Chris no matter how much batteries improve, wind & solar technology are never going to be able to supply even a small amount of our current electricity usage, let alone charge batteries, & power our transport needs as well. Both have nothing like the energy density to do the job.

I'm sure other technologies will be developed, & we will transition away from hydrocarbons eventually, but it is not going to be in our lifetimes. How long has fusion been just a decade away? Those trying to stop hydrocarbon & nuclear usage today are either too lacking in technological knowledge to know what they are doing, or have an ulterior motive for their actions. If they do manage to stop hydrocarbon usage, it will not be an improvement, but will put us back into the dark ages.

Dear Hassie,

Australia has a couple of options regarding its energy
future.

1) We can continue to have energy price increases and
still be reliant on fossil fuels for our electricity
generation. While many of our trading partners will
switch to their own, often lower emission, energy
sources, thereby collapsing the market for our energy
exports.

Or we can - in our

2) households and industry embrace a diverse mix
of new - often cleaner energy technologies.

The challenge for Australia is to choose the future we
want and try to work out the best way to get there.

With our scientific organisations like CSIRO - hopefully
we can unlock the value from our country's unmatched
energy resources in ways that are responsible and
environmentally sustainable, as well as building a cost
compatible, lower emission domestic energy sector.

There are fundamental problems in the way of battery improvement.
One scientific group did a study of the elements table matching all
elements against all elements and concluded that the best are already known.
The problem with batteries as backup is how many overcast still days
do you have to have to cope with ?
Germany has learnt that their country is too small for wind and solar.
Global warming is a last century worry. Best to read up the latest science.
We will have to grasp the nuclear nettle.
Our pollies will some time soon be faced with the reality that even
for a country the size of Australia the cost of 100% x 100% electricity
from wind and solar is beyond us, if not actually impossible.

Not wishing to pick on Foxy but read her last post and you can see
where the general population does not see the magnitude of the project.

As much as I am keen on electric cars I think we might well be
heading for a time when personal cars will not be possible.
Most here will not see it but our children will see it coming and
our grandchildren definately will. Perhaps nuclear powered cars ?

*Yawn*
Weren't people saying similar things about wind turbines a decade ago?

Electric vehicle technology differs among manufacturers, and some don't use any cobalt at all. And did you notice the quoted the figure was for lithium carbonate rather than all lithium? Can you see how that inflates the stats?

It's no secret that electric vehicles will require an increase in the amount of mining of what they're manufactured from. That doesn't make them impractical, let alone unachievable. What it actually means is that there's a great future for our mining industry despite coal's looming demise.

Although Germany did belatedly open a coal fired power station recently, coal's share of electricity production there is declining, and this year they made the decision to phase it out by 2038 at the latest. So even if this one was once planned to be the first of ten, I, and many others, expect it to be the last.

Foxy,

Energy costs have been pushed up by the vast subsidies needed to fund expensive and unreliable renewable power supplies, and China and other countries are building dozens of coal fired power stations and taking over the manufacturing of countries relying on renewables.

SM, quite right.
I don't know the current stats on all this renewable fallacy, but the last time I looked, countries like China and India, to name the two larger populated countries, were flat out building both nuclear AND coal fired power stations.
This being the case, it follows on from the fact that the push away from fossil fuels and massively promoting renewables, has been found to be a fabrication, an over-reach, by certain people for monetary gain.
Now that the TRUTH about GW is beginning to filter through and get traction, many who were naively led to believe the fallacy that WE, humankind have been responsible for GW, are now seeing that it in fact is not the case.
What little CO2 we produce has been described as insignificant when taking the full picture and stats into account.
As for the current price of electricity, it is purely based on greed and averace.
There is NO reason for the current prices, other than we are being gouged, not the BS about the cost of electricity or any other fabricated or contrived lies.
There are things which under any scrutiny clearly belong to the people and not the private sector.
Electricity is just one of them.
I still can't get my head around the stupidity and indifference of the Australian public, who will speak out against some miscreant who defy's the law and suffers the consequences, but will not get off their lazy, indifferent arses to protest the sale of our Govt assets to private leaches, scum-bags and just plain thieves, which BTW includes govt ministers who contrive to put these sleazy deals together.
I clearly recall, as if it was yesterday, when the govt put up the power industry for sale, they received a rejection with a caveat, saying that the return was too low and was not commercially viable, leaving them with the clear instruction: "increase the profits and we'll look at it again".
They did, and here we are today, making excuses for the price of electricity.
I say, "Govt TAKE back ALL the public assets".