No, Abbott is right (pity he wasn't right when in office) and, if coal is "dead", then we are all dead because whizzy gig windmills, the sun and batteries are NEVER going to provide base-load power.

Politicians need to get their heads put of their backsides, stop listening to climate activists, and start building HELE coal-fired power plants like sensible countries are. If they won't do nuclear, they must do coal. The silliness - the treason - that is killng Australia has to stop.

Sorry Huon Hoogesteger but Abbott is right as ttbn just said. Your article simply repeats all the mistakes made by many of those in the media - notably the assumption that because renewable power hardware is falling in price, as it is, then it must become competitive with dispatchable power (coal, gas, nuclear, hydro). Intermittent power can never compete head to head with conventional, no matter how cheap it gets. There are many reasons for this but one of the major ones is that the grid has to be planned for the times when renewables deliver very little or nothing at all, and conventional has to take over. So basically all, or mostly all, renewable power has to be duplicated by conventional, and most of the cost is in capital depreciation, not fuel. The cost comparisons you are basing your arguments don't take grid costs into account. That said, Australia seems to be taking a different route of demand management rather than duplication - that is paying heavy users to drop out when the demand soars on those hot summer days - rather than expect the grid to deliver power. But just in case, gas plants have also been recommissioned and big, diesel generators installed.
As for coal declining, a glance at the figures shows that brown coal in Australia may be on the way out, but that's part of the electricity industry, not big energy (brown coal is not exported, and almost all the coal plants close to date have been brown coal). Black coal is still around, the bulk of which is exported. Sorry Huon, but your article is flat wrong

FINALLY! Someone who gets it!

While I agree with most of what the Author is saying. It can't be left to a race to the bottom between renewables. Unless they can produce an unsubsidised 1.98 cents PKH!

Because that's the promise of unsubsidised, walk away safe, molten salt thorium power!

What sort of manufacturing sector we could have, if the median price of power was just 1.98 cents PKH!?

If you think that's a wild claim? then have a butchers at, Making safe nuclear power from thorium/Thomas Jam Pedersen/TedxCopenhagen.

Then Super Fuel, subtitled, green energy.

Then a highly rated peer reviewed, top documentary film from Google tech talks, and under the heading, the case for thorium.

Where lead presenter,Kirk Sorensen, makes an incontrovertible case for thorium!

I believe it was John Howard who made the first deal to sell our gas to China and Anna bligh who privatised Queensland gas.

The first result of this hidebound, extremely autocratic stupidity?
A 400% rise in the cost of household gas up here.

Anna, the natural cost of recovering our gas from our ground, is the cost of drilling the holes, laying the pipeline and treating the gas to remove the free LPG condensates that often accompany the gas!

Natural cost doesn't include debt and dividend servicing by private players, nor the hidden commissions taken by the finance industry!?

Furthermore, one cubic metre of NG has the same calorific value as one litre of petrol. and nearly every conventional engine can be retuned to run on it as CNG!

We under our brilliant leaders, instead decided to become the world's largest exporters of this, and for half the domestic price, while we continue to import fully refined products from competing economies!
As we the people, lose billions both ways!?

As lamb chop chewing Sam kekovich would say, You know it makes perfect sense!?

Yeah Sam , but only if you the dullest chisel in the toolbox and just trying to maximise personal profit/retirement returns?

Even as the country is sold down the river of no return!
Alan B.

'Is coal today’s tobacco? ' Just shows you that even some conservatives have been so dumbed down they are unable to think. Obviously nothing to do with Huon's benefits from the solar farce.

So there you are Mr Turnbull, this alternative hot shot has just said coal can't compete. Obviously from this is agreement for all alternate subsidies, & ridiculous feed in pricing, to be removed, & a level playing field reinstalled immediately if not sooner.

No more waffle old man, you have to do it now, right now, or the Liberal members might even grow a backbone, & chuck you out on the scrap heap, where you belong. Surely they now know that the member for Goldman Sachs profitability is leading them to destruction.

Meanwhile let's take these self interest articles with the grain of salt they deserve.

