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| Clare polling booth, 2019/05/18
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| | School kids Niamh and Emma asking for the world that they will inherit to be protected
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In spite of the best efforts of kids who want a future, like those in the photo on the right, and a great many Australians who want serious action on climate change, Scott Morrison's Coalition government won the election of two days ago.
This was a surprise to most Australians, including the experts.
The Liberal/National coalition had help from the filthy-rich coal billionaire Clive Palmer and the shamelessly biased and pro-coal Murdoch media empire.
Palmer's party ran a candidate in every seat in what Palmer said following the election was a campaign aimed only at keeping Labor from winning government.
The Palmer party didn't get any of its candidates elected, but may well have taken a lot of votes from Labor.
The election was largely won in Queensland where there were enough voters placing more importance on jobs in the coal industry than on the future of the planet to swing the balance of power to the COALition.
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This section added 2020/02/05
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In addition to the blatant
Bridget McKenzie sports rorts affair (covered elsewhere on this page) there was also rorting associated with the federal government's drought funding.
The Yorke Peninsula Country Times of 2020/02/04 stated:
"It has been revealed Copper Coast Council should not have been eligible for its $2million of funding through the controversial Drought Communities Programme – Extension.
The government awarded funding to CCC, and several other councils, despite them not meeting criteria relating to employment in the agriculture, forestry and fishery industries."
The criteria of the drought relief funding stated that councils must have at least 17 per cent of workers involved in agriculture, fishery or forestry industries to be eligible.
Only eight per cent of the Copper Coast Council's residents are in those industries, yet it was granted $2 million dollars.
This was not the government's money that was misused to help win the election, it was taxpayers' money.
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This section added 2020/02/07
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Jack Snape and Andrew Probyn wrote an
article for the ABC earlier today (2020/02/07).
Quoting from the article:
No guidelines. No tender process. No application form. Some recipients didn't know they'd even been given money until they read about it in the local paper.
And at $150 million, it's worth more than the scandal-plagued community sports grants program that cost the ministerial career of former Nationals deputy leader
Bridget McKenzie.
Projects funded under the so-called Female Facilities and Water Safety Stream (FFWSS) were even more heavily skewed towards Coalition-held marginal seats than the controversial sports grants program it was meant to complement.
And rather than being a nationwide program aimed at encouraging women in sport – as Prime Minister Scott Morrison and then-sports minister Senator McKenzie claimed – the great majority of funding has been pledged towards swimming pools in just 11 Coalition-held seats.
It seems there will be no end to the corruption of the Morrison government.
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This section added 2020/02/15
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SBS News carried an
article dated 2020/02/14 describing how PM Morrison blatantly mislead parliament over the
Bridget McKenzie rorts affair.
It seems that both the PM and the Liberal's leader in the Senate, Mathias Cormann, have claimed that "No project that was funded was assessed as ineligible at the time the assessment was made".
In fact, as reported by SBS:
"a Senate inquiry heard that nearly half the projects funded in the so-called sports rorts affairs were ineligible.
On Thursday, audit officials told a Senate inquiry that 43 per cent of projects funded under the Coalition's $100 million program were not eligible for funding".
This was at least the second time that PM Morrison has mislead parliament.
He had to send a letter to the Speaker to amend incorrect comments that he made while defending his dishonest
Energy Minister Angus Taylor back in November of 2019.
For more information on this see the
article written by Brett Worthington for the ABC.
PM Morrison and God
What would God think of PM Morrison damaging God's creation?
Prime Minister Morrison makes no secret of his Christian beliefs.
How would God feel about the damage that PM Morrison is complicit in doing to God's creation through
climate change and related problems.
How could God be anything other than angry about the way that Morrison is treating God's creation?
Many of the world's
religious leaders are demanding more action on climate change, they seem to think that God would want his creation to be protected.
But PM Morrison is not in a main-stream church, he's Pentecostal, so rational argument doesn't seem to apply.
Does PM Morrison see climate change damage as God's will?
Following his surprise election Morrison said that "miracles do happen".
Perhaps he believes that it is God's plan to end 'Creation' and that he (Morrison) sees himself as one of God's chosen instruments to help bring about Armageddon.
What hope is there if any of our leaders think in ways like this and if the Australian people continue to elect such leaders?
The delusions of the man who will be in charge of our country for the next three years are terrifying
I'm shocked.
I thought that we would have to deal with a man who was in the pocket of the mining industry but who would at least be amenable to reason.
It's worse than that.
His life is solidly founded in delusion.
Read
The Devil and Scott Morrison by James Boyce.
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This section added 2019/11/01
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New study: changes in climate since 2000 have cut Australian farm profits 22%; 2019/12/17; article in The Conversation discussing a report from the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES).
