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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from the national electricity grid jumped by 6.4 million tonnes in the financial year after the Abbott government repealed the scheme that required big industry to buy pollution permits, according to analysis by consultants Pitt & Sherry.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: 3, Insightful) by RedBear on Monday July 06 2015, @09:38AM
I know I shouldn't bother but, really? Are you really in all seriousness sitting there and telling us that solar and wind energy are not infinitely renewable in a very practical sense within the bounds of the probable time period during which the human race will exist on this planet?
As long as the sun shines (billions of years) and the Earth orbits the sun and spins on its axis we will have plenty of wind and solar, and hydro too. Yes, will be extracting some kinetic energy from the wind and it will have some effect on weather patterns eventually. But weather patterns are getting more extreme due to global warming so the net effect will probably be a wash for a long, long time.
The term "Renewable Energy" being propaganda just because of the eventual non-renewability of the sun itself isn't even in the same multi-verse as the B.S. propaganda level of terms like "Clean Coal".
I swear, I've read your post over and over and still can't figure out whether I've just been trolled by someone being very cleverly facetious in support of renewable energy or trolled by someone who really believes they've just made some kind of valid logical statement against it. Totally stumped. I can't even.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2, Disagree) by BK on Monday July 06 2015, @12:48PM
The word you want is "Available". Renewable means something else. Quick, name a form of energy that is, in fact, renewable by humans.
It is used to tell a lie that makes people believe someone's truth. Or to tell a lie in a way that implies something that could be true. Or something. 1984.
You stepped into the middle a pedantic argument about whether the terms used to describe energy in popular media are properly descriptive or misleading propaganda. Unlike so many other discussions around energy policy, it doesn't matter where you stand on energy policy or climate issues, but on whether you actually understand the nuanced meanings of English words used to describe it all.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06 2015, @06:37PM
I know I shouldn't bother but, really? Are you really in all seriousness sitting there and telling us that solar and wind energy are not infinitely renewable in a very practical sense within the bounds of the probable time period during which the human race will exist on this planet?
This definition opens another can of worms. There is enough uranium and thorium available to power humanity for a least a couple of hundred years (ok, in reality a couple of thousands) - however we fully expect to have working fusion before this happens. This means that along the same reasoning nuclear (fission) are for all intents and purposes inexhaustible.
I personally prefer the phrase "practically inexhaustible" over "renewable".
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday July 07 2015, @04:42AM
You may "we fully expect to have working fusion before this happens", but you shouldn't feel too certain. The universe may be so set up that only large lumps of gravitationally compressed matter spontaneously fuse. One *hopes* that this isn't the way things are set up, but to be certain seems to me to be excessive hubris.
We *know* that solar energy systems can be made to work. We *know* that wind power systems can be made to work. We *expect* that reasonably good storage systems are developable. But human scale fusion reactors? Expect may the the correct verb to use, but it's an optimistic assumption. And we don't know what the hidden costs will be. I *really* hope that we can develop decent fusion reactors suitable for powering apartment complexes, but I'm not at all sure that anything stronger than "hope" is a reasonable term to use.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 07 2015, @11:42PM
(Same AC)
Well, if it comes to that we will be unable to build human scale fusion we still will have an extra couple of hundred years of research - and by that time we probably have built either a space elevator and/or a launch loop and therefore can launch solar power satellites cheaply..
Regardless nuclear is a decent stopgap until something better comes along (and current solar and wind still falls short)