Meanwhile, watch out for missionaries like Alan. They are often half right, but that means they are half wrong too. I'm not sure if Alan wants thorium or algae to fuel our world, & they may, but not in our lifetime. Lets just be stick in the mud practical people, & settle for the proven cheap technology of coal, & keep greening the Sahara desert with plant fertiliser.

Meanwhile perhaps Mr Hoogesteger could explain why other more practical countries are building 1000 coal fired generation plants, particularly China, who have cornered the market on windmills.

Our energy paradigm is the one you get, when the inmates are in charge of the asylum?

On the one side, you have one group their eyes covered, complaining they can't see past the "coal" dust in their eyes, at the other solutions?

Another screaming, we'll shine a searchlight and you lot can escape by sliding down the beam!

With the third lot cunning in comparison? Saying, we might be new here and a little green? But you know what? We're just not that stupid! We'd get halfway down and you'd cut the power!?

Levity aside, if you never ever look, you'll never ever see!

Nor can you advance so much as a single inch by refusing to budge or be first to move, if you're glued to the blocks, like a deer caught in the spotlight! Waiting for someone else to react to the starter's gun!

It's the one you don't hear, that's the one to worry about!

We have a two trillion dollar super fund! What we've never ever had is tax free self terminating thirty year investment bonds!

And we assiduously dissembled as much of our cooperative capitalism entities as we could, John!

And because of the absolute necessity to obey the self imposed ideological imperatives that brooked no opposition!? John, Tony!?

Put together, cooperative capitalism and our super, and see what we as one people, united behind common purpose, and median 1.98 cents PKH power, can actually achieve!
Alan B.

Australia has the world's largest supplies of coal, gas and uranium but, thanks to a decade of policy based on green ideology, we can't be sure of keeping the lights on this summer. We have gone from having the world's cheapest power, to the dearest.

And, in apportioning blame, we must remember that it was the Howard so-called conservative government that introduced RET in 1997 – cringe worthy for conservatives, even at 2%, because when the loonies got hold of the idea … well we know what has happened.

I thought that I saw a news item saying that Turnbull is thinking of dropping subsidies on renewables. Perhaps I was dreaming? The subsidies are enriching the rent-seekers and gaining support for corrupt politicians, but they are beggaring the rest of us and dragging our country down to Third World status. The removal of subsidies would show just how absurd renewables are economically.

Perhaps the Author can point us to a Smelter that is run on 100% renewable energy?

Cobber the Hound lives!

ttbn writes:
“I thought that I saw a news item saying that Turnbull is thinking of dropping subsidies on renewables.”

Yes, it looks like Josh is going to run it up the flag pole at least.
The Green fans invariably go unchallenged when they spout renewables being cheaper than coal, so let’s just remove the RET and see how it goes.

It’s about time they put their subsidies (our money) where their mouth is.
I’ll get the popcorn.

Cobber,
Three obvious examples are the aluminium smelters in Iceland.

But we really shouldn't be so obsessed with precedent. If we limit ourselves to what's already being done, progress will grind to a halt.

Instead we should take an engineering approach: what prevents our smelters from using 100% renewable energy, and how can that problem be overcome?

Goodness, There is still a light at the end of the tunnel.
Not abbott`s tunnel though, that is black and full of dead coal.

Quite a compelling article.

Increased use of solar and wind (WITH home or community battery storage) may be the major solution. Prices dropping is key.

Light at the end of the tunnel?

Nope, just the headlamp of a steaming express, destination economic ruin, thundering in our direction.

Aluminium smelters running on renewables? Not wind, too intermittent, with the average being 6 hours generation time in 24.

And you're talking about a process that needs continuous energy for far longer than that. around 24hrs continuous?

Hydro works, always providing enduring droughts don't worsen and they could! The achilles heel could be transmission lines that sometimes don't cope with strong winds, neither do windmills!

So yes to hydro with some backup! Solar power just not consistently reliable enough without really big battery backup, or pumped hydro etc. All needing vulnerable/expensive transmission lines and interconnectors!

The obvious answer stares us in the face.

