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- Jan 20, 2008
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- Nic Martin
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- #2,801
I'm shocked to be sitting hereIt's arguably a bit of a shifting of the goal posts
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I'm shocked to be sitting hereIt's arguably a bit of a shifting of the goal posts
??? Why would the coal plants just stop producing when there's so much money to be made at these high electricity prices? Wouldn't they keep on producing until they are actually obsolete? Why did we literally destroy coal plants instead of just mothballing them?the cheaper source of energy have not yet made up the shortfall from the closure of coal fired power
Is climate change only affected by electricity rather than overall energy consumption?It's arguably a bit of a shifting of the goal posts as far as this the last few pages of this thread goes though since we were discussing electricity generation rather than overall energy consumption.
i respect how you’re not even bothering to quote people any more - you are literally just shouting into the void.Is climate change only affected by electricity rather than overall energy consumption?
What has the 2.3 trillion bought us?
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No idea what your point is here.We know that certain meteorites (carbonaceous chondrites) and comets contain amino acids (the building blocks of proteins). These extraterrestrial amino acids have not been formed from biological pathways, and using your logic neither have amino acids on earth (which we know is not the case).
Carn manCan I please be absolutely clear as to what you're arguing old campaigner?
Is coal being shut down because it's uneconomic or because of current/future government policy?
If the former, why are they shut now even as power prices are high? Do they hate profits?
??? Why would the coal plants just stop producing when there's so much money to be made at these high electricity prices? Wouldn't they keep on producing until they are actually obsolete? Why did we literally destroy coal plants instead of just mothballing them?
Astonishingly you admit that gas needed to increase which puts us at the mercy of international gas prices but somehow you think this proves renewables are a good thing even though you know perfectly well that an increase in renewables must be matched with an increase in gas. It never occurs to you that having to build capacity twice over is ridiculous policy.
Is climate change only affected by electricity rather than overall energy consumption?
What has the 4 trillion bought us?
No idea what your point is here.
Are you saying the amino acids that eventually created life on earth had to have been created from living things previously?
Can I please be absolutely clear as to what you're arguing old campaigner?
Is coal being shut down because it's uneconomic or because of current/future government policy?
If the former, why are they shut now even as power prices are high? Do they hate profits?
To be a viable investment there needs to be certainty that they will be competitive over their 40 year lifespan and this is not the case. Government policy adds further uncertainty.
It's the default assumption for all hydrocarbons on earth unless given compelling reason to think otherwise for any particular deposit.Contrary to your claims the existance of abiotic extraterrestrial hydrocarbons (or amino acids) does not automatically imply that all hydrocarbons (or amino acids) on earth are abiotic also.
I see.
So all coal fire power stations in Australia were built exactly 50 years ago and 50 years is exactly the age all such stations can exist - no more - and nobody thought to build any new stations or do any refurbishments in any of these stations for the entirety of those 50 years.
Why was there no investment in new coal stations 10 years ago? 20 years ago? 30? 40?
Why are they practically all coming to their end right now?
You finally got it. There's been no investment because of sovereign risk. Economic viability in terms of electricity prices (current or expected) has nothing to do with it.
But why don't you tell me precisely when we can expect to see electricity prices collapse because of these magical renewables? Your precious experts previously all said these price falls would be apparent by now - hence their continuous calls to speed up the transition - and Albo of course campaigned on it. Now your precious experts admit prices will skyrocket. So when will our renewable utopia come to fruition?
And could you explain why governments need to set low/zero emissions targets?
That part has me confused.
According to you solar and wind are 100× cheaper and more reliable than coal - which means they're 1000× cheaper and more reliable than gas. You also claim that energy companies are purely profit driven. So why did governments need to get involved at all?
This leads to a further question. Why, in the transition, do people say we need gas? If renewables are cheaper and more reliable (and they are certainly more modular and flexible) than coal then obviously they're unambiguously better than gas. So what's the point of keeping gas plants (or converting coal to gas)?
I also love the fact you keep harking back to "experts" but those "experts" are so stupid they didn't even realise domestic gas prices were influenced by world markets.
How did they not know this?
Why should we believe anything they say?
How did they not know that there would be a long lag between coal stations being shut down and renewables being able to cover for them? Why didn't they tell governments five years ago that we were going to run into trouble and they needed to do everything they could to get coal stations to produce for longer? Why did they tell governments that it was perfectly ok to destroy the coal generators rather than just mothball them in case we needed them?
