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Today, the Australian government drastically scaled back its renewable energy targets for 2020, dropping them by nearly 20 percent. The new target, 33 TeraWatt-Hours, ends an extended period of uncertainty. The Abbot government had announced its intent to lower the target, but parliamentary negotiations were required to set a new one.
Australia's initial target, 41 TW-hr, had been set in 2009 with the goal of having renewables contribute 20 percent of the nation's electrical generation. But greater efficiency and reduced manufacturing has already pushed the fraction of renewables up over 13 percent. The Abbott government, which is generally hostile to climate science, didn't feel the need to overshoot its goals and so decided to cut the renewable energy target.
The article also states that the Australian Prime Minister "will appoint a 'wind farm commissioner' to field complaints about turbines, too."
Australia's geography and weather seem to make it a good candidate for national energy independence through solar and wind. Also, given China's new moves to realize its territorial ambitions (see: Spratley Islands), not relying on ships to bring you oil would seem to be a good idea.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday June 26 2015, @09:42PM
Did you read the summary? The problem seems to be that they will meet the old goal, and probably surpass it. If the goal was 20% by 2020, and that was set in 2009, and now in 2015 they are already at 13%, hmm, let's see 13/20 is 65% of the goal in 6 of the 11 years, so that's 35% in 5 years, but if it continues at the past rate, it would be about 119% of the goal in 2020, but the cause given was falling prices of equipment and increasing efficiency, so we cannot really assume linear projection from past data, but not enough information to calculate that.
And my point is that it does not seem that lowering the target meant any actual change in government subsidies or tax-break incentives or anything at all, so most likely it will have no effect except to make it clear that Prime Minister "Bruce" Abbot is a climate-change denier.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 26 2015, @10:06PM
And my point is that it does not seem that lowering the target meant any actual change in government subsidies or tax-break incentives or anything at all
That shoe just hasn't dropped yet.
(Score: 1) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Friday June 26 2015, @11:17PM
...it will have no effect except to make it clear that Prime Minister "Bruce" Abbot is a climate-change denier.
If we're going to give him a nickname let's at least make it an appropriate one, such as "Bushfire"[1] Abbot, since he really is a committed global warming denier.
[1] We don't know which particular bushfire from last summer his style of thinking caused, but it was at least one.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday June 26 2015, @11:34PM
If we're going to give him a nickname let's at least make it an appropriate one,
Yeah, sorry, I just grabbed the old Monty Python riff about auzzies. Bushfires? Caused by drought? Sounds good!
(Score: 1) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday June 27 2015, @07:35AM
I just grabbed the old Monty Python riff about auzzies. Bushfires? Caused by drought? Sounds good!
Understood (and enjoyed) the "Bruce" reference - I just get so annoyed with the crap he and his minions come out with about this subject (and many, many others*) that I couldn't resist.
It's not so much the long term drought but the hot dry spell after late winter/early spring rains that causes most of the problem, so that we'll be seeing more (and more serious) bushfires on a regular basis.
*Police Academy reference
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 27 2015, @09:34PM
It's not so much the long term drought but the hot dry spell after late winter/early spring rains that causes most of the problem, so that we'll be seeing more (and more serious) bushfires on a regular basis.
Of course, we ignore here that past firefighting policy which was much more aggressive has lead to a considerable build up in fuels. If Australia had pursued a sensible fire fighting policy for most of the last century, then there wouldn't be a bushfire problem even in the presence of global warming. Too many of humanity's failings have been blame on "climate change". They don't improve just because we transferred blame to a convenient target.