When the DOT-COM bust happened 11 years ago, a lot of people lost their shirts. Investments in junk stocks like walk-my-dog.com lost everything. Those stocks were worthless. But there were still some stocks that were based on real value, google, bestbuy, yahoo, etc., dropped in value but not to zero.
Last year, the mortgage backed securities crashed because of government required sub-prime mortgages, but not to zero. They were based on real estate that physically exists.
There has been atmospheric cooling the last 8 years, and no new high global annual temperatures in the last 11 years. When the carbon credit scheme goes bust, because earth decides to prove CO2 does not control climate, ALL carbon credits will be worthless. There will be no good carbon credits vs. bad carbon credits. Who will be holding these worthless credits after investing hundreds of billions of dollars? Power companies, manufacturers, bakeries, farmers, delivery companies, you name it. They will ALL go bankrupt.

A couple of developments are in the pipeline that may change public perceptions. One is a shift back to El Nino conditions and the other is crude oil depletion. We will need more desalination plants and electric transport. We will probably convert trucks, buses and many cars to compressed natural gas fuel thereby lessening supply to gas fired power stations. While Australia appears to have a lot of coal many northern hemisphere countries are running short and we will be hard pressed to share our resources. We will also be tempted to export a lot of gas in the form of LNG. I think emissions trading and carbon tariffs will be too weak to make any real difference.

There is little evidence from any country that expensive wind or solar power has actually reduced coal consumption. It is thought that global coal production will peak around 2030 then go into a slow decline. Thus we have to prepare for a lower carbon future global warming or not. I think our best options are aggressive conservation backed by tough carbon caps, steady retirement of coal replaced by nuclear and wind and solar for niche applications. It just takes political will to make it happen.

Nicholson's article has added nothing to this important discussion other than his own opinion. Without citing any evidence, he retails the popular fallacy of nuclear power having "significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions". Where is his evidence? The net energy analysis (NEA) simply has not been done. ISA Consultants provided a very comprehensive review of NEA for the Zwitkowsky report to the Howard government a couple of years ago, but it only demonstrated that no useful work has been done on this vital subject for almost 30 years. The fact that nuclear power stations do not have smokestacks does not mean that lots of carbon isn't been consumed in other parts of the nuclear life cycle and value chain. Evidence please!

Further, he does not address the critical issue of the finite supply of uranium. This issue was canvassed by me and others only 2 weeks ago in OLO (see Lynch, OLO 27/7/09). Without a radical shift in technology, nuclear fuels won't last out this century, and despite a lot of wishful thinking, none of these new technologies are acceptable from net energy, safety and viability criteria.

We have some real problems with future fuel supplies. Resolving the problems will not be helped by bland assertions and misinformation. Try putting a few (substantiated) facts to your opinions, please.

"The difficulty is that electricity can only be stored as another form of energy (such as chemical or kinetic energy) and this is expensive."

In fact a lot of the energy used in a household is to heat water, and this energy not only can be stored, it most often is stored. It would cost approximately nothing to adapt existing off-peak storage hot water to heat up when sun, wind, etc is abundant.

Of course this stored energy cannot easily be converted back to electricity, so the author's statement is true in that sense.

However, until we see this cheap effective option for energy storage used to accommodate the variability of some renewable energy sources, no-one can complain about the variability of solar/wind electricity and the difficulty of storing their output.

Regarding the future potential for natural gas as a replacement for gasoline and diesel, see this comment:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5615#comment-524089

and the EIA concludes much the same, see the section "Substitution of Natural Gas for Petroleum Consumption" a little more than half way down the page:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/issues.html

and then see these data about how fast oil supply reduction is occurring for the U.S:

http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/2009/06/net-hubbert-curve-what-does-it-mean-by.html

The capital for natural gas conversions and supply infrastructure will disappear as oil supply reduction impacts the global economy.