And can I ask? Do you realise that when a business sets a nominal date for their investment to be obsolete, that is all it is don't you? Nominal. Investments can last much longer or much shorter depending on a range of factors. If electricity prices are high (which they are) then even a 50 year old coal generator can be made to work a little longer. There's no law of physics that says that the generator must be shut down on its 50th birthday.
And I love your comment about total energy vs electricity. Car makers have a shorter investment timeframe - less than ten years before they upgrade their models usually - than coal generators (which as you keep saying is multi-decade). Sovereign risk therefore doesn't affect car makers as much as it does coal generators. Car makers could still produce ICE cars knowing that if government decisions made them impossible they could pivot without great cost. Coal generators couldn't do that. So car makers continued to produce ICE whereas coal generators just stopped investing altogether.
IOW, virtually no change in total energy source vs large change in electricity source is what you would expect when this is purely a politically driven thing rather than economic.
Do you agree that investment decisions in new coal generation have, at least in part, been affected by non-economic considerations ie expectations that governments (current or future) will make things more difficult for them?
It's the default assumption for all hydrocarbons on earth unless given compelling reason to think otherwise for any particular deposit.
Given there's no way to explain the energy contained in a thick coal seam or large oil deposit from any biological source (eg forest) that we know of the probability of there being "compelling" reasons is extremely low.
Zero in fact.
Right. So your initial claim that the reason there is a massive deficit now is because they were coming to the ends of their lives is completely and utterly wrong.I didn't say that, I said a lot were built in the 70s. Loy Yang was completed in the late 80s/early 90s iirc. That one is slated for closure in 2035. It was originally expected to close in 2045 but the owner has bought forward the closure date.
Yes. They saw the writing on the wall when it came to sovereign risk.No one has wanted to invest in coal fired power stations for the last 15-20 years. Even the more modern plants are considered worthless. Why would anyone invest more money into something like that?
View attachment 1547055
Source: Australia's newest coal-fired power plant deemed worthless by Japanese owner
Noting these are some of the largest companies on earth and it's probably not a stretch to say they have done a tad more research on the viability of coal fired power stations than you or I.
Yep. Sovereign risk.Because it hasn't been an attractive investment for the last 15-20 years. The Paris Agreement made it even less so.
But the high coal prices reflect the (unexpected to you) high demand! Asia is building hundreds of new coal plants.High coal prices, which are a boon for coal mining companies simply worsen the business case for new (and existing) coal fired power stations.
If everybody in the parliament- Labor, Liberal and Green - had said coal plants could continue without any obstruction that would have been investment certainty. Instead, everybody in the parliament fell over themselves to punish any coal investment as fast as they could.Businesses knew all this was coming 15-20 years ago which was why we needed a bipartisan energy policy to give those businesses the certainty to invest in the future of our energy network.
There was disagreement because the Green policies were abject lunacy, the Labor policies mostly lunacy and the Liberal policies partly lunacy.Unfortunately that didn't happen and we've reached the point where the existing generation capacity is old and is being wound down without sufficient investment in the replacement.
Oh so it's just a matter of lobbying? So anybody who lobbies gets their own way do they?Government policy is also a factor but if there was money to be made from it you would see far more businesses lobbying to be allowed to build a coal fired power station.
There should already be zero reliance on gas given that renewables are 1000x cheaper and more reliable than that.Prices will reduce when there's less reliance on gas.
Have you taken into account the cost of storage when you assess the cost of renewables. I assume you have. How much battery capacity do we need for Australia? How much investment does that require when batteries have a very finite shelf life (say 20 years)?The way the AEMO pricing model works the more renewable energy generation there is the more days we'll be getting by without relying on gas generation. Increased storage capacity will add to this, as will grid firming.
You claimed it was much cheaper and more reliable and that is why nobody wants to invest in coal. Whether it is 100x or 2x makes no difference. You are still left trying to make the extraordinary argument that these renewables have somehow supplanted cheap/reliable electricity purely for economic reasons even as electricity prices have been driven much higher.I haven't claimed renewable energy is 100x cheaper.
No they don't. They can be changed on a whim. And they are. Always made higher. How on earth does that give certainty?Renewable energy targets give businesses greater certainty when they're working through the business cases for new projects.
