How Australia intends to get to Net Zero

[GregLocock]

An unusually honest assessment of Australia's plans, from 'their' ABC.

The six charts that reveal Australia's (slow) climate progress

Climate and Energy minister Chris Bowen declared "Australia is on track to deliver on our legislated targets" in his annual climate statement. But new data challenges that optimism.

www.abc.net.au

Basically most of the improvement to date has been by booking ever larger amounts of land use changes. The 30% decrease in electricity emissions to date since 2009, ie 15 years, will have to be doubled in the next 5 years. That'll be interesting.

 

[dik]

It looks like the only country that is taking Climate Change seriously is China.

 

[GregLocock]

Yeah

 

[dik]

You forget they have 5x the population of the US. On a per capita basis they are less than half the US carbon output. They are very rapidly switching from fossil fuels. Much faster than most other countries.

Some additional information:

Hydro power in the US has increased since 1965 to present. It has gone from 199.96 TWh to 233.96 TWh an increase of 17%. In the same time, China has gone from 22.20 TWh to 1245.17 TWh an increase of 5500%.

I found another one, based on Total Renewable:

Total Renewable power in the US has increased since 1965 to present. It has gone from 212.778 TWh to 973.667 TWh an increase of 357%. In the same time, China has gone from 22.205 TWh to 2894.141 TWh an increase of 12933%.

To reiterate, it looks like the only country that is taking Climate Change seriously is China.

 

[GregLocock]

If they are rapidly switching from fossil fuels why are their emissions still going up? Because they aren't rapidly switching from fossil fuels. They are augmenting FF with more renewables, but are still building new coal fired power stations.

 

[dik]

I suspect that it's because they have been booming in production of 'stuff'. If their manufacturing has increased 10 fold, their coal usage has only increased 8 fold. I don't know. I came across an article a few months back where they had denied permits for 85 additional coal power plants. Maybe this can explain it. Their total use of power has likely been increasing much faster than the rest of the world.

"The new analysis for Carbon Brief, based on official figures and other data that only became available last week, reveals the true scale of the drop in coal’s share of the mix.

Coal lost seven percentage points compared with May 2023, when it accounted for 60% of generation in China."

Analysis: China’s clean energy pushes coal to record-low 53% share of power in May 2024 - Carbon Brief

Clean energy generated a record-high 44% of China’s electricity in May 2024, pushing coal’s share down to a record low of 53%.

www.carbonbrief.org

 

[GregLocock]

If the pie gets bigger and you take a smaller %age slice it may still be bigger than a larger %age slice from a smaller pie.

 

[GregLocock]

" I came across an article a few months back where they had denied permits for 85 additional coal power plants."

Yes. Coal is so attractive in China that everybody wants to build a coal powerplant. That would have resulted in an inefficient use of capital and so the authorities turned down the less sensible proposals. They are still building new ones



So on a per capita basis China is building about 7 W per person, the rest of the world is building 0.5 W per person, and you have the gall to claim that China is the only country taking climate change seriously.

 

[dik]

Use of coal:

They caught up to the US in 2005, and yes they are increasing.

 

[georgeverghese]

We will all choke on nasty plastics long before CO2 threatens Life on Earth.

 

[GregLocock]

Copy of the original article before it gets disappeared
Chart1

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chart4



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chart6

 

[GregLocock]

Here's the graph that says it all. All sectors are flat except for maybe a 10MT drop from electricity, and 40 MT from the nebulous LULU

https://www.dcceew.gov.au/climate-change/publications/national-greenhouse-gas-inventory-quarterly-update-june-2024

 

[rb1957]

Greg, saw this on the SMH (yes, I know you people not from Sydney ...) site ...

"Nuclear energy
Fact check: Dutton says his nuclear plan is cheaper than renewables. Is it?"

thoughts ? (article behind a paywall)

 

[dik]

Nuclear, if done right, is very good. It can be very costly and can take a long time, with approvals, etc. to implement. It is not normally the least expensive.

 

[TugboatEng]

I think this is what dik means when he says nuclear done right.

Nuclear War Could Reverse Global Warming

Nuclear War Could Reverse Global Warming

www.huffpost.com

 

[dik]

Not at all... I'm for change, but not that kind or that much.

 

[GregLocock]

It all comes down to how much gas you allow to cover dunkelflauts. Duttons nuclear plan allows for gas, as nukes aren't very good peakers - I don't know how France manages. Somebody needs to sit down with all the weather records and decide how much storage a wind+solar+battery+allowable amount of gas system would need. The Royal Society estimated the UK needed several months of backup to cover a once in 37year event-for which it was obvious that batteries would be impractical. Australia is larger and has a more reliable solar profile, so it seems likely that less storage would be needed than the UK. Nonetheless as regularly mentioned here days at a time of low wind and solar occur across all 5 of Australia's grids.

The main 'National' Electricity Market, the eastern seaboard, runs about 25 GW on average, so if we go for a rather optimistic one week's storage, we'd need 4200 GWh of storage, which would be at least $4.2 trillion. That is clearly absurd and shows the AEMO must have either assumed a lot of gas, or underquoted on the batteries.

Dutton's plan seems to envisage an initial buildout of 24 GW of nuclear, rising to about double that in 2050. Assumed cost of nuclear is A$10000/kW, that is the initial cost of 24 GW is A$240B, a little higher than the UAE plant but perhaps a little optimistic, given inflation and first world costs.