And these article do not even take into account declining oil supplies and how that will impact the economy:

http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/439656-arbitrary-vote/11018-economic-fragility-underestimated-collapse-may-be-imminent

http://www.commodityonline.com/futures-trading/currency/Why-you-should-get-out-of-the-US-dollar-now!-734-1.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/08/g8-recession-plan-global-economy

And the IEA indicates that "the oil crisis begins to grip after 2010:"

http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/2009/08/indendent-london-warns-about-peak-oil.html

Best regards,

Cliff Wirth

Cliff Wirth
Cliff - you should look at your own links. I glanced at the first two. I couldn't quite work out what you were referring in the first link and the seond tends to prove the article's case rather than yours. In both cases (at least as near as I could work out for the first one) they refer to American conditions. In Australia the use of LNG in cars is well established - there is no talk of the use of natural gas for cars here as we have plenty LNG. There is also a distribution network for LNG, although it is not nearly as extensive as the network for petrol, and an established industry for converting cars.
As for the use of coal, I can see no viable way to kick the habit, assuming we wanted to. As has been pointed out before, renewable energy is so variable that generators generally have to back up most of the output with conventional power. Basically its there as a way to make the greens think the government and the power utilites are doing something, nothing more.
Switching to gas power generators, where possible, will do a lot more to reduce emissions than messing around with renewables.

Curmudgeon, you should read your own comments :-)

LNG is not LPG.

Coal will be around for a long while yet, adaptation will take decades.

If the world is to reduce GHG emissions, all alternatives must come into play.

LPG is mainly propane and a byproduct of both petroleum refining and natural gas separation. It might be safest to assume supply will decline about 5% a year along with crude oil. However it only needs low pressure tanks around 15 bar or 210 psi. CNG which is mainly methane needs 220 bar or 3300 psi tanks which for cars will have to be made from wound fibreglass to save weight. So far I believe LNG vapour is mainly used to propel the ships that carry the cryogenic tanks. It is not worth the energy penalty to liquefy natural gas unless it will be shipped overseas. If we export too much we might not have enough for domestic use after a decade or two.

Ooooops! Quite right - my apologies. I was thinking of the gigatnic project they announced recently.. okay LPG conversion and the network .. not as extensive as the petrol conversion and the fuel is not as convenient, but still that's the major alternative in Aus, if the oil supply does become constrained for whatever reason.

Not a particularly gripping post. As others have said, not much meat and a lot of soft opinion. Let's review a few issues: 1) the best way to use less dirty coal is to conserve electricity - an area with a lot of potential (including things like co-generation where the useful heat and electricity are produced simultaneously and more efficient power plants). 2) In the US, it looks like, if the true costs of coal are taken into account (environmental damage of extracting and using it by adding "clean coal" or carbon costs), it may be edged out by natural gas which is, for the short term, relatively abundant and cheap. 3) Renewables over a longer (20 year+) time frame, may show enormous improvements in technology and application and begin to undercut "cheap" coal and NG. The benefit of most renewables is that they are essentially "fuel free" and can operate at constant prices for years, unlike coal and other fossil fuel electricity sources which are whipsawed by changes in fuel. 4) Coal is certainly not clean (at least not without huge effort and expense), but *economical* coal is arguably less abundant globally than what was once believed. As the price of coal is driven up by a perfect storm of causes, we should use less and less.

If we remove some of the market distortions (tax breaks, "R&D" , etc) that support coal and instead divert these to the proven renewables (large scale solar thermal) then the process of weaning ourselves off coal can commence.
So long as coal is "cheap" but does not have to pay it's way due to historical investments made by our parents and grandparents and modern "too big to die" financial support then newer technology cannot compete.
We may need coal reserves more as a chemical source than energy in the future so it would be unwise to totally exploit for energy now.

“And we could still be living in peace and harmony tending our farms, not fretting about climate change and enjoying our life expectancy of 38 years.” Says Martin Nicholson.

Unfortunately some of the 3rd world countries still only have the same life expectancy and it is because the 1st world demands the high standard of living it is now used to.

Using “cheap coal” will keep us in electricity for the foreseeable future but it will destroy most of us eventually.
It can be likened to a heavy smoker having the pleasure of the nicotine hit but heading towards catastrophic health problems, which will kill him.
The myth that it is not possible to use renewables as a base supply is trotted out yet again when it has been refuted by the action of some countries such as Spain which is now running on 40% of wind power now and that does not take into account the solar thermal plants being built.

Australia has no need of coal power at all now, with solar thermal and heated salt storage for overnight power supply. Any shortfall could easily be provided by gas turbine co generation plus wind.

There is no choice now but to stop coal fired power, if humans and most other life are to survive in the future.

Yes with nuclear.

