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A year on from the abolition of the carbon price, greenhouse pollution from electricity generation has rebounded as Australia burns more brown coal to meet its power needs.
Carbon dioxide emissions from the national electricity grid jumped by 6.4 million tonnes in the financial year after the Abbott government repealed the scheme that required big industry to buy pollution permits, according to analysis by consultants Pitt & Sherry. The 4.3 per cent increase unwound part of an 11 per cent fall in emissions across the grid in the two years the carbon price was in place.
It can mainly be attributed to Victoria's four large brown coal generators running at greater capacity more often as the electricity they generate became cheaper. Output from the ageing Latrobe Valley quartet was up about nine per cent.
With the exception of burning oil for power – a practice favoured in Saudi Arabia – burning brown coal is the most greenhouse-intensive way to create electricity. Cutting emissions from the electricity supply is widely considered the central battle in tackling climate change in coming decades. It pumps out about a third of Australia's carbon pollution.
The new data comes as the federal cabinet is set to this month consider Australia's climate change targets beyond 2020 amid international pressure over Prime Minister Tony Abbott's contrarian stance on the issue.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Monday July 06 2015, @06:33AM
This used to be my take on it as well, until I read something by Elon Musk somewhere (can't seem to find a reference at the moment) discussing the cost of transmitting the electricity from place of generation to place of use. Looking at that analysis it actually made me question whether micro generation will simply make such large projects not financially viable in the nearish future. It now seems inevitable that the grid will shift from large-generation/small-use to a small-generation/small-use type of scenario, which will seriously throw decades-old economic models into a tailspin.
All that said, there can't be many more places more suited to solar collection than the red outback...
(Score: 2, Disagree) by curunir_wolf on Monday July 06 2015, @01:07PM
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Monday July 06 2015, @04:52PM
Yes, it costs money to transport the power - it's why we use AC instead of DC (it can be transported further with less loss of current).
That is plainly wrong. DC is far superior at large distance transmission. The ONLY reason AC is used in transmission lines is historical. It is much easier to build transformers for AC, than DC currents. AC only requires a passive transformer to translate voltage. DC requires a switch to chop the voltage across a transformer - that's what is an isolated DC-DC converter. AC is also much easier to make motors with.
But as far long haul transmission goes, DC is far superior.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Tuesday July 07 2015, @11:43AM
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday July 06 2015, @05:30PM
Well we do know what Musk is selling, and I'm not sure this is his area of expertise.
However, I too believe that local generation, (with grid inter-tie), has a lot of resiliency and flexibility.
Micro Nuclear [wikipedia.org] might make more sense to satisfy the grid stabilization needs where there is a bunch of solar or wind power with the resultant fluctuation in supply, plus the need for night supply. There are a lot of these designs, but the security issue is going to be an issue.
Basically it comes down to three main issues: Storage, Storage, and Storage.
The only storage that scales is Hydro dams, and everybody suddenly cares very deeply about drowned acreage on lands they would never otherwise ever even visit.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Tuesday July 07 2015, @12:57AM
I wish you luck convincing the general public that Micro Nuclear is a good idea. If ever there was a NIMBY-generator, it was that...
Your three issues are right on the money though, and it really is an interesting time to live in.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday July 07 2015, @04:51AM
I think it was where he was trying to sell excess Tesla batteries to power homes. Any my take on this was "maybe". Do be aware that he's trying to use economies of scale to cut the cost of his cars. Also to make them more convenient to use (in this case more ways to charge them). And I can think of a lot of use cases that this wouldn't work in (though perhaps there are ways around that, like putting overhead solar chargers on all the roads). Consider that many people live in apartment buildings, and don't have their own roof. And many businesses use power at a rate grossly in excess of their use of area.
But perhaps if you expand "local" to be an entire metropolitan area then local power generation would be more reasonable, though that would tend to surround metropolitan areas with "shadow belts" where nothing grows but mushrooms because not enough sunlight gets through to the grounds.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.