “clean” – hitting a global market at a time when some analysts believe it will be already priced out by zero-emissions hydrogen derived from renewable energy.

Bhavnagri told Temperature Check he doubts using coal to make hydrogen could have any commercial success.

He said assuming the project could capture and store a significant amount of CO2, the carbon footprint of the hydrogen would still be higher than producing hydrogen from gas with CCS and “much higher than producing it from renewables”.

“If it’s more complex and more costly and more polluting than making hydrogen from renewables, why would you do it?”

If you want to make money, just float a proposal to the Morrison Govt that includes the words "clean coal". Then you just have to make sure you won't be crushed under all of the money that the Govt will give you so it can burnish its climate credentials.

[ElwoodBlues1]

I won't write too much here we have an energy thread.

I understand a large chunk of Australia's export is black coal used for coking not energy, and even when we transition to clean energy that won't change as the demand for coking coal as steel production will not diminish even though steel mills move to greener energy, the coking coal is part of a chemical process to make steel not part of the energy production.

Not sure we export much brown coal, it's is mostly used domestically for energy production.

The coal everybody wants to trade is the black stuff, it sells at a far higher price, so much so there is a lot of R&D going into techniques to turn brown to black. The higher the black coal quality the better the alloys you can make.

Interestingly Japan mostly buys black coal for it's high tech energy production, black coal burns cleaner so it's easier to deal with the waste, Japan's technologies eliminate about 80% of the waste emissions. Protestors will still rally against this but as a short term transitional solution that technology is as good as immediately shutting 80% of your coal fired power plants, actually for Australia it would be equivalent to shutting even more than 80% because the brown coal we burn for energy is not as clean. The only long term viable solution is still nuclear be it fission or fusion, several countries that historically closed nuclear are now reversing the decision, they have become woke to the lobbyist tactics.

Solar, wind and other renewable energy lobbyists tend to just lump coal(pun intended) all in the same basket.

PS; When Australia stops selling black coal or supply is limited, China and India do their best to get it from other sources like Borneo and the Amazon Basin! The lobbyists paint us as vandals, but the truth is far more complicated.

China (Mainland) have 1,100 coal fired power plants and are building another 1.1 billion dollar plant, around 75% of the worlds total, thats a lot of coal......Japs are building another 22 power stations running on Aussie coal.
Ukraine have been buying their gas from Poland, Romania and couple of other countries thus cutting dependence on Russia and were about to do isolation testing in an attempt to breakaway from the Russian electricity grid but Putin timed his invasion for the day they were going to experiment by cutting the Russian link. Ukraine want to hook up with Western Europe and become part of that grid and dump the Ruskies and Belarusian distibution networks which they are tied to at the moment.
Vlad wasnt having Ukraine cut all power ties and while I know electrical stability will be an issue if Ukraine join the other EU grid, the US and other countries were going to help them achieve their goal.
For all Putins political rhetoric about saving Russians living in Ukraine from the mythical Nazi Zelensky regime it all gets back to money and big business and the leverage Russia has on many countries in terms of energy supply.
No surprise he wants to be paid in Ruble's now which means other countries have to buy them so he is trying to counter the effect sanctions have had and how much the ruble has plummeted in value.

[capcom]

When the rouble has plunged over 50% since the invasion, no wonder he's losing friends.

[Baggers]

China love our better quality coal and we love selling it to them and Europe are reliant on Russia for natural gas and wont apply sanctions in that area. Its a strange world of contradictions we live in.....

Much like the critters than inhabit it (planet Earth)!

[LP]

Green hydrogen is therefore on track to be competitive with coal-fired hydrogen production by 2025 with costs of under $2 per kilo.

All the expert commentators seem to wilfully ignore the R&D going at the moment to convert coal and other fossil fuels by catalysis to liquified hydrogen, so they make the argument based on conventional electrolysis.

But these experts, if they are experts and not renewable lobbyists, also know the R&D going on at Newcastle Uni related to catalytic conversion of liquified brown coal to clean hydrogen via a catalysis reactor that is designed to run off solar thermal. Basically it's getting to the point of upscaled trials. This by the way is not new, it's been in R&D since the early 2000s.

It's also a process that like a desalination plant is a very serious option for complimentary installation with nuclear. Nuclear / Hydrogen Refinery or Nuclear / Desalination Plant, this type of configuration is the preferred option for nuclear to operate at peak efficiency.

Know a state in a drought riddled country with a expensive to operate desalination plant or a state with an aluminium refinery that has had operations derailed due to high energy costs, either needing cheap base load power to be viable?