Australia's electricity source
Not sure how old these figures are, maybe someone knows.
Australia's primary energy consumption is dominated by coal (around 40 per cent), oil (34 per cent) and gas (22 per cent). Coal accounts for about 75 per cent of Australia's electricity generation, followed by gas (16 per cent), hydro (5 per cent) and wind around (2 per cent).
(Again, these are old figures)
Electricity generation in the UK comes from three main sources – gas, coal-fired power stations and nuclear. A small but growing proportion of electricity is supplied by renewables. Gas accounted of 46% of electricity supplied in 2008. Gas is also used to heat approximately 70% of homes.
Currently the UK has 15 nuclear reactors generating about 21% of its electricity but almost half of this capacity is to be retired by 2025.
So the fight rages on - renewables or coal. Can the government find an answer to this critical energy problem we face today. It all gets back to whether you believe in climate change or not - if you do, you will push for renewables which have no hope of fulfilling our needs right now and if you don't, you'll want to stay with coal.
What's the answer?
Yes Toot it is not only here butt world wide .
The waste of taxpayers money for no benefit has reached a breaking point politically .
I'm trying to compare our costs with the UK. Remembering that 70% of homes are heated by gas and run 24/7 in the winter in UK, and their average dual fuel bill (gas/electricity) in the UK for 3-4 bedroom house is 291 pounds per quarter ($A493.45)
Our last dual fuel gas/electricity bill came to $472 combined BUT we have no hope of running the heat/cool 24/7.
I hope these figures are correct.
The Americans were able to cast the Arabs adrift and how they did it was through fracking.
Hydraulic fracturing technology, more commonly known as "fracking," paved the way for drilling into America's enormous shale deposits. It has fuelled a dramatic boom in U.S. oil production.
Back in 2000, there were just 23,000 fracking wells pumping about 102,000 barrels of oil a day. Now there are 300,000 fracking wells, churning out 4.3 million barrels per day.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/24/investing/fracking-shale-oil-boom/index.html
The latest Household Expenditure Survey shows that the poorest Australians spend 8.8 per cent of their disposable income on household fuel and energy, while richest spend just 2.4 per cent.
If there were a prize for most heartless headline of the year, Peter Martin’s column in the Herald last Saturday would have to be in the running. “Get real,” it read. “Electricity isn’t that expensive.”
No word — obviously — in Martin’s column about the jobs being lost because of high power prices. Perhaps it is because energy-stressed sectors employ a disproportionate number of blue-collar workers. Few graduates take up careers in steel fabrication.
Freezing the RET at the present level of 23.5 per cent will do little to ease the short-term burden, but it will at least send a signal that renewable energy must stand — or crumble — on its own two feet. The renewable sector must be made to carry the cost of its own instability instead of passing it on to mugs like us.
As things stand, energy distributors are forced to buy in baseload at absurd spot prices while the wind and solar kings sit around their idle generators and count their profits. Why should the taxpayer have to pay for unfeasibly large batteries from a US billionaire because of the failure of highly subsidised renewable energy plants to provide electricity around the clock? The Finkel review says that should change.
Aus today
It's a tragedy happening right now all around us but nobody seems to care.
Good information toot. It should surprise nobody that AMericans enjoy the cheapest energy on the planet. You needed to also show Japan and not sure why missing.
The moral of the story is here in Australia, a country endowed with overflowing natural assets, our governments sell off everything to foreigners. We are the third largest exporter of gas but have none for ourselves. So now that we need a cheap fuel to tide us over from coal to renewables WE HAVE NONE. Thank you coalition governments. So now apparently we should frack and stuff our fertile farming land. Unbelievable. If this were not true people would say one was making it up. Welcome to coalition destruction and betrayal.
If you want chaep energy you have to be smart. Unfortunately that leaves Australia out.
Rubbish Mick
you know very well its your fixation on renewables that's driving our prices
Spoken like a true coal man. You clearly do not follow the statistics because you choose to not want to believe them. I suppose you also missed that an ice shelf the size of tasmania has broken off in the past 6 months. Yeah....'natural occurances'!
