I’d love to see more independents the likes of Windsor and Oakshott were in the last minority gov, in the present Government. Last election, stuck in Katterland, I donated to Climate 200 as my democratic contribution to the tealification of Australia. One has to put the money where the mouth is and community based representation has a long and proven history. My first Australian political experience was with Ted Mack on Sydney’s north shore. Organisations like Voices for Indi and the Teals offer tremendous political potential. The polarised and vaguely entertaining politics of the party duopoly is wasteful and ineffective and people with a sense of community are waking up to it. I wonder though where does that leave the Greens?
Re disturbing inaction, for what seems like forever gas has been allied with ‘clean’ and ‘natural’ and promoted as such. Older generations would remember the dirty old ‘manufactured gas’ plants that used to adorn the cityscape. Natural gas has been sold as cleaner than dirty old coal etc The marketing has been brilliant.
It’s going to take another massive campaign just to undo these falsities.
It matters whether Australia decarbonises fast or slowly. But does it matter much what the Australian government says and does, or doesn’t do? Apart from land use, where the country is net positive, the transition is mostly about manufactured capital goods and consumer durables: solar panels and inverters, wind turbines, batteries, electric cars and trucks, heat pumps, variable-speed motors, smart and networked controllers for everything, and so on. A little is infrastructure: pumped hydro plants, HVDC lines, cycle tracks, and the rail lines you aren’t building.
The Australian manufacturing sector is negligible and we don’t lose much with a simplifying assumption that it doesn’t exist. This means that there is no significant lobby for protectionism and the country is a pure price taker for manufactures. World prices for transition products are far more important than national policy. PV modules are down to 15c per watt in China, with more cuts to come, and electric cars have reached sticker price parity there with ICEVs. The suite of technologies needed for the transition is just about complete – I follow Mike Barnard’s case that short-haul shipping and aviation can go to batteries now or very soon, and long-haul to sustainable biofuels. They will all get cheaper still, in the world and therefore Australia. The transition is irreversible from market forces, and networking and cultural factors, as well as the shifting balance of vested interests, will accelerate it further.
It has always been true that if the global outcome depends essentially on sound policy everywhere, we are all doomed, but if on technology and profit-seeking, we can be quite hopeful. It is true that in their gestation and infancy, the new technologies were critically enabled by good policies in a handful of countries. Without Denmark, there might not be a global wind power industry; without NASA and MITI, no solar one either. These policies were partial: overall, subsidies to renewables have consistently been smaller than those to fossil fuels. But coal continued to fade in Trump’s USA and Morrison’s Australia.
Australia does lead the world in one sector, rooftop solar. It’s an instructive story, showing how luck and a few small policy decisions can enable big changes – or frustrate them. Australia’s success here cane SFIK not from a grand policy but from: a sunny climate and sprawling suburban housing; no or low import tariffs; uniform and sensible technical standards and streamlined paperwork, unlike the balkanised chaos in the USA; an effective feed-in right. (I haven’t heard of a law requiring this as in Germany, so it was probably down to enlightened regulators.) Australia does have world-class researchers in the field, but Martin Green’s audience is in China.
So far political will has been weak, if not outright hostile, with as much or more political commitment to evading commitments than to achieving zero emissions. As well as the don't-care apathy and it's-all-too-much paralysis we have a society where short range economic fears have much greater potency than long range environmental ones, even ones that have are more far reaching and enduring economic consequences.
If Labor wants Australia (and the world) to achieve zero emissions it seems they want the demise of the fossil fuel sector part to be NOT OUR FAULT. Taking credit for the achievements of renewable energy that has gained it's own level of self-sustaining growth seems reminiscent of Abbott, Morrison and Taylor - "More renewables than ever on our watch".
Although to be fair Labor is making some effort to do the things that will make renewables work reliably, even whilst sustaining cognitively dissonant "we support fossil fuels, absolutely without reservation" - a bet each way - whereas the LNP is going all out to impede the things that will make renewables reliable, ie transmission lines, batteries and wind, especially off-shore wind and just having more solar and land based wind.
LNP efforts are now turning to astroturf nimby "environmentalism" (as well as their nuclear distractions) but I think that having framed the issue as for, by, about (unreasonable) environmentalism themselves - anything but the climate science - they appear to be mistaking environmentalism for being pivotal and therefore think environmental fears can be used to wedge renewables in their efforts to save fossil fuels from global warming.
