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The Forum > Article Comments > Keep the lights on if you want to stay, Malcolm Turnbull > Comments

Keep the lights on if you want to stay, Malcolm Turnbull : Comments

By Gary Johns, published 2/2/2017

Once the old plants are retired or electricity demand increases sufficiently, Australia will need investment in coal-fired power.

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Geoff, oil or more accurately, fatty acid hydrocarbons is the product of metamorphosed ancient algae.

Even so there are no rules that say we have to wait a couple of million years to extract ready to use as is, oil from home grown, oil rich algae! And grown as effluent mop crops in broad scale farming, only requiring 1-2% of the water of traditional irrigation!

And if we ever run out of effluent, seawater will suffice!

Extracting the ready to use diesel or jet fuel is as simple as filtering out some of the still living product, sun drying it, then crushing it to remove the oil/ready to use diesel or jet fuel.

Algae absorb 2.5 times their bodyweight in Co2, which under optimised conditions, doubles every 24 hours as does the extractable oil content! With an industry expert reportedly claiming, that even with fuel excise added, 44 cent per litre retail is very doable?

But the good news doesn't stop there. The crushed material can go on to become feedstock in an food and arable land free, ethanol brewery. And the waste from that process can be speed on to/through commercial digesters to create copious methane for use in cooking, or scrubbed for use in ceramic fuel cells and what have you.

The waste from that process, carbon rich soil improver!

If it's so good? Why isn't it being done elsewhere?

Well it is! Just not by the smartest folk on the planet, Aussies, who'd rather fork over 60-70 billion per, of scarce export dollars, to buy fully imported fuel from a price gouging OPEC!

We've surely got to be the cleverest folk on the globe, with the most intelligent Leaders? Eh?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Thursday, 2 February 2017 3:55:16 PM
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Check this list of federal environment ministers and you'll see why we have had such appallingly bad policies about coal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_for_the_Environment_and_Energy#List_of_Environment_Ministers

That list is almost entirely a list of carpetbaggers.

While Robert Hill and Ian Campbell, under John Howard, were bad enough, the performance of Greg Hunt has been atrocious. He's the bloke who appeared from time to time on Bolt's TV program, but refused point blank to discuss the basis for his quasi-religious commitment to the global warming scam and refused to acknowledge that if Australia was completely decarbonised tomorrow the difference to CO2 emissions and/or global temperatures would be near as dammit to zero.

Hunt's dead hand continues to show itself in the RETs, which are just a money sink: none of the renewable technologies - wind, solar, hydro, wave - actually work. And none would survive without massive subsidies by taxpayers. Yet we are regaled with side-splitting stories by those on the Left of how "renewables costs are coming down" . And Hunt, of course, whose belief system is indistinguishable. The entire process is just vapourising money. Just check your electricity bills, they are much truer indicators than politicians.

Poor Josh Frydenberg, from time to time he seems to hint that he understands the global warming religion is entirely crap, but he can't admit to anything because Turnbull is a true believer.

Still, the Turnbull problem moves closer and closer to resolution with each passing day.
Posted by calwest, Thursday, 2 February 2017 3:55:43 PM
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One more point: the white paper's reference to "a period of weak demand" is misleading. That should be "a period of unaffordability", since a lot of people are afraid to turn on their heaters and/or airconditioners because of the cost.

And yes, I should admit there were some federal environment ministers who were competent. But not many.

With great respect to Gary Johns, I reckon all this is way beyond Turnbull's range, so he's not going to solve any problems or admit his multiple failures. He's just not up to it. Not up to much at all, really. It's about time we all accepted that he never was and never will be the smartest guy in the room. That was only propaganda. His only notable talent has been as a leaker.
Posted by calwest, Thursday, 2 February 2017 4:11:28 PM
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CW I've read some odious crap in my lifetime and some of it shoveled by the shipload, but none more voluminous or smelly than your last contribution!

You need to pop your head up, if only to enable you to talk from a little higher up!

Moreover, nobody not even someone as so obviously important and self assured as you, gets to own your own facts! Which you accomplish in spades! Almost as if we can't make power from anything but coal or that it's the cheapest, safest option?

It must be such a comfort, knowing you're always right!

God grant me patience!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Thursday, 2 February 2017 4:17:25 PM
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Jotzo came across as disturbingly naive on ABC radio today, blithely dismissing the prospect of new coal developments because 'renewables are cheaper'. Maybe they are, in ideal economist-land where electricity generation can be reduced to who can push electrons for the lowest $/MWh. But it seems he didn't get the memo the rest of the country got last year about there being a fair bit more to reliable and affordable supply than that. All the cheap capacity in the world isn't worth a damn if you need it when the conditions aren't right to make it work.
Posted by Mark Duffett, Thursday, 2 February 2017 10:27:34 PM
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Spot On Geoff. Shell in recent times has been making noises about
leaving the oil industry and concentrating on natural gas.

I saw that comment in a financial column and I thought, why are the
financial commentators not all out gabbling like geese ?
I think it might be because fracking covered up peak oil in recent
years and they just do not believe that it is possible.

World peak coal is over the horizon now and Australia is lucky to have
such large reserves. We should use it to build the replacement power
generation stations that we will need.
Write off the money we put into wind and solar and concentrate on a
system that will support our whole economy.
As oil becomes less productive electricity demand will soar so we
might need twice the amount of electricity we use now.
So what do we build ? Nuclear is the only operational system that we
can be sure will work so we should start there. If anything else
proves up start on that as well.

I doubt that politicians will be able to see the implications as clearly we do.
Posted by Bazz, Sunday, 5 February 2017 3:21:13 PM
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