My post was emphasising that we don't need coak becaus we have gas coming out of every other fissure. Unfortunately your employer has sold the rights to that gas to Asia and now we have none. A familiar story which your side of politics has brought down on us. For the record gas was always going to be the stepping stone to renewables.
I hope that when renewables become dirt cheap (they will) you will call for coal energy for yourself. Yeah, just like you won't use the NBN either.
In cities, towns and small communities across Australia, surging energy costs are destroying businesses and family farms, and reducing the living standards of ordinary Australians
. Hardworking Australians are losing their jobs through no fault of their own. Millions of pensioners and working families are being forced to ration their energy use. There is a real prospect of blackouts over the summer.
In recent years, the renewable energy target has delivered subsidies of about $9 billion to renewable projects. And over the next 13 years, renewable projects will receive another $36bn.
That’s about $53 million every week between now and 2030. And who pays for these subsidies? Households and businesses.
A good example of the staggering scale of renewable subsidies is the Moree Solar Farm in NSW.
This project has received a $102m taxpayer grant and a $60m taxpayer-funded concessional loan, and will receive $141m in production subsidies (by 2030). Is this a good investment? No. In the next 13 years, the project will receive more than $300m in subsidies but deliver about 1/68th (or 1.45 per cent) of the output of the Hazelwood power station that closed ..
Aus today
And who owns the Moree solar plant . A Saudi Royal billionaire
Australians are set to pay $300 million in subsidies to an outback solar farm owned by a Saudi Arabian billionaire in a new test of the federal government’s looming energy reforms, escalating a dispute over whether to cut the handouts to keep coal-fired power stations alive.
Aus today
The project’s owner, Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel, is expanding into new solar farms across Australia after the federal government backed the first development with grants and concessional loans as well as guaranteed credits for more than a decade.
Aus today
I've just heard about Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel, the grants, loans and credits he will receive is a disgrace nobody knows or cares about.
Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel received honorary knighthood
You must be heck of a total moron Brocky. You know as well as I that there are many reasons why we have high electricity. The Carbon Tax was never one of them.
What you omit to say is that the coalition has sold us all out. Toot's grapg above shows you what a responsible goverment does with energy and there is a reason the US is so competitive. Australia is not...but then coalition governments have done this to us. Howard, Abbott and now his protege strutting the parliament and putting on a show for those who do not understand who is to blame.
YLC are supposed to be a place offering advise to Retirees .
Why isn't it making headlines about the plight of our pensioners with these high electricity prices caused by renewable subsidies .
And campaigning against Govt waste whist our pensioners live in poverty .
More than any other policy action the RET is responsible for today’s energy mess. Force-feeding high-cost, unreliable energy into the National Electricity Market killed off any investment in baseload energy and made the grid more expensive and more unstable...
If your crew would have left the Carbon Tax alone then we would already have lower prices. Can't do that when you are financed into government by the coal industry though.
The rot started with the privatisation of generation and distribution. Power stations that were paid for by taxpayers were sold off the private industry(mostly foreign) and run to exhaustion.
NO new power station have been build for a long time and a lot have been shut down because owners don't want to spend money maintaining them.
Regardless of what socalled greenies say we need base load power stations fueled by either coal,gas or nuclear. Wind and solar power can not sustain a modern industrial nation. You can't install a battery bank large enough enough to keep a state or country going even for a short time if wind and solar fails. Hydro is an option but we don't have enough suitable places to build that and again, we have the issue of greenies and thier ilk protesting about NIMBY.
We desperately need to build new power stations and the only option we have is coal or gas unless we get some expert help to build nuclear( as if the greens will go for that).
I'm amused when i hear about SA installing batteries to run the state. The gov has no idea about how much thats going to cost for an installation to run the state or a part of it for even an hour. You will need an awful lot of car batteries.
We should have built gas generators to bridge the gap between coal and renewables but the Howard government sold us out. No gas for Australians in a country overflowing with the stuff. WHY?
Because the state governments forbid it .
I am not talking about fracking. I am talking about offshore rigs. Howard let Gorgon go and now 100% of the gas from this one, the world's third largest, goes directly to Asia.
When Howard dies the mates club and the right wing media will sing his praises. If you let me know where this pariah will be buried I'll do my thing on his grave. Such should be the fate of traitors to our wonderful country.