Overall the commitments from the mainstream LNP/ALP "adults" are still weak to outright (if somewhat deniably) oppositional. Apart from electricity that is largely an unstoppable change at this point any commitment to things that are hard, eg decarbonising heavy transport, industrial processes and feedstocks, remains weak despite the electricity example where the doing shows it can be done without the predicted economic ruin.
I fear that the successes of renewables will get warped into justifying continuing weakness of policy commitments instead of being seen great opportunity and cause to up the ante in other areas besides electricity.
Politicians may take comfort in not-our-fault excuses but the ones in Office are the ones with the duty of care - so neglect of that duty IS their fault.
a. No. I'm embarrassed to recommend anything sponsored by the Adam Smith Institute, but Tim Worstall's " No Breakfast Fallacy" article from 2015 is still indispensable reading before subscribing to the panics started by hustlers that the world is about to run out of unobtanium and here is an **unrepeatable investment opportunity!** to profit from this. Worstall's key point is that "proven reserve" is a technical term in mining securities law. It means a mineral resource that has been delimited by rigorous methods like drilling, and shown to be economically extractible with current technology. Proving a reserve is time-consuming and expensive, so mining firms don't want to spend a lot of money on something they may never need decades ahead. The cushion they feel comfortable with is about 20 years. Proven reserves have no relation to the likely total that is ultimately extractible. Incidentally there are no proven reserves for hafnium and sodium, for opposite reasons.
Chart of the spot price of lithium carbonate, showing the end of a classic speculative bubble. Mining it was profitable at $10/lb, and will be again.
b. I share your annoyance at the irrational macho boom in large SUVs and utes. But the global CAGR of electric vehicles is about 25%, completely swamping any shift to larger vehicles in the declining ICEV market. https://www.statista.com/statistics/867963/ev-global-growth-by-region/ IMHO it's not worth wasting time and effort on tinkering with the dinosaurs, for example with tighter fuel efficiency standards. Focus on enabling the electric takeover, fixing soluble problems like chargers in condos, balkanised charging networks using loyalty cards not ordinary bank ones, and a sensibly balanced regulatory framework for V2G.
Here's hoping that Labor goes into minority government after the next election. It's the only way they'll be forced to take climate change seriously.
I’d love to see more independents the likes of Windsor and Oakshott were in the last minority gov, in the present Government. Last election, stuck in Katterland, I donated to Climate 200 as my democratic contribution to the tealification of Australia. One has to put the money where the mouth is and community based representation has a long and proven history. My first Australian political experience was with Ted Mack on Sydney’s north shore. Organisations like Voices for Indi and the Teals offer tremendous political potential. The polarised and vaguely entertaining politics of the party duopoly is wasteful and ineffective and people with a sense of community are waking up to it. I wonder though where does that leave the Greens?
Re disturbing inaction, for what seems like forever gas has been allied with ‘clean’ and ‘natural’ and promoted as such. Older generations would remember the dirty old ‘manufactured gas’ plants that used to adorn the cityscape. Natural gas has been sold as cleaner than dirty old coal etc The marketing has been brilliant.
It’s going to take another massive campaign just to undo these falsities.
It matters whether Australia decarbonises fast or slowly. But does it matter much what the Australian government says and does, or doesn’t do? Apart from land use, where the country is net positive, the transition is mostly about manufactured capital goods and consumer durables: solar panels and inverters, wind turbines, batteries, electric cars and trucks, heat pumps, variable-speed motors, smart and networked controllers for everything, and so on. A little is infrastructure: pumped hydro plants, HVDC lines, cycle tracks, and the rail lines you aren’t building.
The Australian manufacturing sector is negligible and we don’t lose much with a simplifying assumption that it doesn’t exist. This means that there is no significant lobby for protectionism and the country is a pure price taker for manufactures. World prices for transition products are far more important than national policy. PV modules are down to 15c per watt in China, with more cuts to come, and electric cars have reached sticker price parity there with ICEVs. The suite of technologies needed for the transition is just about complete – I follow Mike Barnard’s case that short-haul shipping and aviation can go to batteries now or very soon, and long-haul to sustainable biofuels. They will all get cheaper still, in the world and therefore Australia. The transition is irreversible from market forces, and networking and cultural factors, as well as the shifting balance of vested interests, will accelerate it further.
It has always been true that if the global outcome depends essentially on sound policy everywhere, we are all doomed, but if on technology and profit-seeking, we can be quite hopeful. It is true that in their gestation and infancy, the new technologies were critically enabled by good policies in a handful of countries. Without Denmark, there might not be a global wind power industry; without NASA and MITI, no solar one either. These policies were partial: overall, subsidies to renewables have consistently been smaller than those to fossil fuels. But coal continued to fade in Trump’s USA and Morrison’s Australia.