Mass produced, factory built thorium reactors that use liquid fluoride salt, that also act as the separate coolant. And connected to smaller turbines that'll run on compressed/superheated CO2.

Can be trucked virtually anywhere to meet demand, and a few kilograms of thorium enough fuel for 100 years?

Nothing comes close in build or running costs/reliability. And as we tool up and export these around the country, that build cost comes exponentially down! Moreover they can be paralleled to meet increased or any foreseeable demand!

And yes I'm still an algae advocate as a much better source of liquid fuel. And an industry to not only save the Murray Darling. But have it prosper beyond comparison!

It's not either either but all of the above Has!

Politicians past and present, are obsessed with winning and blame shifting! Virtually to the exclusion of all else!

And as they win that stupidity personified game! The whole of Australia loses!

Has. Q: What did the stroke victim, completely paralysed down his left side say to the Doc?
A: I'm always alright!
Alan B.

Same old argument. World Coal's ERoEI has declined to about 10.
That is why the US is taking the tops off mountains.
That is why China is closing mines and has stopped the building of
some coal fired stations. It is becoming more dependant on imports.
The lucky country struck it rich again as our coal is cheap and plentiful.

Note there is one catch 22 that the pro renewables will NEVER answer.
How much bigger the solar and wind and battery backup has to be to
cope with, say 5 overcast still days ?
I will tell you, apply M = X(S+W+B)* N+1 where
M = installation size
X = the size of plant to supply one days electricity.
N = the number of overcast still days for which you plan to cater.
S W B = size of solar, wind & battery.
You have to recharge your now much larger battery on the first sunny
day and hope like hell that it is windy that night.
The size of the solar has to be about twice the size in winter than summer.
This is the reason why we will eventually go nuclear, uranium and/or thorium.
The cost to achieve 24/7 guaranteed electricity with solar and wind
is far too expensive and based on a guess of how many overcast still days.
That is why the pro renewables will not discuss that problem.
Have you ever heard it discussed in all the discussions that have been
waffled about on TV ? Q&A last night was typical.
A collection of technical idiots.

Aidan's throwaway line, that Iceland powers three aluminium smelters with "renewables", is misleading.

Yes, Iceland does power three smelters, other energy-intensive industries and domestic use - with hydro (73 per cent) and geothermal (27 per cent). Fossil fuels (mainly oil), wind and solar produce near as dammit to zero.

Hydro and geothermal (Iceland and its volcanos sit on the conjunction of two tectonic plates and the country has massive snow fields) are Iceland's competitive advantages. Coal is Australia's.

If the Left want Australia to become 100 per cent reliant on renewables, like Iceland, all we need is a dozen or so active volcanos and lots of high, perennially snow-covered mountains.

Not even the Prime Dunce is suggesting that.

thanks Tony Abbott for dragging the Liberals a little bit back to the way of sanity. Keep up the good work.

Posters here on this subject have Nil to no idea of the real issues involved on this subject.
High prices for energy are a direct consequence of corruption.

Deal with corruption, and you deal with Australia's farcical position on pricing and availability of resources for domestic use.

Corruption here is on a par with political corruption in South Africa. In fact, if you are poor in Australia, you will be treated worse than the poor in South Africa, when it comes to electricity supply cost.

At the least, in South Africa, 50kw per month is supplied free to a targeted poor, by State supplier Escom.

This is the same Escom, deregistered from the African busness union, for corrupt dealings with the Gupta brothers.

The same Gupta brothers a few days ago, lost a SA high court challenge to maintain their bank accounts, against corruption charges, which includes money laundering and a smorgasbord of other criminal charges.

The same Gutha brothers now parading around with permanent smiles in Australia, where their corrupt business practices are unacceptable in South Africa, but acceptable for Australian standards apparently: and… now involved in renewable energy where they have recently taken a 51% stake in a solar power company.

Eventually uranium or thorium? Yes we have uranium, but around four times as much thorium already mined or in easily recover placer/alluvial deposits.

Finding it, is almost too easy. Just with aerial side looking radar!

Uranium?

