At the G7, Albanese has vowed to provide "reliable energy for Japan" but, he has not, and cannot, make the same promise to his own country. Japan takes 70% of our coal.

Australia has become a bit like a drug dealer: selling coal to countries that want it, but not keen on using the product itself.

I remember they were selling Japan Aussie gas cheaper than Aussies could buy it.
- But that's what happens when your country is run by incompetent morons.

Seems the government likes the high cost of everything, because it can take a larger dollar sized piece for themselves.
- They just merely pretend to care at voting time.

Armchair Critic,
When a Coalition Govt exports coal they’re environmental vandals, when a Labor Govt sells coal they’re responsible economic managers !

I remember they were selling Japan Aussie gas cheaper than Aussies could buy it. But that's what happens when your country is run by incompetent morons.

Little Johnny Howard was the PM.

Little Johnny Howard was the PM.
Paul1405,
That was 30 years ago, just goes to show Albo hasn’t learnt a thing in all those years since !

'Progressive' are not really progressing at all: when their contemporary heroes are criticised, they scuttle back to the past, dragging up what someone they didn't like did in the dim, unchangeable past - as if that excuses what some clown they do like is doing now.

Hi Paul,
No it wasn't that long ago, but I'm not saying it didn't also happen under John Howard
(Australia's most famous cricket bowler)

- Dug the article up, in was back in 2016.

Australian gas 40% cheaper in Japan than in Australia despite export costs - August 2016
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/16/australian-gas-40-cheaper-japan-than-australia-despite-export-costs

Hey ttbn,
>>'Progressive' are not really progressing at all<<

Probably just a trick, nothing but a fancy word to throw around.
Makes them sound all worldly, and in touch with current generation and worldview.
- Hides their overall incompetence and inability to do anything right.

We need to unlock energy to live.
Coal is a source.
Whether we burn it ourselves, or sell it to someone else to burn, has the same result.
We are pouring the by-products of burning in to our atmosphere.
We are altering (quickly) the makeup of air, which is vital to our existence.
There are gradual changes to air's temperature and content over time.
But we are accelerating the process dramatically.
We must have energy, but the by-products of producing it will strangle us?
Definitely not a win-win situation.

It's all crap Ipso Fatso,
Endless mind-numbing narrative that seeps into everyones brains.

If things really were as bad as they say, they wouldn't be throwing away / recycling older secondhand solar panels that can still produce 95% output so people can have the newer model ones on their roofs.

That's capitalism, not sensible-ism.
- Nothing to do with the environment.

If things were that bad, every single one of those old solar panels would still be producing energy, somewhere.

I doubt the veracity of that statement.
I don't know by how much, but I do know the efficiency of panels decreases over time.
There will be a point where the output is no longer adequate?
Replacement is a practical solution.
I am also confident that the old panels can be at least partially recycled.
They contain valuable material which can be used to make new panels.
If I am wrong about this, so be it.

You would not burn arsenic treated timber in your home fire place would you? It would keep you warm on a cold winters night, but unfortunately the evidence is overwhelming that the arsenic in the timber will slowly kill you, not today, not even tomorrow, but it will sometime in the future if you keep burning it. The evidence against the burning of fossil fuels is in the same category, it will keep us warm etc, but it will slowly but surely lead to our own self imposed destruction. With our dependence on fossil fuels we can not stop their use immediately, but we can work to transition away, and towards cleaner, greener forms of energy, which is imperative if mankind, and life as we know it, is going to continue to exist on the plant.

What a stupid topic based on yet another false premise trotted out by the inane.

Japan's per capita coal use in 2021 in power units was 10,694 kWh per person.

Australia's figure is 17,475 kWh per person. We are the 4th highest in the world.

http://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-consumption-per-capita?tab=table

Time to move on people.

Time to move on people.
SteeleRedux,
How do you think Australian Island communities are powering their cars, boats, air conditioners, willy nilly travel, homes & TV’s etc ?
Solar you think ?

SteeleRedux,
It’s utterly illogical & purely academic to compare such figures per person ! It is a well known albeit it not to you, fact that longer distances & remoteness increase such figures whereas in tightly packed countries like Japan such figures naturally are lower due to logistics. Do you know what logistics are, they’re real facts not just some academic theory !

Hey Ipso Fatso,

Spotlight on solar panels in draft drive to recycle and reduce landfill
- Queensland will consult on a proposal to ban the dumping of end-of-life solar panels in landfill
http://statements.qld.gov.au/statements/97303

If they are proposing a ban on dumping them into landfill within 10 years, then that says that many are being dumped into landfill within 10 years.

Scientists believe they've found a way to recycle solar panels | ABC News
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlweV5SaIqU
"Australia has one of the world's largest uptakes of solar panels, but finding a way to recycle them has so far proved difficult and expensive."

"At the moment it's cheaper to put them into landfill"

- I think the whole thing is stupid.
Find some big piece of unused land adjacent to linking into the power grid, hook them up, and leave them there to keep on producing power until they're down to 10% output, then replace them with more second hand panels with 90% output.

Whats the cost to the environment just to manufacture them?
Why waste something that can still produce power, just got to hook them up - think of it as a place where solar panels can live out their final days and still produce power, as they were meant to do.

Beaurecrats are incompetent and stupid.
All it takes is a scheme put in place and these panels would still be producing power and not going into landfill.
Doing so might even provide a few jobs as well.

The biggest joke is the banning of nuclear power in Australia. I found it strange that the CSIRO ignored ANSTO and pretty much every long life nuclear power plant, then selected parameters to make it look as expensive as they could. Further, they compare dispatchable costs with non-dispatchable costs to make wind and solar appear cheap, effectively comparing apples oranges, something that no other developed nation does.

Australian energy providers should be considering repurposing existing power plants for nuclear generation instead of blowing them up. I think that the renewable energy lobby is fervently anti-nuclear as nuclear power plants have been in existence long enough to demonstrate actual costs for dispatchable power below that of wind and solar. CSIRO is helping them with their deception.

SteeleRedux once again reminds us of his brilliance by declaring the topic "stupid", and its creator "inane". What a towering intellectual he is.

"Japan's per capita coal use in 2021 in power units was 10,694 kWh per person."

Japan also build nuclear power plants in one of the worlds most seismically unstable countries, along the ring of fire.
If they had've built coal plants instead they might not have polluted the whole northern pacific ocean with radioactive isotopes from Fukashima, detected in places as far away as US and Canada, and which was still leaking years after the meltdown.