I will work on creating a job !
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What do they need to do? Finance another thermal coal project of course! Far cheaper. Also, itâs what his political heroes like so it must be right.
I somewhat feel like a hypocrite, as mining and the coal industry are just about my most important customers, so I really should be biased in support of them.
The good news is that when I now go to Coal Conferences there is a harsh reality that they are living on borrowed time and that technology research is trying to find a real âclean coalâ. Reality is that soon there will be no new coal mines or coal devouring industry. Steel production is just about the last hold-out, but new technology is changing that as well.
However reality is that coal fired power stations and steel-works will still be around for the next 20 years or more, and hence coal mines will not disappear soon. They will try to clean them up to keep them going, but many places have no alternative at present.
Sad for me that the next big market for my products is OIl & Gas; so hopefully I can sell my business soon, hide all the money and pretend it came from a nicer place.
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Nicely said Bacchus. Fortunately, youâre not selling the stuff directly.
Rio Tinto threatening to leave the Minerals Council over the lobbyistâs effects on climate change policy. Thatâs the two biggest members now with BHP making similar threats over the councilâs unhealthy position on coal.
The pro-coal house of cards keeps wobbling.
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Well both Rio and BHP have been selling out all their coal holdings. So easy for them to now be critical. Should ask them about fracking and their shale oil interests; just farking hypocrites.
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Youâre right. Itâs a tad rich of them but what it does indicate is that coal is definitely a spent force and will slow down to service existing (and shrinking) thermal and coking uses. It also means that our federal government has hitched its wagon to the wrong horse and has less excuses for having no energy policy.
Fun Fact. Re: Electric Cars,âŚ
Battery cost has fallen 80% over the past 7 years, ⌠and continues to fall.
(This of course relates to House batteries as well)
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Of course the Government can assist even in a privatized environment by ensuring that conditions around coal production are not detrimental (they do the opposite). The below is a good example of Labour fuckery at work:
Terry McCrann: Useless windâs $390m power bill
Terry McCrann, Herald Sun
January 30, 2018 9:00pm
Subscriber only
VICTORIANS and South Australians didnât just swelter through two consecutive days of 40 degree heat on Thursday-Friday two weeks ago, they also had to pay an extra â and hidden â $390 million to keep their air conditioners and lights on.
The reason is that, at critical times through the two days, all those wind turbines scattered across the two states just stopped turning or slowed to a dribble of power generation into the grid.
When it really mattered, in the heat of the two afternoons and into the early evenings, all the turbines which are supposed to be able to generate a massive 3200 MW of electricity â thatâs equal to two of the now-closed Hazelwood coal-fired station â produced as little as 200MW or so.
The much vaunted turbines of SA Premier Jay Weather-dillâs fantasies were actually the more hopeless.
At one point they were pumping out all of just 55 MW or so as compared with their supposed 1800MW total âcapacityâ.
We â apart from Weather-dill & Co â already know that âwhen the wind donât blow the power donâtâ flowâ; what we should increasingly understand is that the wind in SA and Victoria also tends not to blow when we need the power most; when itâs hot.
Also, do the maths: Weather-dillâs even more vaunted 100MW Tesla battery wasnât going to make up much of that missing 1750 MW or so â even for the minutes it would be able to supply.
South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill. Picture: Dylan Coker
The lights and air conditioners only stayed on â saving both SA and Victoria from going all âNorth Korean Darkâ â by Victoria importing massive amounts of electricity from NSW and Tasmania and passing much of it on to SA.
NSW was, in turn, only able to supply that extra power by importing electricity from Queensland â from Queenslandâs coal-fired plants.
Yes, when the heat â literally â went on, the east-coast network âworkedâ to feed power around and avoid blackouts. But only because there were coal-fired stations still operating which the Labor premiers, Victoriaâs Daniel âthe bird-killerâ Andrews; and Queensland Anna Palaszczuk, want to follow Weather-dill in closing.
And it âworkedâ only at the cost of a massive hike in price.
On both days the wholesale price in Victoria rocketed to over $10,000 a MW hour. In SA it did that only on the second day, going âonlyâ as high as around $3000 on January 18.
The wholesale price is usually less than $100 a MW hour â and before we started embracing useless and destructive wind turbines, the coal-fired network consistently delivered power at around $50 a MW hour.
Tom Quirk and Paul Miskelly, who crunched these numbers and supplied them to me, calculated that Victorian users paid $294 million for electricity over the two days instead of the $26 million or so they would ânormallyâ pay (at the already doubled ânormalâ prices).
The now-closed Hazelwood coal-fired power station. Picture: AAP
SOUTH Australians were even more heavily hit, paying $128 million over the two days instead of the ânormalâ $8 million or so two-day bill.
Quirk, a nuclear physicist, was a founding director of (Jeff Kennettâs) Victorian Power Exchange and Miskelly was an engineer at the Lucas Heights nuclear facility.
They know what they are talking about; and calculating.
Now, this extra $390 million across the two states didnât feed directly and immediately into consumer power bills.
It would probably be better if it did; then consumers â and voters â would wake up to the fact of just exactly what the mad rush to useless and â whatâs actually worse, unreliable â wind (and increasingly also solar) is actually doing to wreck the electricity network and send costs of power soaring.
But that absolutely doesnât mean consumers wonât end up paying the bill for that two-day madness two weeks ago, and the madnesses to come.
