The Forum > Article Comments > The NT must keep the door firmly closed to fracking > Comments
The NT must keep the door firmly closed to fracking : Comments
By Rosalie Schultz, published 8/5/2017People may think of fracking as an environmental or industrial issue, but ultimately fracking is an issue of health and wellbeing.
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The author is quite right - fracking is a health and environmental hazard. Conventional gas, on the other hand, is only a hazard in terms of its greenhouse gas emissions. We don't need fracked gas because, despite east coast shortages, there's actually plenty of gas around. The problem was the $80 billion LNG terminal in Gladstone and now, with others the total costis $200 million, which meant gas had to be exported to pay for the capital expenditure. The Prime Minister was right to request that some of the gas be reserved for domestic use, though it was long after the horse had bolted. But the solar revolution has begun and is about to be followed by the battery revolution (along with pumped hydro) which will deal with the intermittency problem. Apparently, batteries suitable for grid storage have already arrived on Australian shores. Forget nuclear, even thorium, since the costs (not least decommissioning costs) do not make it economically competitive.
Posted by popnperish, Monday, 8 May 2017 4:16:46 PM
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Taswegian you are completely wrong when you say "The various substitutes for gas are more expensive." Don't take my word for it, listen to the Australian Gas Light company (AGL no less! http://reneweconomy.com.au/agl-kills-idea-of-gas-as-transition-fuel-wind-solar-storage-cheaper-63013/
“The energy transition we have all been anticipating will skip ‘big baseload gas’ as a major component of the NEM’s base-load generation and instead largely be a case of moving from ‘big coal’ to ‘big renewables’,” AGL CFO Brett Redman says in a presentation to the Macquarie Australia Conference in Sydney on Tuesday. The cost of wind, solar and storage is already cheaper than both baseload and peaking gas for new generation. Way cheaper for peaking. Add to that the fact that wind, solar and chemical battery storage are getting cheaper by the year and gas is rising as pricing is indexed to export prices since Gladstone LNG hub was opened (as Govts were warned it would at the time of approval). Posted by Alastair, Monday, 8 May 2017 4:54:33 PM
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Tombee, perhaps you'd like to start with this film the Human Cost of Power produced by the Public Health Association (!) and CAHA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5DIDUB_RyA There's a large body of evidence which supports every single effect detailed in this film, in fact PHA made sure of it. Posted by Alastair, Monday, 8 May 2017 4:57:06 PM
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Hey Adian, Hasbeen might be on to something?
All we need is around a thousand nuclear powered vessels from every (finally cooperating) nation on earth sailing in ever widening circles around both poles and using inboard surplus nuclear power coupled to fractional distillation to make dry ice. Then pile mountains of the material on the ice. why even the polar bears will have chattering teeth/fangs! Dry ice being far colder than ice, will enable the ice formed by lower polar temps to remain all summer long? And as it piles, atmospheric Co2 will drop down dramatically!? Especially if the dual purpose vessels keep spraying their dry ice during all the daylight hours? Thus, the wisest man posting here may have offered a planet and species saving solution, and here you were castigating him as a demented old fool, rather than a genius in disguise. And boy, what a disguise. Alan B. Posted by Alan B., Monday, 8 May 2017 5:10:27 PM
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We will continue to have price increases on power until the average punter understands that the Greens aim is to impoverish and ruin Australia. Then those punters will just vote in politicians who will establish coal fired power stations. this may come a lot sooner than you think as we can pay the Germans or Chinese to build new coal fired units that are already operating in those countries.
The madness of the current crop astounds me. Our power prices going through the roof and our industry being decimated for a ball of nonsense. Roll on Trump knocking it over in the US and then watch us all scramble to follow. Posted by JBowyer, Monday, 8 May 2017 5:10:43 PM
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Alistair if wind and solar are so cheap why don't they shut down all the coal and gas plants immediately? Why is SA power more expensive and less reliable than the other states? You have forgotten that wind and large solar get an 8.5c per kwh subsidy on top of whatever price the get on the NEM. In 2015 brown coal power was wholesaling for 3.2c per kwh a fraction of that. There is also an implicit subsidy since the RET (a penalty backed quota) forces backup generators into stop-start operation rather than more efficient continuous operation.
That's cost then there's emissions. Compare the emissions of renewables heavy Germany to France, Sweden and the UK on this site https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false®ion=europe&page=map I see little chance of batteries replacing much gas backup for intermittent generation. In heatwaves when wind fails we want many hours of high output, not a couple of hours of low output from batteries. Posted by Taswegian, Monday, 8 May 2017 6:09:31 PM
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