"Investment that can reignite Britain’s industrial heartlands to create good jobs in the industries of the future – like wind power and solar. And this includes carbon capture and storage. That’s why today we have announced up to £21.7bn of funding over 25 years to launch this major new industry for our country in a new era for clean-energy investment and jobs".
Ye gods. Labour is the current British government in good part because it plausibly promised a return to evidence-based policy. Instead they propose to throw £22bn at carbon capture, a snake oll industry with a consistent record of costly failure around the world. It is perfectly clear that betting the farm on flue gas CCS was a huge mistake, and we need something much better.
I have been the resident carbon removal hawk on JQ's old blog, on the grounds that the world is certain to overshoot the 1.5 degrees C target, and has in fact already hit it, while 1.5 degrees is too damned hot already, with much worse to come. Ergo, we are going to need net carbon removal by the hundreds of gigatonnes after we hit net zero. The current technology portfolio is not up to the job, so what we need now is a very big, rigorously professional, technology-agnostic, and globally coordinated *research and development* programme to identify, test, and weed out the long list of candidates. Global investment in green transition tech - emissions mitigation - is running at $1.3 trn a year, so a Manhattan Project of a generous billion or two a year initially would not materially divert funds from mitigation. Reeves' plan is to spend far more than this in one smallish country on the logic of the Sir Humphrey syllogism: "We must do something. This is something. Therefore we must do this." Coming after Hinkley C and HS2, a little caution would be in order.
Footnote: A rational carbon price should include an equal subsidy for demonstrated long-term sequestration, starting now. A little of this money would be awarded to successful CDR trials. If the Manhattan-bis Project goes well, it may lead to earlier net zero. This outcome, with low residual emissions balanced by removals, should not be condemned by climate mitigation hawks, in spite of the bad faith of many early CCS proponents. I dealt with the diversion argument above.
I'd forgotten about the nukes. The Labour manifesto includes a vague commitment to the Sizewell C megaproject using the failed EPR technology, wishful thinking pricetag another 20 bn, zero contribution to cutting emissions for at least 10 years. Why not build a high-speed rail line to the construction site for all the expert commissions investigating why it is gong wrong? The only ray of hope is that the Reeves op-ed doesn't mention nuclear.
I am lucky enough to live in Spain, Zero-emissions share of electrical generation 77% in August, prices stable, nuclear and coal phaseouts proceeding according to plan. Teresa Ribera actually understands this stuff.
A deadly pair of charts from IEEFA (via Coalwire) on Australian experts of metallurgical coal. The history clearly shows slow but steady structural decline. The other one exhibits a sequence of Dunning-Krueger forecasts by the responsible government agency, DISR, always showing growth ahead.. It's not as dramatic as the famous chart of old IEA forecasts of solar PV capacity, but shows the same refusal to learn. (In the end, the IEA did,) An AI chatbot would surely do better.
Are you aware about the cause of voting reform in Melbourne?
Basically businesses can vote in Melbourne. This ought to change.
"Melbourne is the only municipality in Victoria in which businesses get to vote in council elections, and their power is increased at the ballot box: they get two votes each, compared with one per resident.
And property investors and business owners have yet another advantage: they don’t have to be Australian citizens to vote."
"The result was an electoral roll in the 2020 election made up of 55.09 per cent business owners and out-of-the-area property owners. Locals made up only 44.91 per cent of the roll."
I write mainly about US monetary policy, US fiscal policy, trade/industrial policy, and climate change policy from a Neo-Social Democratic (aka "Neoliberal" :)) perspective.
I have my opinions about which US political party is least bad and it’s not hard to figure out, but I try to keep my analysis non-partisan.
• There is a new edition of the ANU global PHES resource map, now up to 820,000 sites, with new toys for users, including star ratings for the best sites. https://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/pumped_hydro_atlas/
• Pumped hydro and batteries are complementary. “Hybrid storage systems that combine batteries and PHES are superior to either technology alone. Batteries are relatively inexpensive for storage power ($/GW) but are expensive for energy storage ($/GWh). PHES is more expensive than batteries for storage power ($/GW) but much cheaper for energy storage ($/GWh). A hybrid system has both cheap energy (GWh) and cheap power (GW). In a hybrid system, storage can charge storage. A large PHES reservoir can trickle charge batteries 24/7 for a week during a calm and cloudy period….”
• Astonishingly, the wholesale spot price of electricity was negative for 9 consecutive hours. This absurdity should never happen with a supply entirely based on solar, wind, hydro, gas and storage, all of which can be turned off in minutes or seconds. It can only happen with inflexible coal and nuclear power stations – in Australia, just coal. The coal power stations reduced their output, but couldn’t be turned off, as a proper merit order would require. I do not understand why the wind and solar plants were not turned off rather than reaping negative prices. The result of the competition in incompetence was that everybody lost money. Note how tiny the role of storage – the dip below the line at the bottom – still is. This will change.
Rachel Reeves, in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/04/carbon-capture-labour-green-revolution-britain-industry-jobs:
"Investment that can reignite Britain’s industrial heartlands to create good jobs in the industries of the future – like wind power and solar. And this includes carbon capture and storage. That’s why today we have announced up to £21.7bn of funding over 25 years to launch this major new industry for our country in a new era for clean-energy investment and jobs".
Ye gods. Labour is the current British government in good part because it plausibly promised a return to evidence-based policy. Instead they propose to throw £22bn at carbon capture, a snake oll industry with a consistent record of costly failure around the world. It is perfectly clear that betting the farm on flue gas CCS was a huge mistake, and we need something much better.