Right now, the power companies have had to pick up the tab. But consumers will get the bill when electricity prices are hiked, again, next January.
And it is only going to get worse, as more turbines and solar panel blot the landscape and the coal-fired stations progressively close.
Plus, thereâs also the added â benefitâ of even these coal-fired stations â which have generally served Australians reliably and continually 24/7, 365 days a year for 50 years or so, also becoming progressively more unreliable as the power companies donât want to âwasteâ money on maintenance and rejuvenation.
In relation to the pink batts disaster of course the government is responsible. They implemented a program that was using a largely unregulated industry and one that the industry would not be able to cope with without massive and rapid expansion. A recipe for disaster. Clearly governance was required not just for safety but to ensure that the spend was delivering the desired results. The impact is deaths, fires, rorts and waste. If you honestly believe the government is not responsible (I suspect you are just protecting your Labour mates) then I hope your business has very good liability insurance because governance is not too high on your agenda.
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All you have shown Mr Wolf is that this privatised system is bullshite. If Governments, and here I blame all Government both blue and red, State and Federal, had kept electricity production in public hands then you would not have this nonsense pricing regime., and I suspect an organisation like SECV would have had all types of energy production co-ordinated and working in concert.
And seriously Mr Wolf, if you are going to base your reply on a peanut like Terry âthe sky is fallingâ McCrannâs comments, then you are really scraping the barrel. He hates Governments more than me, and selectively uses figures as he goes along, to âproveâ his assertions. If you really think that there was an extra $390 million paid by energy providers in two days, then you are not really thinking about it.
With regards to Pink Batts; no industry in this country is unregulated. Of course many shonky businesses, flaunt regulations and use unlicensed and poorly trained operators, and for this I would condemn State Governments and Local Councils who are responsible for ensuring these laws are upheld. To blame KRudd (and I think he is a tool) and Garrett (who is a great muso) is just a nonsense, and as the Abbott inspired Royal Commission showed, KRudd had no case to answer.
You need to get over your paranoia about Labor and your Left/Right Wing war footing. Many things are about Politics, but most are not. Take for example the Essendon Saga; both sides of Government screwed this up together, Labor started it with the darkest day in sport nonsense and then the LIberals followed it through, denying natural justice to the 34.
Mr Wolf, I do see see that you are not as stupid as E12/Tripper and sorfed, and I know you like baiting those of us who do lean to the Left, but you just need to grow up.
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Hey Bacchus, agree with almost everything here except you do know and I know that you do know, Local Government has absolutely zero to do with upholding any laws to do with the Pink Batts scheme, unless the workers are double parked out the front. If you donât need a building permit they would not have even heard of it and in these post Kennett days even being informed that a building permit has been issued is problematic.
Well Max, my point to Mr Wolf was that all business is regulated by some-one.
In our Shire they would need a Building Permit to do these projects, and while since Kennett, most LGA do not have any Building Inspectors but send you off to find your own, they still administer the permits.
I had to get a âbuildingâ permit recently even though we were building nothing. We were changing the use of a building and for some reason that needs a building permit. I contact nearly 40 Building Inspectors before we could get some-one to do the job. Farking weird system, when you are paying a bloke to issue a permit and he only gets paid if you get the permit. Seems like a conflict to me.
I agree that many people would not bother getting a permit, but you cannot blame KRudd for that. I have more than enough to blame the cretin for.
Dear me. ⌠Terry McCrann makes Adam Smith look like a Stalinist.
Have to agree. When the Batts thing was announced, I, as a tradesman, (which you had to be), went through the process of registering as an installer, so I too could cash in on that sweet sweet Gov money handout. Although something else came up, and I never actually did any installations, the Reg process was quite rigorous and involved, and one part of the regulations, was that âTHE (or a ) QUALIFIED TRADESPERSON MUST BE ON SITE AT ALL TIMESâ.
In every instance there was a death, it was due to rogue barstards sending unqualified recently employed kids out to do a job on their own, or the person that was required to be there, not being there to police the simple OH&S measure, of turning the fkn power off before even entering the roof space, let alone beginning work.
The format and process was thorough enough, it was just money hungry arseholes that flouted them to make more cash that caused the senseless loss of life.
I believe that those responsible were charged, although ICR what the outcomes were. They should have been given 15 years for manslaughter/causing death by GREED in my book,. . and I hope they were.
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Thatâs called free enterprise. Libs love it. In fact, if you can screw as many other guys over while youâre free enterprising, theyâll give you a seat.
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Love your sentiment, but it is not free enterprise but capitalism.
There is an important (though mostly ignored) difference.
In fact, the Libs HATE free enterprise: that is why they hand out massive amounts of taxpayersâ money to capitalist organisations (e.g. health funds, miners, etc etc). It is not free enterprise when privately owned capitalist organisations canât operate profitably (enough) without government giving them a huge boost.
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Free to be enterprising in the ways you can get yours while dudding theirs I should have said. The model adopted by unscrupulous sparky firms was the trimmed, untrained labour, minimal safety one that has served developers in Dubai, and assorted everywhere elses, for many a year. But yes, capital C U N T capitalism.
Amazing that all these outages seem to always happen when demand is greatest.
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Did you umm⌠read the article?
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âUnprecedented demand exposed the distributors as unprepared when fuses blew at local power substations, leaving tens of thousands without cooling on one of the hottest January nights on record last month.â
What does this have to do with CC?
(Other than warming increasing demand via use of aircon)