Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Monday July 06 2015, @01:49AM   Printer-friendly
from the burning-more-than-beds dept.

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from the national electricity grid jumped by 6.4 million tonnes in the financial year after the Abbott government repealed the scheme that required big industry to buy pollution permits, according to analysis by consultants Pitt & Sherry.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

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2, Disagree) by curunir_wolf on Monday July 06 2015, @01:07PM

    by curunir_wolf (4772) on Monday July 06 2015, @01:07PM (#205602)
    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). Be that as it may, Musk's numbers are just marketing to sell batteries. Duh.
    --
    I am a crackpot
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   0  
       Disagree=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Disagree' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by gnuman on Monday July 06 2015, @04:52PM

    by gnuman (5013) on Monday July 06 2015, @04:52PM (#205724)

    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

      by curunir_wolf (4772) on Tuesday July 07 2015, @11:43AM (#206077)
      Well that's certainly interesting. Distribution in general is still more economical with AC - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents, [wikipedia.org] but regardless of that, Musk's numbers are still marketing bullshit designed to sell batteries. I can see small, self-contained breeder reactors as a decent way to provide distributed power generation, but the current way of subsidizing solar panels is just another way to shift costs from the rich to the poor.
      --
      I am a crackpot