Needs massive investment! Reactor vessel which needs to be nine inch single piece steel!

To cope with around 300 atmospheres of pressure!

After the containment vessel, the building needs to cope with the massive expansion, if and when a critical pipe shears!

This building needs to be massive with a reinforced concrete roof using hundreds of tons of concrete!

Then the rods need to be moved around the core every 18 months then completely changed every 4.5 years!

So as to avoid another chernobyl, and building xenon gas blowing the reactor core apart!

This is where big nuclear makes its cash flow/fuel fabrication profits. Because a heavy water reactor burns around 1% of the fuel rods. Light water reactors burn even less, around 0.5%?

Molten salt thorium on the other hand, operates at near normal atmospheric pressure. and therefore needs no humongous containment vessel, no special building.

So straight away the costs are way way down!

Secondly, the design allows the molten salt to circulate and safely release any and all xenon, which has a relatively short half life and goes away quite quickly.

In a molten salt, thorium fueled reactor, this process can continue until 99% of the fuel is consumed, with the remaining 1% eminently suitable for long life space batteries.

Moreover, if designed as a LFTR, a thorium reactor can be gradually and very safely fed nuclear waste, to consume the remaining fissionable fuel, which is most of it, even weapons grade plutonium!

Earning annual billions in the process!

Enough other folks cash to pay for a dozen or more, walk away safe, molten salt thorium reactors!

Only those folk, with a very bad dose of Serant Schulz syndrome. Who doggedly refuse to look at the evidence, would chose coal over nuclear and uranium over thorium! And therefore, enduring poverty over abundance and exponentially growing wealth!
Alan B.

We can declare solar the winner when it no longer needs 8.2c per kwh subsidy at the commercial level nor $100m grants from ARENA as in the case of Moree. A few solar panels outside our remaining aluminium smelters might add to the greenwash.

Let's also hope solar battery users shun the use of the coal tainted grid after a week of rain. If Australia had 15 GW of nuclear baseload we could meet the Paris emissions pledge and set the scene for overnight charging of millions of electric cars. Solar won't do either.

'Molten salt thorium on the other hand, operates at near normal atmospheric pressure. and therefore needs no humongous containment vessel, no special building.'
Agreed.....but Australians don't work that way
and you have to consider the criteria Australians work with being....

'I'm entitled and it's up to the govt. to provide'

which brings us to the dilemma at hand.....

Coal isn't dead....nothing with energy is dead....abused and misused more likely but nevva ded
and while free money is available....nothing will change...no reason to

Molten salt thorium sounds attractive, but it has problems, and is not working commercially anywhere in the world:

'There are still several problems that need solving before NRG’s thorium reactor designs will be scaled up to industrial levels. While the waste is safer, scientists still need to figure out how much of it there will be and what can be done with it. The environment inside a molten salt reactor is also extremely corrosive. So, some creative materials might be needed. If it works, we could generate more power without pumping more carbon into the atmosphere — a win for everyone.'

Doesn't seem a goer in Australia right now, where I am wondering about blackouts this and coming summers.

Don do you really believe pumping a bit of CO2 into the atmosphere is a problem?

If as we are told, coal is just dead trees & dinosaurs, surely we are just putting back into the atmosphere that which was in it when life was thriving much more than today.

The author confirms that some supposed conservatives are misinformed alarmists.

Ttbn: “We have gone from having the world's cheapest power, to the dearest. … And, in apportioning blame, we must remember that it was the Howard so-called conservative government that introduced RET in 1997. … thought that I saw a news item saying that Turnbull is thinking of dropping subsidies on renewables.”

Such price escalation has been largely the result of heavy subsidisation of renewables (wind and solar), at the expense of low-cost, controllable, reliable coal-fired power. But, as yet, renewables can be relied on only for about 6% of total contributing electricity supply on average. One can only wonder how higher reliance on renewables would lead to lower electricity prices and not affect supply reliability, as Turnbull and Labor are leading (or rather, misleading) us to believe.

As for Turnbull dropping subsidies on renewables, there appears little prospect that he would unshackle himself from entrenched political correctness and, instead, positively act in the national interest.

