Australia Risks 2035 Climate Goal Without Bigger Emissions Cuts (bloomberg.com) 31
Australia warned it's in danger of missing its 2035 climate targets without deeper pollution cuts, which in turn threatens the nation's ambitions to reach net zero by mid-century. From a report: Emissions are set to fall 48% by 2035 from 2005 levels based on current projections [non-paywalled source], the government said in a report on Thursday. That's short of an official pledge to cut greenhouse gases between 62% and 70%. The forecast doesn't take into account new action planned under the nation's Net Zero Plan. Still, the targets remain achievable and officials plan to take additional measures to meet them, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen said in a speech to parliament.
Don't believe the hype (Score:4, Insightful)
Australia claims to have reduced CO2 emissions by 30% since 2006. If you exclude Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) it has fallen by just 4%, mostly electrical generation. Other sources have increased. LULUCF is a very flaky bookkeeping exercise, easily manipulated.
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There's a reason LULUCF is included in climate change estimates around the world: deforestation and the use of land is a huge emission source. It's easy to be quick to dismiss Australia's efforts, but the reality is LULUCF's inclusion should be applauded because Australia had a fucking horrendous historical track record on deforestation, and despite still being very bad it's encouraging to see the rate reduce since 2008. Excluding it as a source of emissions doesn't help anyone even if the accounting can be
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As the last graph shows successive estimates have improved the reduction from LULUCF back in time -how convenient. I agree, deforestation was (and is)a blight but Labor have their hands tied by CFMEU and the Coalition doesn't care. Perhaps the new EPA regs will help.
Australia never cared about reducing emmisions (Score:1)
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Australians value their sovereignty. Laundering 1 trillion dollars to multinational companies to establish a nuclear industry did not make financial sense.
Australia also has the world's largest uranium reserves. Don't discount the sovereignty in that.
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Pretty sure I voted for the nice lady with a funny laugh, not the orange traitor.
And you can build new nuclear without laundering 1 trillion dollars across multinational companies. You have the most uranium reserves in the world.
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The South Koreans built a 5 GW nuclear plant in UAE for $32B. Australia needs about 24 GW, say $200B
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Not my guy. He wasn't serious about building nuclear power. So what? His opposition wasn't serious about decarbonize Australia either.
And opposing nuclear energy means you are prolonging the use of fossil fuels. Intermittency is a real issue that you ignore.
See Germany. They spent 500 billion euros and 15 years only to fail.
They are current at 395 g CO2 per kWh. [electricitymaps.com]
Meanwhile France is at 36 g CO2 per kWh. [electricitymaps.com]
36 is less than 395. Every rational minded person should look at those two metrics and conclude
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The uranium has never been the expensive part of nucllear.
its building the bloody thing. The reality is nuclear is stil one of the most expensive forms of power out there whilst solar and wind (Especially in australia) are by far the cheapest. Its kind of weird to ignore the obvious solution to go for a plan that wont even come online until a decade after the solution is due.
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Wow. You do realize that solar and wind are intermittent? That means when the sun isn't shinning and the wind isn't blowing they don't work.
If solar and wind are so cheap and fast why did Germany fail after spending 500 billion euros and 15 years? Well they failed because solar and wind are intermittent.
What does Australia currently use to overcome solar and wind intermittency? Its coal and methane.
Also do you know the single largest cost of a nuclear power plant? It's interest. That is a solvab
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Seems more like political problems. They have been trying to build large wind farms and export cables for years. If they can't even manage that, they have no hope of building nuclear.
It's a tragedy really. They have massive amounts of space for this stuff. A lot of sun, and good on and off shore wind resources. The domestic solar market is actually doing okay, because it gets less political interference and there isn't all that much that can be done to stop people putting panels on their homes.
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The coalition spend decades convincing the Australian public that climate change was a left wing hoax, while undermining any efforts by Rudd and Gillard to legislate a target.
Witness this week's "abandon net zero" discussion within their own ranks and we're supposed to trust them on constructing one single reactor in two decades time?
