Elon Musk’s 100% clean energy vision is that the world’s energy needs will come from electricity – around one third transport, one third heating and manufacturing uses, and one-third electricity.
By the last category he clearly means everything else we use electricity for.
His new gizmo is a solar roof shingle:
David Leitch’s article Battery storage: Bad advice about costs is fooling Australian governments reviews two American reports on grid-scale battery storage in the states of Texas and Massachusetts. He says the reports:
Leitch, the principal of ITK says in their view:
Continue reading Grid-scale battery storage: can it happen in Australia?
Bloomberg is warning that the multi-trillion-dollar ‘big crash’ in oil investments could start as soon as 2023. However, the smart money is bound to move earlier. Here’s the progress of electric car sales:
The Coalition government and the Murdoch press were already mounting a full-scale attack on renewable energy when the AEMO report on the SA blackout presented information in such a way as to cast further doubt on renewable energy. AEMO stands for Australian Energy Market Operator. That is AEMO is an operator in the game, not an independent watchdog. In fact an operator that may not itself have acted prudently.
On top of this Chris Uhlmann of the ABC has been virulently critical of the rush to renewables, using what turns out to be techno-babble to sound convincing. His views have skewed the ABC network coverage across all platforms.
So what happened? Continue reading Renewables under attack – again
Per Bolund, Sweden’s minister for Consumer Affairs and from the Swedish Green Party, is introducing legislation to give tax breaks to repair white goods to keep them running.
In fact it may be exactly the wrong thing to do. Items like fridges washing machines, air conditioners and TVs take far more energy to run than to make. Upgrading to a new and more efficient machine may be better for the environment than keeping the old one. Continue reading Climate clippings 186
My idea of a driverless car is that you can sit back and read a book. In fact it may be more like this:
Most people don’t realise that 64% of the EU’s renewable energy is in fact biomass. The scam starts with UN and EU rules that say if you cut down a tree you don’t count the carbon it emits when you burn it. The assumption is that the tree will grow back again. The New Scientist (probably paywalled) has the story. Continue reading The great EU biomass scam
One of the more eye-catching comments on the SA blackouts was from AGL Energy’s CEO Andy Vesey telling the All Energy conference in Melbourne that a secure power system would be rooftop solar and batteries in a distributed power system with power being generated at the point of consumption. He also said that politicians were blaming the South Australian blackout on renewable energy because technological disruption was confounding their “mental models”.
Greg Hunt, a man clearly in a muddle, went in hard, as reported by Giles Parkinson at RenewEconomy:
Continue reading After the blackout, a new dawn for renewable energy
In what is called ‘attribution science’ climate scientists are getting better at analysing how much climate change has influenced particular extreme weather events.
In short, it is no longer a question of weather there is an influence, rather how much.
It would be useful to know, for example, whether the kind of storm that hit South Australia is still a once in 50 years event. Continue reading Climate clippings 185
Tony Wood from the Grattan Institute is one of those lucky people who seems to know everything, and repeatedly sets us all to rights. So when he spoke about the Institute’s new report Keeping the lights on: lessons from South Australia’s power shock (Press Release, where you can download the report) my BS detectors were fully operational. On further investigation, however, the report has value, but there is a twist.
In brief, he points out that we have no climate policy that will reduce emissions in our power system beyond the RET to 2020, and that we need climate change and energy policies that combine to produce reliable, affordable and sustainable clean power. Continue reading Grattan weighs in on renewables
The Arctic sea ice extent has just reached the second lowest ever, tied with 2007. I got the story from The Guardian, but here’s the story at NSIDC:
Leaders from federal and state road and transport agencies, motoring clubs, local government and engineering and industry groups met in Brisbane in August to consider how government and industry can better collaborate to ensure a smooth transition to the world of connected and automated vehicles.
They are expecting partially automated vehicles on public roads before 2020, and highly automated and driverless vehicles within the ensuing decade. Continue reading Climate clippings 183