When are we going nuclear? Plenty of uranium and Australia is earthquake stable.
Yup, the only sensible way to go.
Ask your descendants in half a million years time if going nuclear was a bright idea. The worst of all calls because the spent material will kill you for a million years before it is safe enough to handle. Seemed like a great idae at the time.....
Our ancestors will be using nuclear fusion the same as the sun
For years nuclear fusion was the stuff of sci-fi books and movies, but technology has brought it, like so many other things, closer to reality. So close, in fact, that there are plans to build the first nuclear fusion reactor by 2025—a reactor that could yield a lot more energy than is fed into it and provide vast amounts of clean, sustainable energy.
Nuclear fusion, unlike fission, involves smashing particles together to generate energy. Basically, as Bloomberg Energy author Jing Cao explained in a detailed June overview, it’s like recreating the Sun on Earth.
An international team of scientists is working on the biggest project in nuclear fusion in France, to build the largest magnetic fusion machine—a tokamak—and test the commercial-scale viability of this clean energy source. The ITER project is based on the pretty simple premise that the larger the vessel in which fusion reactions occur, the more of them occur, generating more energy.
The ITER tokamak will be ten times larger than the largest existing such device, capable, as per plans, to produce 500 MW of fusion power. To compare, the record so far, set by European tokamak JET (the largest existing one), is 16 MW, from input of 24 MW. The goal of the ITER team is to produce these 500 MW from an input of just 50 MW. Recently, a team of researchers from the MIT published a paper that suggests this achievement is realistic.
The MIT team tweaked the “recipe” for nuclear fusion in such a way that the output of power was ten times greater than with the original composition, which consists of 95 percent deuterium ions and 5 percent hydrogen ions, forming plasma heated to incredibly high temperatures in the tokamak from the movement of the ions.
https://www.iter.org › sci › Fusion
No CO?: Fusion doesn't emit harmful toxins like carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Its major by-product is helium: an inert, non-toxic gas. No long-lived radioactive waste: Nuclear fusion reactors produce no high activity, long-lived nuclear waste.
Don't what substance you have been on but you need to stop.
1. Your ancestors are dead. They will not be using anything.
2. Fusion? They have trying to get that one going for at least half a century. NOBODY has managed to do it yet and if they do nobody knows if the reaction will be controllable either.
3. Human being do not live on the sun. A nonsense talk!
You're right out there Brocky. Unbelievable.
You can live in your sad world of whinging and moaning .
The future is looking teffific .
i intend to be part of it
You and your government will be reviled in the future for your sabotage of the nation. You post a lot about climate change denial. Here is something from today you need to read:
http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2017/09/19/australia-hottest-driest-winter-record/?utm_source=Responsys&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2070919_PM_UPDATE
This is not from a Murdoch rag, None News or any of the other right winf propaganda conspirators who refuse to report the truth about climate change. Its from an independent player, the sort your crew cannot control.
I hope you accept nuclear waste in your backyard Brocky. Couldn't happen to a nicer bloke. Cheers.
You have to excuse him Mick, after all the guy is still working on the first page of string theory.
However, since Brocky's "ancestors" are all dead, they will know nothing about fusion. You are correct, scientists have been working on fusion for over 40 years and every time they think they are getting somewhere, they find out there is still a lot more ground to cover.
Mick Ben Regan Ray Billy etc You need to read more...
Getting insulting is like water off a duck's back. I already have my science degrees and on't have to copy and paste BS.
Mick is right, get off your hoss and listen to people who know, little man.
I see I've got another new name, Billy - is that Billy the Kid?
Science degree in what ?
Need to overcome that stuttering Micha .. let me help you .
You have a BS degree ..
australia has many earthquakes mostly unreported as they do not occur (usually) in areas with large populations.
here is the evidence, and this map is only for the last 30 days.
http://www.ga.gov.au/earthquakes/recentQuakes.do?when=5&where=2&which=false&x=30&y=9
Don’t think our current ‘energy crisis’ is all down to the Libs, particularly in the area of gas.
Some have said the Gillard government had made a “reckless” decision in allowing gas to be exported from the east coast of Australia without putting in any domestic reserve protections for Australian families, households and businesses.