In any case, who could ignore Turnbull’s (through Frydenberg) ‘thoughtful’ solution of asking(/paying?) suffering consumers to turn off airconditioners on stinking-hot days so as to not overload the supply system and cause blackouts.

Assumedly, Turnbull supporters would be ‘re-assured’ by what the Oz reported yesterday: “Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has rejected calls from two of the nation’s most renowned economic reformers to wind back Australia’s commitment to the Paris climate accord. Mr Turnbull said Australia was “on track” to meet its commitment to cut emissions by between 26 per cent and 28 per cent by 2030. “Australia is a nation that when it makes international commitments of this kind it keeps them,” Mr Turnbull told reporters in Sydney this morning. “You keep the lights on, you ensure people can afford to keep them on and you meet your emission reduction commitments”.

As if we believe anything the pollies say. In response to the power needed by an aluminium smelter. Aluminium melts at much higher temperatures than steel. So it requires a huge amount of power which I doubt any renewables we would come up with would handle the load or draw. As for Iceland, as one commentor already said, they have geothermal and hydro. They can plug into the ground and catch water from melting snow, and all this on a larger scale than we can ever dream up.
Someone has to tell the greens to shut up and get off the train, they are de-railing the train for nothing more than political gain and of course, money. The greens leader is nothing more than a 'mouth'. Knows only what the blind, deaf and dumb followers push. Because of a childish notion and level of reasoning, we have allowed this joke of a party to exist. It has never offered one salient intelligent and workable solution, just pipe dreams.

My understanding of the aluminium production problem is that if the
power goes off during production it solidifies in the pots and they
have to be dismantled and the aluminium has to be cut up into smaller
pieces and then reprocessed in some manner.
Think about that, the work would just make it all a big loss.
No wonder it is guarantee supply or we are out of here.

Bazz, correct. No one is going to invest or even spend money in the power generation industry at all in the hope that things will normalise. Even if renewables could one day step up to the mark, it's not happening now. Aluminium smelters are just one small player in all this. The Australian public is the major stake holder and the largest user of electricity so we should be given priority. We require regular and reliable supply because we have things that cannot go without power for too long a period. So we the public come first again, but it seems we are irrelevant. The power suppliers know that we're not going anywhere and that they can hold us to ransom while they play at manipulating power supply and prices at will, and we just have to shut up and take it. Another privatisation scam/con.

Once upon a time there was this man and woman who bought a house so as to raise a family and the mantra they raised this family by was 'use only what you 'need'.....not 'want'....'need' and this isn't a case of same same but different.
When it came to electricity they only lit the room they were in and only for as long as was needed. They were conservationists but didn't know it.
They were 'frugal' but didn't realise it. They were practical because they needed to be.
Now it's said that 'life is in the struggle' which is true as the intensity of life itself is felt in hard times whereas when things are plentiful, they're taken for granted and the true value is somewhat distorted.
Today you have people who think that every light bulb in the house is there to be lit irrespective of whether it's needed or not and then complain about the price of electricity. Government buildings fully lit with no one in them...why?....who knows.
We have a society of self indulgent, disrespectful, social morons who have no idea as to what they have other than to demand more.
You use what you've got while you've got it and be thankful because things change ever so quickly.

I have just read an article on mixing renewable electricity into the
grid and the associated techniques that need to be undertaken.

However one quote from it sums up what I think is the authors view as the only possible result;

“…. if the UK would accept electricity shortages for 65 days a year,
it could be powered by a 100% renewable power grid (solar, wind, wave
& tidal power) without the need for energy storage, a backup capacity
of fossil fuel power plants, or a large overcapacity of power generators.”

The article was published in Resilience from Low Tech Magazine.

http://tinyurl.com/y95nbpeo

I think the quotes I have been hearing since Tony Abbotts speach does
sum it all up about running the grid on 100% renewables is to the point;
as the little boy said;
"The King has no clothes !"

Reading this article has convinced me that my gut feeling was right,
that it is just not possible run the grid, even with battery backup,
on 100% renewables. Also it is unaffordable.

