FESTER - not sure what you're on about with Forrest and nickel or how that logically translates to real world evidence. The LCOE of various energy sources are well documented and peer-reviewed. They're the basic information that we can build our grids from, and then feed into various weather and topographical maps to design and tinker with a 100% renewable grid. This stuff is hard - and I'm no expert. But guess what? The Professors at ANU and CSIRO are experts. And they tell us it will be affordable, and cheaper than today's fossil fuel grid - ESPECIALLY if we take into account the health costs associated with particulates. Hey - with that attitude of yours good luck with your super. You probably have it in a traditional portfoilio with coal and gas and oil securities. Can you say "Stranded Asset"?

Meanwhile, Europe has plenty of topology appropriate for today's tried and true off-river pumped hydro to store all the power they need to store to go 100% renewables WITHIN EUROPE. I doubt after Russian gas they'd want to get addicted to overseas power again. There are various plans to do this. Wind is the cheapest, Solar next, and pumped Water next for storage. This reduces the need for Transmission, but some places will need upgraded transmission. But because wind and solar are SO cheap - they more than offset the additional costs. Let alone being energy secure and weaning off oil and preventing future oil wars!
https://www.solarpowereurope.org/insights/market-outlooks/100-renewable-europe-study
https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/european-green-deal/repowereu-affordable-secure-and-sustainable-energy-europe_en

The church has every right to get political. Jesus was political – that’s why he was crucified. The prophets were political. St Paul was political. Martin Luther King was political (so was Martin Luther).

The separation of church and state is an important principle, but it applies to the constitutional and functional separation of the two institutions, not as a means to silence the church from speaking out on moral and social issues that are deemed political.

Climate change and how we deal with it is perhaps the largest moral challenge we face, with huge implications for the environment and human welfare. The church is right to advocate for net zero emissions.

Where I agree with Graham, though, is that the church and its clergy have no expertise in advising on how we get there. Banning approvals of new coal and gas projects could well make the transition more costly and difficult with little or no environmental benefit (and could even arguably add to net emissions). The church has every right to address the “ends” of climate and energy policy; it should leave the “means” to the experts.

Rhian,
but if we're serious about climate change - why do we need to add new coal or gas? With Wind, Water storage, and Solar - we just don't need new fossil fuels for electricity at least. I used to be a nuclear promoter - because I was concerned about the cost of overbuilding renewables to meet winter challenges. But now that solar is 1/4 the cost of nuclear and wind is even cheaper, the fact that you might have to build 2 or 3 times the capacity in winter that you need in summer just is not an issue. The fact that we'll have to build heaps of off-river pumped hydro sites isn't an issue either. The fact that we'll have to spend billions upgrading our HVDC transmission towers isn't an issue either! We were going to have to do that *anyway* with peak oil on the horizon.

Wind, Water and Solar. WWS. It's the CSIRO plan for abundant cheap reliable Australian energy!

“PV and wind allow Australia to reach 100% renewable electricity rapidly at low cost. Wide dispersion of wind and PV over 10–100 million hectares reduces cost. Off-river pumped hydro energy storage is the cheapest form of mass storage. There are effectively unlimited sites available in Australia. **LCOE from a 100% renewable Australian electricity system is US$70/MWh (2017 prices).”**

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544217309568

And as we clean up our electricity, we'll save in other areas. That 'cheap' coal electricity science Deniers go on about so fondly isn't that cheap when you count the health bill. We basically pay the electricity cost again - only it's 'externalised' to people dying from various cancers and throat concerns and lung issues. Nice of our coal corporations to warn us about that, wasn't it?

Indubitably Uncle Fester

But first more aboout You:

Fester is recognizable in a number of cartoons, both by his appearance (bald, stooping, sunken eyes) and behavior (e.g. turning the shower into a special "scalding" setting.

Fester feeds his garden plants blood plasma, and likes to release an eagle on his neighbor's gerbils.

Yours in knuckle dragdom.

Mavs

Hi Max,

If you’re right, the government doesn’t need to ban new projects. The market operator will ensure that cheaper options get priority in supply. Along with the fact that many banks and other investors are reluctant to invest in new fossil fuel generation – both because of risk/uncertainty and for their corporate images – I think it unlikely that any major new fossil fuel energy capacity will be added in Australia. It’s interesting, too, that oil and gas exploration in Australia is at near-record lows despite recent high prices.

https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/industry/mining/mineral-and-petroleum-exploration-australia/latest-release

My concern is the intermittency/unreliability issue with wind and solar, despite their falling costs. It doesn’t matter how much capacity you have if the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. Batteries are still expensive and not very suited to large-scale, longish-term supply (they are great at solving the ancillary services problem such as frequency control that we once thought we’d have with renewables, though). Pumped hydro may be the solution but it has its own challenges in terms of environmental impacts, costs and suitable topography (especially here in WA). I think there will be a place for fossil fuels in the energy mix for some time yet, though increasingly as backup/capacity rather than baseload generation.

Then, as Graham points out, there are uses for oil and gas other than electricity generation that we will probably still need in future.

And there is the matter of export markets. If Australia stops exporting coal and LNG it is highly likely our customers will simply find other suppliers, so the net effect on emissions would be negligible (and possibly even increase them, if our former customers turn to inferior fuel sources); while the economic impact here would be significant.

Our fossil fuel energy industry is in terminal decline. There is not much to gain, and possibly a lot to lose, in accelerating its demise.

Hi Max,

Experts also claimed "too cheap to meter" nuclear power. I hope that pumped hydro works as hoped for energy storage, but it is only one piece of a complicated renewable energy puzzle.

What I am seeing with the development of renewable energy makes me hope that the nuclear reactors being developed prove effective. I suspect that increasing the proportion of renewable energy will become prohibitively expensive.