The lower waste CANDU reactors are available and the very low waste thorium reactors will be available in a decade.

Howwever with the greens we can, but probably won't, and will continue on the limp wristed approach to pollute for decades.

We have a choice muck up our planet by using coal/oil/gas or adapt to using electricity when it is available.
If we start now with 'innovation' and produce items that work when the sun shines and forget about storage and base loads.
At least then we can reserve our fuel for essentials, hospitals etc.
We have to change our life style it cannot continue as it is.

there are currently 2 excellent ways of storing power, which don't involve using non renewable resources. The first is Hydro electric; using surplus power to pump water up hill to high storage reservoirs. The second is compressed air. Both very simple, very cheap and no nasty side effects.

I can't take Martin Nicholson's article seriously. Of course we can ditch coal, we have to ditch coal and we mostly will. Doing so will be far more beneficial to future prosperity than not doing so despite short term energy cost increases. Will we do it in time to save the Great Barrier Reef? I'm doubting it. SE Australian agriculture? I'm seriously worried for that too. The author doesn't even mention such costs and consequences of the acceleration of emissions that he appears to be advocating. Changing will be hard and expensive so don't bother? I think that he exaggerates the costs and difficulties of renewables. As well I think he overestimates the opposition to nuclear in Australia. I believe we can get by without and not end up impoverished but mainstream Australia may well choose to use some nuclear if it guarantees the coal plants get shut down. We may be less extravagantly wasteful of energy but we aren't headed for the dark ages by going low emissions.
Only someone who refuses to accept the real costs of using coal and urgent necessity to drastically reduce it's use could write an article like this.

I just want to add that switching to gas is a policy that will fail to deliver the reductions in emmissions needed, merely setting a limit to reductions of at best 20 or 30% - ie to fail on climate change. That's if it's taken up seriously and replaces existing coal plants, which it won't be and won't, not by those proposing it or by anyone serious about climate change - who aren't proposing it. It could only ever be stopgap backup for renewables and even that's debatable, never a solution and the window of opportunity for gas to be a stopgap has already passed. The author's passing mention as if it were given that it was a viable option is jsut more evidence that he doesn't take climate change seriously or really see any need to reduce emissions at all.

Amongst power engineers it is well known that having power when you need it is far more important than volume, and that the largest most efficient systems are slow to ramp up and down.

This is why the base loads have typically been coal and the peak load supplies have been the relatively nimble gas generators.

The difference in price paid for peak power vs base load is about 10 to 30x.

The renewable technologies either don't generate at peak periods, or are extremely unreliable. The peak times are typically 6-8 am and 5-10pm.

Obviously solar doesn't feature then, wind cannot be relied on, and other technologies that are being touted are far from economical yet.

The answer is obviously to have storage, but 3 major criteria have to be met to make it feasible:

1 - it has to be relatively inexpensive to build,
2 - it needs to be store and regenerate the power efficiently,
3 - it needs to be able to operate many times without degradation.

Hydo plants such as the Snowy scheme fit the bill well, in that for the huge capacity, the dams and pump stations are relatively cheap, the power out over power in is about 50% and the system is almost infinitely repeatable. However, the shortage of mountains and water makes expansion of this unlikely.

Compressed air is slightly more expensive but would seem to be similar but has low efficiency as the power out / power in is only in the order of 10%

Batteries are suitable only for vehicles.

Liquid salt combined with solar power is the most promising, as it stores heat prior to generation, and is viable (under very heavy incentive schemes) for larger plants. Unfortunately as solar only generates for about 6hrs per day, the storage has to be much larger for relatively small generation capacity.

There is a huge way to go before we can replace coal with renewable energy. The next few decades will probably see nuclear become more acceptable as the ETS makes power far more expensive.

Actually, water is only scarce in certain areas; there are some parts of Australia with an abundance of fresh water.
Many years ago, the bloke who designed the Harbour Bridge gave his name to a scheme to place high level dams in those areas (highlands of North Qld) and (mostly) use existing river systems to guide the water into the Darling system.
It was called the Bradfield scheme, I believe.
Obviously,these high level dams could also be used for Hydro.
A more imaginative approach could be to pump salt water, using wave/solar power up to high level reservoirs on the great divide. The salt water could then be fed through osmotic filters and hydro turbines, then released onto the western slopes.