I have been the resident carbon removal hawk on JQ's old blog, on the grounds that the world is certain to overshoot the 1.5 degrees C target, and has in fact already hit it, while 1.5 degrees is too damned hot already, with much worse to come. Ergo, we are going to need net carbon removal by the hundreds of gigatonnes after we hit net zero. The current technology portfolio is not up to the job, so what we need now is a very big, rigorously professional, technology-agnostic, and globally coordinated *research and development* programme to identify, test, and weed out the long list of candidates. Global investment in green transition tech - emissions mitigation - is running at $1.3 trn a year, so a Manhattan Project of a generous billion or two a year initially would not materially divert funds from mitigation. Reeves' plan is to spend far more than this in one smallish country on the logic of the Sir Humphrey syllogism: "We must do something. This is something. Therefore we must do this." Coming after Hinkley C and HS2, a little caution would be in order.
Footnote: A rational carbon price should include an equal subsidy for demonstrated long-term sequestration, starting now. A little of this money would be awarded to successful CDR trials. If the Manhattan-bis Project goes well, it may lead to earlier net zero. This outcome, with low residual emissions balanced by removals, should not be condemned by climate mitigation hawks, in spite of the bad faith of many early CCS proponents. I dealt with the diversion argument above.
CCS and nuclear, at a time when they are faced with massive demands for capital investment. They seem totally clueless
I'd forgotten about the nukes. The Labour manifesto includes a vague commitment to the Sizewell C megaproject using the failed EPR technology, wishful thinking pricetag another 20 bn, zero contribution to cutting emissions for at least 10 years. Why not build a high-speed rail line to the construction site for all the expert commissions investigating why it is gong wrong? The only ray of hope is that the Reeves op-ed doesn't mention nuclear.
I am lucky enough to live in Spain, Zero-emissions share of electrical generation 77% in August, prices stable, nuclear and coal phaseouts proceeding according to plan. Teresa Ribera actually understands this stuff.
Metallurgical coal
A deadly pair of charts from IEEFA (via Coalwire) on Australian experts of metallurgical coal. The history clearly shows slow but steady structural decline. The other one exhibits a sequence of Dunning-Krueger forecasts by the responsible government agency, DISR, always showing growth ahead.. It's not as dramatic as the famous chart of old IEA forecasts of solar PV capacity, but shows the same refusal to learn. (In the end, the IEA did,) An AI chatbot would surely do better.
PDF link: https://ieefa.org/sites/default/files/2024-09/fact-sheet-met-coal_0.pdf
I couldn't work out how to copy the charts, but the whole document is only 2 pages.
Are you aware about the cause of voting reform in Melbourne?
Basically businesses can vote in Melbourne. This ought to change.
"Melbourne is the only municipality in Victoria in which businesses get to vote in council elections, and their power is increased at the ballot box: they get two votes each, compared with one per resident.
And property investors and business owners have yet another advantage: they don’t have to be Australian citizens to vote."
"The result was an electoral roll in the 2020 election made up of 55.09 per cent business owners and out-of-the-area property owners. Locals made up only 44.91 per cent of the roll."
https://archive.md/GGpdB - archived Age article
Maybe it's not quite cricket, but I' shamelessly tout my (free) Substack, "Radical Centrist," https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/
I write mainly about US monetary policy, US fiscal policy, trade/industrial policy, and climate change policy from a Neo-Social Democratic (aka "Neoliberal" :)) perspective.
I have my opinions about which US political party is least bad and it’s not hard to figure out, but I try to keep my analysis non-partisan.
Thanks,
Thanks for the shelf space. :)
Pumped hydro and fried eggs
Update from the invaluable estimable Blakers team on pumped hydro (PHES) as still the workhorse energy storage solution. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/10/08/energy-storage-is-a-solved-problem/
• There is a new edition of the ANU global PHES resource map, now up to 820,000 sites, with new toys for users, including star ratings for the best sites. https://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/pumped_hydro_atlas/
• Pumped hydro and batteries are complementary. “Hybrid storage systems that combine batteries and PHES are superior to either technology alone. Batteries are relatively inexpensive for storage power ($/GW) but are expensive for energy storage ($/GWh). PHES is more expensive than batteries for storage power ($/GW) but much cheaper for energy storage ($/GWh). A hybrid system has both cheap energy (GWh) and cheap power (GW). In a hybrid system, storage can charge storage. A large PHES reservoir can trickle charge batteries 24/7 for a week during a calm and cloudy period….”
• Snowy 2 is decent value for money.
• A fine image of the duck demand curve in Australia on 4 October, morphing into a fried egg: https://www.pv-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/power-curve-1200x640.jpg
• Astonishingly, the wholesale spot price of electricity was negative for 9 consecutive hours. This absurdity should never happen with a supply entirely based on solar, wind, hydro, gas and storage, all of which can be turned off in minutes or seconds. It can only happen with inflexible coal and nuclear power stations – in Australia, just coal. The coal power stations reduced their output, but couldn’t be turned off, as a proper merit order would require. I do not understand why the wind and solar plants were not turned off rather than reaping negative prices. The result of the competition in incompetence was that everybody lost money. Note how tiny the role of storage – the dip below the line at the bottom – still is. This will change.
Yes, i saw the piece on storage. On the last piece, there is an awful lot of curtailment, but I think some contracts make turning off more difficult.