PM Transcripts Transcripts from the Prime Ministers of Australia
http://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/taxonomy/term/4?page=62
Gillard, Julia … Speech 24/09/2012. Transcript ID: 18808
Consider our plans for the future exploitation of our gas reserves. Seventy per cent of our liquefied natural gas exports go to Japan - and changing patterns of energy demand in developed Asian economies are creating new market opportunities. Take the Ichthys liquefied natural gas project in northern Australia which starts operation in 2016. A Japanese-French joint venture between INPEX and Total, this is the biggest single investment by a Japanese company outside Japan.
This single project will boost Australian export income by $72 billion over its life. And the entire first fifteen years' production of LNG from the project is already priced and sold: mostly to Taiwanese and Japanese buyers.
Or the Santos Gladstone LNG project: another joint venture, this time involving French and Malaysian investors. A pioneering project which will convert coal seam natural gas into liquefied natural gas for global export, this project alone will supply 11 per cent of Korea's domestic gas needs and 9 per cent of Malaysia's gas consumption.
These are only two examples of the projects which are securing the future of Australian mining and extraction. Gas is a key example of the strength and diversity of the Australian resource industry. Our gas exports should more than double as a share of our energy exports over the next two decades - they're now forecast to reach more than a quarter of Australia's net energy trade by the mid-2030s.
Now, Australia is an open trading economy, operating in a demanding world economic environment. We must use the opportunity of today's strength to invest in the drivers of future prosperity. We know this.
And in saying all this, the point I'm making is not to replace one simple story - fragile prosperity based on a boom and at short-term risk from slowing Chinese growth - with a different simple story - good times that will last forever with no risks at all.
Love the last sentence … ‘good times that will last forever with no risks at all’ … Yeh right!! Thanks Julia et al.
What I don't understand is why the State Governmemts of NSW and Victoria refuse to allow gas development .
Brocky - you coal freak! You are talking about FRACKING. Look it up. This is different to our huge offshore deposits.
RnR - you might want to google 'Gorgon'. This is the third largest gas deposit on the planet and, strangely enough, you ommitted to mention this one. Sold offshore by the Howard regime. I know, I owned shares and bought in to fund my retirement. Sold down the drain. The typical behaviour from all coalition governments. As Jacqui Lambi correctly said to Julie Bishop on election night "youz only know how to sell off everything".
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Gorgon...
Developers. The project is being developed by the Gorgon Joint Venture, which consists of Australian subsidiaries of three international energy companies: Chevron Australia (a subsidiary of Chevron) (47% share and projectoperator) Shell Development Australia (a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell) (25%)
Company: Chevron Corporation (47%); ExxonMobil (25%); Royal Dutch Shell (25%); ...
Which company did you have shares in ..,
The project is being developed by the Gorgon Joint Venture, which consists of Australian subsidiaries of three international energy companies:[12]
Chevron Australia (a subsidiary of Chevron) (47% share and project operator)Shell Development Australia (a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell) (25%)Mobil Australia Resources (a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil) (25%)Osaka Gas (1.25%)Tokyo Gas (1%)Chubu Electric Power (0.417%)
On the total investment of the Gorgon LNG project, media articles have reported analyst forecasts of estimated costs ranging from A$11 billion (in 2003), A$16 billion (2007),[16] and A$50bn in March 2009 [17] to A$43bn in Sept 2009 and A$53bn in 2015.[13][18] ### The next line relates to the Wheatstone Project ###Chevron, however, mentioned in September 2011 that the foundation phase will cost about US$29bn and consists of two LNG processing trains with combined capacity of 8.9mtpa.[19]
Economic BenefitsEditEconomic modelling carried out in 2008 as part of the environmental impact assessment process, forecast the following macroeconomic impacts (based on a 30-year period):
6000 jobs in Western Australia at the peak of the construction phasemore than 350 direct and indirect jobs sustaining throughout the life of the projectan increase in national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of A$64.3 billion (in net present value terms)A$33 billion of expenditure on locally purchased goods and servicesadditional government revenue of about A$40 billion (in 2009 dollars)[20]
Brocky, if you insist on copy and pasting everything, could you at least do it in a legible and coordinated way.