Australia does lead the world in one sector, rooftop solar. It’s an instructive story, showing how luck and a few small policy decisions can enable big changes – or frustrate them. Australia’s success here cane SFIK not from a grand policy but from: a sunny climate and sprawling suburban housing; no or low import tariffs; uniform and sensible technical standards and streamlined paperwork, unlike the balkanised chaos in the USA; an effective feed-in right. (I haven’t heard of a law requiring this as in Germany, so it was probably down to enlightened regulators.) Australia does have world-class researchers in the field, but Martin Green’s audience is in China.
So far political will has been weak, if not outright hostile, with as much or more political commitment to evading commitments than to achieving zero emissions. As well as the don't-care apathy and it's-all-too-much paralysis we have a society where short range economic fears have much greater potency than long range environmental ones, even ones that have are more far reaching and enduring economic consequences.
If Labor wants Australia (and the world) to achieve zero emissions it seems they want the demise of the fossil fuel sector part to be NOT OUR FAULT. Taking credit for the achievements of renewable energy that has gained it's own level of self-sustaining growth seems reminiscent of Abbott, Morrison and Taylor - "More renewables than ever on our watch".
Although to be fair Labor is making some effort to do the things that will make renewables work reliably, even whilst sustaining cognitively dissonant "we support fossil fuels, absolutely without reservation" - a bet each way - whereas the LNP is going all out to impede the things that will make renewables reliable, ie transmission lines, batteries and wind, especially off-shore wind and just having more solar and land based wind.
LNP efforts are now turning to astroturf nimby "environmentalism" (as well as their nuclear distractions) but I think that having framed the issue as for, by, about (unreasonable) environmentalism themselves - anything but the climate science - they appear to be mistaking environmentalism for being pivotal and therefore think environmental fears can be used to wedge renewables in their efforts to save fossil fuels from global warming.
Overall the commitments from the mainstream LNP/ALP "adults" are still weak to outright (if somewhat deniably) oppositional. Apart from electricity that is largely an unstoppable change at this point any commitment to things that are hard, eg decarbonising heavy transport, industrial processes and feedstocks, remains weak despite the electricity example where the doing shows it can be done without the predicted economic ruin.
I fear that the successes of renewables will get warped into justifying continuing weakness of policy commitments instead of being seen great opportunity and cause to up the ante in other areas besides electricity.
Politicians may take comfort in not-our-fault excuses but the ones in Office are the ones with the duty of care - so neglect of that duty IS their fault.
Will a lithium shortage impact the roll out of electric vehicles? Should government take on the SUV craze which is undoing much of the benefit of EVs?
a. No. I'm embarrassed to recommend anything sponsored by the Adam Smith Institute, but Tim Worstall's " No Breakfast Fallacy" article from 2015 is still indispensable reading before subscribing to the panics started by hustlers that the world is about to run out of unobtanium and here is an **unrepeatable investment opportunity!** to profit from this. Worstall's key point is that "proven reserve" is a technical term in mining securities law. It means a mineral resource that has been delimited by rigorous methods like drilling, and shown to be economically extractible with current technology. Proving a reserve is time-consuming and expensive, so mining firms don't want to spend a lot of money on something they may never need decades ahead. The cushion they feel comfortable with is about 20 years. Proven reserves have no relation to the likely total that is ultimately extractible. Incidentally there are no proven reserves for hafnium and sodium, for opposite reasons.
Chart of the spot price of lithium carbonate, showing the end of a classic speculative bubble. Mining it was profitable at $10/lb, and will be again.
https://images.app.goo.gl/ubaxSE3NMvxc4GM56
b. I share your annoyance at the irrational macho boom in large SUVs and utes. But the global CAGR of electric vehicles is about 25%, completely swamping any shift to larger vehicles in the declining ICEV market. https://www.statista.com/statistics/867963/ev-global-growth-by-region/ IMHO it's not worth wasting time and effort on tinkering with the dinosaurs, for example with tighter fuel efficiency standards. Focus on enabling the electric takeover, fixing soluble problems like chargers in condos, balkanised charging networks using loyalty cards not ordinary bank ones, and a sensibly balanced regulatory framework for V2G.
Thanks for the response, James
Hey, how can I as a Substack commenter embed a chart?
I think you may need to post a link, rather than embedding
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/4lkbmofhxatzmfm1mpme9/ClimateFIg1.png?rlkey=3ezs8wdfaii942avlw3ahzbw1&dl=0