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The goal is minimize g CO2 per kWh. Germany spent 500 billion euros and 15 years on their energy transition only to fail. If they just kept their nuclear they would be below 100 g CO2 per kWh. If they built new nuclear they would have be near France which deep decarbonized their grid decades ago.
Australia please don't repeat Germany's mistake. Australia will not be able to achieve their decarbonization goals without a nuclear baseload.
And supporting nuclear doesn't mean opposing renewables. So build
Re: Australia never cared about reducing emmisions (Score:1)
they're only 1% of global emissions, #16. Doesn't matter what they do. The top 10 are the big fish
\o/ (Score:1)
Meta-comment: It's most considerate to put a link to a non-paywalled source - thanks :-)
Why not save time and fruitless clicks by simply omitting the paywalled source?
What proportion of people are expected to be able to read an arbitrary source of private news?
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The real reason for Australia not going nuclear (Score:1)
1. The bulk of Australia's solar panel and wind turbine infrastructure is manufactured in China. The CCP wants Australia to keep buying from them. If Australia went nuclear, there is no way in hell they'd be importing any Chinese nuclear tech, for reasons of sovereign risk.
2. A nuclear weapons industry benefits greatly from a nuclear domestic energy industry. The skillset crosses over. If Austral
Global Net Zero is dead (Score:3)
Global Net Zero is dead. You can tell this by looking at COP and at the policies of the largest and fastest growing emitters. None have any intention of reducing emissions, in fact their universal policy is simple, and consists of two elements:
1) Grow your economy as fast as possible and let emissions go where they may.
2) Attend COP and make sure it never agrees anything binding to do with reducing emissions or fossil fuel use.
Anyone who doubts this just has to look at the record, both of their conduct at COP and at what they are building themselves.
This means that what the English speaking countries do about energy is a matter of energy policy. Its not a matter of climate policy. You cannot have a climate policy when you collectively do about 20% and falling of global emissions, when the 80% are as a matter of policy growing as fast as unrestrained economic growth leads to. Nothing you do in the name of climate has any effect on it. This will greatly upset many people here. But just look up the numbers. What is China, what is India, building in coal fired power plants? How large are their plans in relation to the total power generation from fossil fuels in the English speaking countries? There is your answer. You may not like it, but its a fact.
So you have to look at Australia's situation (and that of the UK, Canada, US) in a different way and ask a different question. That is, are their Net Zero plans a feasible and sensible energy policy in the world as it is? The answer is becoming clear, and its pretty obviously negative. The UK is probably the canary in the coal mine on this. All it has managed to do, at great expense, is try to convert its electricity generation to wind and solar. Leaving untouched all the other sources of emissions. And the result of this has been to raise electricity prices and lower security of supply. Meanwhile it has also tried to close down domestic (North Sea) oil and gas production, and the result of this has not been to reduce demand but has been to increase dependence on imports.
The reason for this is just physics: its intermittency. The problem is the same everywhere in the world, but its most clearly documented on a daily basis for the UK, here:
www.gridwatch.co.uk/wind
There is no way to use such an unreliable supply to power a modern industrial society and economy. You have to get through periods of a week or more, in the coldest part of winter, where peak demand is around 45GW and actual wind output from 30GW installed plant is under 5GW for the whole period and under 1GW for several days within that period. There is no way of managing this.
This of course will not stop the current UK energy minister, Ed Miliband, from keeping on trying it, but the result will be blackouts. It will not stop New York State from keeping on trying it, but its not going to happen. The recent court case in New York shows the same thing - people in charge of policy having committed themselves in law to the impossible can see where its going, namely blackouts, and are frantically looking for the exit.
The best thing that could happen to Australia would be if it too would admit both the impossibility and the futility of Net Zero, make a realistic assessment of what risks global warming really poses to its citizens and society, and take measures to allieviate the worst effects. Which will not include reducing emissions.
At the moment the Western countries who remain committed to Net Zero because climate are like someone who refuses antibiotics for their child on the grounds that there is a global problem with antibiotic resistance. There may be. But you are not going to affect that one way or the other by depriving your child of life saving medication today.
in other news "sky has fallen, nobody cares" (Score:1)
Thankfully, the only people believing the climate grift are the zealots anymore.
The world is healing.