Yes.Less certainty means greater risk, greater risk requires a risk premium which makes it more costly to invest.
Watch. Even faced with the crisis in Europe there are still people who prefer to virtue signal about unicorn farts than use actual reliable cheap coal generated electricity.Electricity is something we can't afford to go without.
You mean one without the government creating sovereign risk like it has with zero emissions targets and renewables targets.Under a normal efficient market model new supply will be created when there is insufficient supply to meet demand.
I don't.Because we don't want electricity shortages
But, apparently, we do want to blow up coal mines that could have been used - even if only as a spare.we don't want the market to wait until there is a decrease in supply before making the decision to invest in a project with a 5 year lead time.
Yes. They've achieved this brilliantly.Ideally we want new supply to come online as old supply decreases. There's a few mechanisms to achieve this and renewable energy targets are one of them.
But supply isn't constrained. We have renewables remember? They're cheap, plentiful, reliable and come with their own puppy hugging machines.In a supply constrained system sources of generation like gas will be used despite the cost.
There are times when SA was powered completely by fossil fuels. Difference being that time was several decades rather than several minutes.When there is plenty of supply (such as the times when South Australia was powered 100% by renewable energy) the expensive sources such as gas are not used.
They did know this. People have been calling for a transition to renewable energy since the early 2000s.
And we invested squillions into renewables.People knew our fleet of coal generators were aging and there needed to be a pipeline of new generation capacity to maintain supply.
Ok. Tell me the exact number that the renewables target needed to be at every given year for the past two decades to ensure we had reliable and cheap power?The current situation (effects of the war aside) is precisely what they were hoping to avoid. Politics got in the way for various reasons.
Yes. Sovereign risk.The fact that companies are choosing to shut down power stations at a time of high electricity prices should tell you something.
Lack of investment in coal generators due to sovereign risk. Also lack of investment in coal mines/gas fields. Not as bad a problem but still significant.What is driving power prices high?
Tell that to the governments who have told us that all the generators are evil and they're price gouging and so governments will probably go down the path of price caps.It's the cost of inputs - coal and gas. The fact that prices are high does not mean coal and gas fired power stations are making attractive margins.
It's the exact opposite. Electric cars have faults but are actually quite decent in many ways. Solar panels and wind turbines are hopeless in every respect.The situation with cars is a little different. The technology to enable EVs to be a cost effective alternative to ICEs is more recent and it's really only been in the last 5-10 years that there's been significant investment in them.
That it is heavily affected by sovereign risk. In countries with less sovereign risk, coal stations are still being built.I think it's probably just one of several factors. The biggest factor being that the forecast price decreases for renewable energy projects as economies of scale develop and technology matures will undercut any new coal fired generation. The most modern coal fired power station in the country was written off as worthless 11 years after it was built. What does that say about the economics of coal?
Russia's isn't. They produce more oil than we do. And I know for a fact that Western producers go back to capped wells to produce more later on.Except there is. Our entire hydrocarbon exploration and extraction industry is based on the biogenic theory of fossil fuel formation.
What is it exactly that you think you can see?We cans see it happening, from organic rich seafloor sediments, to kerogen in shales, to oil.
Correct. If you don't explain it in your own words I don't care.The chemical pathways can be followed all the way along. I have already posted links (I doubt very much that you've read them)
explain how (in your own words) that study you linked to showed that.explaining how fossil fuels contain biomarkers that indicate they can only have come from living things.
??? I didn't think you believed that coal deposits formed rapidly.I note you still haven't provided an explanation for the rapid and recent formation of coal deposits.
I don't source conclusions. It's a terrible method of debating which proves you don't understand and simply regurgitate those who tell you what you want to hear.You're happy to say X is wrong but why don't you post your alternative hypothesis or a link or something? You go through every other post with a fine tooth comb, why do you keep avoiding this?
This much is pretty obvious to everyone by now I think.I don't source conclusions
Thanks. I use observations that are common knowledge or sourced and then explain the syllogism in a way that it's easy to understand. If I can't explain it myself in my own words I will never argue for it.This much is pretty obvious to everyone by now I think.
Oh it wasn't a compliment.Thanks. I use observations that are common knowledge or sourced and then explain the syllogism in a way that it's easy to understand. If I can't explain it myself in my own words I will never argue for it.
lolOh it wasn't a compliment.
It really was.Oh it wasn't a compliment.
Then you've misunderstood.It really was.