It's like a dog's breakfast.
Mick Ben Regan Ray Billy etc you need to read more ...
So my question remains which company did you have shares in ?
Shell Mobil Exxon ??
Mick Ben etc .
In contradiction to your statement Gorgon was never sold off.
It was developed by Shell Mobil Exxon with billions of dollars of investment .
It has added 40 billion to Govt revenues and as with all Gas devloments can only go ahead ithey have binding contracts for the gas.
The State governments have caused a gas shortage in the local market by not allowing gas development so gas has had to be diverted to fulfil contracts.
You have not replied to your statement that you held shares in Gorgon and your fund lost money How ??
"Similarly the NSW and Victorian governments never told voters that their decisions to ban the development of their immense gas reserves boosts the price of both gas and electricity to their communities and creates shortages. The people pay hard cash so politicians can gather green votes."
Australian today
Predictions about the impact of emissions were overstated. Picture: Supplied.BEN WEBSTERThe Times4:22PM September 19, 2017SaveShare on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on emailShare more...367
The worst impacts of climate change can still be avoided, senior scientists have said after revising their previous predictions.
The world has warmed more slowly than had been forecast by computer models, which were “on the hot side” and overstated the impact of emissions, a new study has found. Its projections suggest that the world has a better chance than previously claimed of meeting the goal set by the Paris agreement on climate change to limit warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, makes clear that rapid reductions in emissions will still be required but suggests that the world has more time to make the changes.
Michael Grubb, professor of international energy and climate change at University College London and one of the study’s authors, admitted that his past prediction had been wrong.
He stated during the climate summit in Paris in December 2015: “All the evidence from the past 15 years leads me to conclude that actually delivering 1.5C is simply incompatible with democracy.” He told The Times yesterday: “When the facts change, I change my mind, as [John Maynard] Keynes said. It’s still likely to be very difficult to achieve these kind of changes quickly enough but we are in a better place than I thought.”
READ MOREBoM says it’s hot when it’s notMAURICE NEWMANWorld reliance on coal ‘will last for decades’GRAHAM LLOYDThe latest study found that a group of computer models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had predicted a more rapid temperature increase than had taken place. Global average temperature has risen by about 0.9C since pre-industrial times but there was a slowdown in the rate of warming for 15 years before 2014.
Pleased to hear this latest news
"Australia's big gas companies have agreed to supply enough gas to meet the needs of the domestic market next year.
The commitment from Santos, Origin Energy and Shell, whose executives met with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in Sydney on Wednesday, means the federal government won't have to follow through on its threat to restrict exports.
A pair of reports this week warned of a shortage of gas in 2018 of up to 108 petajoules - about three times larger than previously forecast."
Agree it's good news, but what's the bottom line? How much will we be charged for our own gas? I sincerely hope it will be cheaper than those overseas countries who are already enjoying our gas for considerably less than they are charging us.
We will have to pay spot prices as we have not gone into long term contracts like the overseas elecricity companies .
If the states would allow development of gas sitting under our feet we could give companies the security of long term contracts .
The States do foe gas from Moomba or Bass Straits but won't allow any development to replace them.
Maybe best to buy some shares in a gas company Toot :)
the gas companies have SAID they will supply the shortfall to eastern australian customers.
but will they keep to their word when they can sell our gas more profitably to overseas customers?
i am doubtful.
and the coalition probably knows it will then be out of office so they can blame labor and/or the greens for the coalition's failure to get written agreements with those gas companies.
It's not up to the Federal Govt to get contracts but the States.
The Federal Govt has stepped in to Broker a deal as the States were looking at buying Gas from overseas .
The NSW and Even worse the Vic government have completely failed in this area . We won't mention SA as they are beyond a joke .
Having recently moved into a not for profit retirement village I was most interested to see what my monthly electricity bill would be.
All homes have solar power. Today I found out. We used 76 units and our bill for the month was $18.24.
At our previous home a month's worth of power would have been $111.00 going on the previous bill,
Quite a difference.
Sounds like you made a great choice in retirement village
well done
We have been so badly governed over the last decades, I shudder in disgust at the ineptitude of our politicians. They are an absolute disgrce.