The decline is demand, the incursion of renewables and the subtle shift away from base-load generation is reducing the value of black-coal fired generators. The market is changing so much that the state-owned assets held by NSW and Queensland may be unsellable, at least at the prices they are hoping.
China is proposing to introduce an absolute cap on emissions by 2016, and bring forward its emissions peak. It is being hailed as a potential breakthrough in international climate change action. More importantly, it makes the Coalition’s carbon policy look a nonsense, and further undermines the case for the huge coal projects proposed by Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer.
The carbon markets, the electricity industry and even BNEF now think it is more likely than not that Australia’s carbon price will be repealed. It’s just that it’s likely to be decided by someone we’ve never heard of, or a big Labor back-flip. Either way, it won’t be progress.
SunPower, the US solar giant, says module costs continue to fall sharply, battery storage will be economical “very shortly”, and it’s about to move into the energy management business. And it says, solar has “barely scratched” the $2 trillion global electricity market. No wonder the utilities have hit the panic button.
Utilities release a new report that suggests non solar households are paying $30 a year to cross-subsidise rooftop solar. That’s less than one tenth of the cross-subsidy on air-conditioning. But air-con is good for the utilities business, rooftop solar is not.
ARENA has suffered a 5 pct cut in funds, and had a further $370 million in funding deferred. However, the agency says the “reprofiling” may suit its investment plans, as it considers tariff support and contracts for difference to augment one off grants. And it is about to launch a new $400 million off-grid and remote renewables investment program.
It promises to repeal the carbon tax, but the Coalition’s Direct Action Plan may miss the opportunity to drive energy innovation.
WA’s new energy minister doubts the fact of climate change, is pro-nuclear, thinks brown coal is clean, hates windmills and says solar is too expensive. He also thinks a ‘negawatt’ is an activist plot. Given that Australia now has a full house of backward-thinking, conservative energy Czars, what chance do renewables have in this country?
IPART continues to demonise the costs of renewable energy support mechanisms, at the same time as adding to those costs by sanctioning above market cost pass-throughs. And consumers will pay nearly double those costs to feed into a kitty so that their neighbours can be offered “discounts”. Anyone hear the sound of laughter?
Report names Australia’s ‘big four’ banks as heaviest lenders to coal and gas expansion in Barrier Reef area, sparks calls for customer boycott.
It might seem ironic, but environmentalists and farmers fighting the expansion of coal mining and coal seam gas across Australia are the only thing likely to moderate the rude economic awakening we face when the global carbon bubble bursts and the fossil fuel industries start their inevitable, terminal decline.
Skeptical Science has developed an excellent collection of one-line responses to deniers of climate change. Here are the top 99 with links to the science.
It is finally dawning on Australia’s largest energy utilities that not only are their customers unfaithful, they are also ignorant. So Origin Energy has turned to lolly wrappers to try and inform its target market. Sounds like fun, but it belies a deeper problem for the energy industry: the age old oligopoly is under threat from the democratisation of energy.
MidAmerican Solar and SunPower mark the commencement of the 579MW Antelope Valley Solar Projects with a community celebration.
New report suggests rooftop solar should be embraced as a natural hedge against volatile electricity prices, and to hasten transition to low carbon system. But it warns that incumbents are lined up against the technology, but politicians would be ill-advised to side with the owners of legacy assets.