It seems to me that the debate is over, hold renewables at their
present level while we refurbish Liddell and other plants and perhaps
build a new coal one or two.
Once we have those projects started a study should be made on if/when/where
we build a nuclear power station.
Hopefully a fusion plant may be on the horizon.

We really do not have the time now to stuff around with suspect
techniques but just have to get on with building what we KNOW will work !

The author is in the renewables business, flogging solar.
Renewables have a market based on the climate fraud, which asserts that human emissions affect climate, when there is no science to show any measurable human effect on climate.
Is there not a considerable financial risk in backing an industry based on a fraud, and selling what it calls renewables, which, of course, are not renewable in any sense of the word.
A current ad, on television, states that Australian coal is used by Japan for emission free power generation, and asks why we do not do the same.
Coal has big markets, and if the Banks are wrong, it is certainly not the first time, and when the climate fraud blows up, they will be shown to be wrong again.

Bazz and Leo, good to see the thinking caps are on. The greens are going to have to just disappear because so long as we have questionable and conflicting facts and reports we will not get investors for these fairy tale 'renewables'. We need reliable power NOW. The mongrels in Canberra sold our public utilities off to their mates, which has caused all this distress and extortion. We must put the blame squarely on the greens and as I said before that buffoon of a joke Di-Natale is killing us for his own political and financial gain. I apologise but when I heard of a 'greens' party, I thought, what on earth would some tree hugger know about running a country. Their policies are narrow at best and do not have any credible flow on effect to enhance the economy. If you listen to that idiot talk he actually says nothing, spewing out the same stuff he said on the campaign trail. Turn him off and turn him away before we are unable to turn things around.

Altrav, yes there is no reality in the words that some issue on the
subject. The greens seem to be the worst on that as their highest
priority is reduce emissions at all costs.
For a really interesting article see The Weekend Australian article
by Lomberg. A real "Reality ON" article by a warmist.

I saw on the weekend Queensland electricity was selling on the market
for $249 a Megawatt/hr. It is usually around $85 Mw/hr.
The difference is due, I believe, to having to stoke up the coal fired
stations to produce a peak load supply.
The wind & solar get first go at any load and then when they cannot
supply the fossil fuel stations are called on.
So it is either pay up ot cut off the customers.
The stations have to pay for their fuel and pay wages so they have to
take every chance they get to make a quid.
It is just not an efficient way to run an electricity system.

The gas fired station are promoted as an alternative as they are
at least "quickstart". ie I believe they can be on line in 15 minutes.
Quite good if you know the wind will drop in 15 minutes time.
The real catch with wind is the expotential wind speed/output ratio.
A fifty percent drop in windspeed means a 75% drop in output.
If you watch Sth Aus the wind output can fall very suddenly.
The battery will help that for its wind farm so long as the drop is
for less than an hour.
Then catch 23, it has to be recharged. From the grid ?

Hugh is not alone. My own 50 years in energy - plant and systems planning, operation, research and regulation, in Australia and overseas - leads me to scepticism of individuals who regard themselves as "expert". So many of the social media comments in this broad space are "uni-dimensional" expressions of their authors' ideological biases.

On the contrary, an interconnected/distributed energy industry is but part of a larger-scale, massively-interacting, multi-party "complex" socio-technical system. Such systems are dynamic; their performance - both overall and at particular times and places - results from the behaviours of many stakeholders and influencers; their planning has always defied simplistic approaches based on thinking of them as "machines" (a point that even economists are now recognising).

In practice, each new investment will be shaped by projections of the new and existing, demands they are to meet, technology and other resources that will be available, economics, and politics, and equally opportunities - both identified and unforeseen. The result will almost always be a continually changing "messy" mix always in transition.

Policies that unnecessarily constrain or fail to accommodate such dynamics - e.g. by imposing static, arbitrary targets - will assuredly fail or at the least result indirectly in huge additional costs - whether by stranding otherwise productive assets, or discouraging economic investment and operation.

Australia's special contribution to the world has been to provide an exquisite example of such failure. The way out of the hole now, is not to keep on digging.