No doubt if PM Morrison wasn't away on holiday (during some of the worst fires in Australia's history and a record-breaking heatwave, both also connected to climate change) he would be sending our farmers 'his thoughts and prayers'.
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Morrison breaks collaboration commitment; March 2020
In an
article in The Guardian, 2020/03/06, Adam Morton wrote that the Morrison government "will break a commitment to fund an international collaboration into what is required to shift to a zero emissions future."
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In a piece of Orwellian double-think that Big Brother would be proud of PM Morrison called climate change activists selfish because they are pressuring businesses to be responsible.
For Mr Morrison to call climate change activists selfish, when they are trying to make him and others look after the planet we all live on, is gross dishonesty.
PM Morrison's stance in looking after the fossil fuel industries at the expense of life on earth is criminal, selfish and extremely shortsighted.
Most Australians want serious action on climate change and natural justice demands serious action on climate change, but Morrison is fighting against action.
Morrison cannot see past trying to prop up the dying coal industry in return for more donations to the Liberal Party.
The ABC's political reporter Nour Haydar wrote a
piece on 2019/11/01 headlined "Scott Morrison to slam environmental groups 'targeting' businesses with 'selfish' secondary boycotts".
PM Morrison's concern that so-called secondary boycotts (boycotting a company that supports polluting industries) may have serious consequences for the Australian economy should give heart to climate change activists; keep up the good work people, you are having an impact.
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This section added 2019/05/07,
edited 2019/05/20
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In the last weeks before the May 18
th election, which all the polling was predicting that the Morrison Government would lose, the COALition was running a shamelessly dishonest scare campaign.
They were claiming that Labor would wreak the economy (in their six years in government the Coalition had not had a single budget surplus), but perhaps their most dishonest claim was that Labor's renewable energy target of 50% by 2030 would be cripplingly expensive.
South Australia went from near zero renewable energy in 2003 to over 50% by 2018 at practically no cost to the tax payers.
Why shouldn't Australia be able to do something similar?
Not only could Labor's targets be reached at little cost to the taxpayers, but they would provide a boost to the economy and provide thousands of jobs.
See the
2019 Clean Energy Australia Report by the Clean Energy Council.
Labor is also promising to reduce Australia’s pollution by 45 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030.
While Labor's aims are less than is needed they are far better than the Coalition's energy/emissions/climate-change-action paralysis of the last six years.
The future of the planet and everybody's children and grandchildren is at stake.
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| Clements Gap Wind Farm
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| | Energy Minister Taylor is particularly opposed to wind power having notoriously, and very stupidly, called it 'gobsmackingly inefficient'.
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ScoMo first came to prominence when he took a lump of coal into the Australian parliament and made a big point of telling people it was nothing to be afraid of.
Perhaps PM Morrison's biggest lie is in claiming that fossil fuels, coal in particular, are the key to lowering power prices.
The fact that renewables are now cheaper than new-build coal fired power stations has been given a huge amount of publicity recently from many sources.
Just one is the very recent (at the time of my writing this) article by Steven Long on the
ABC Web site, 2018/01/03, "The reality is new coal power is not the answer for cheaper electricity bills".
Mr Long wrote:
"The tipping point's been reached: renewable energy is now a cheaper source of power for Australia's future electricity needs than coal."
Mr Long quoted the Australian Energy Market Operator:
"The lowest cost replacement for this retiring capacity [Australia's fleet of ageing coal fired power stations] and energy will be a portfolio of resources, including solar (28 gigawatts), wind (10.5 GW) and storage (17 GW and 90 GWh), complemented by 500 megawatts of flexible gas plant and transmission investment."
PM Morrison also continues the pretence that coal has a strong future.
In fact it is a
dying industry.
Melissa Price showed that she was effectively bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry following a report by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change released on 2018/10/08.
Giles Parkinson wrote a piece for
RenewEconomy the following day covering the Morrison Government's "breathtakingly stupid response to IPCC climate report" in which the 'Environment Minister' featured strongly.
It seems that Ms Price's credentials to call herself Environment Minister are as good, or bad, as those of Rupert Murdoch's man
Graham Lloyd to call himself an Environment Reporter.
I will not write much about Mr Taylor on this page, I have
another page dedicated to the man.
I would think that he would have to be the most biased and dishonest Australian Energy Minister ever.
Natural Disasters Minister David Littleproud had the lead position on
ABC's Media Watch of 2019/09/16.
Quoting from the Media Watch transcript:
"DAVID SPEERS: You say climate’s changing and that’s certainly true. The question is, is this man-made climate change?
DAVID LITTLEPROUD: I’ve got no idea, but does it really matter? I ...
DAVID SPEERS: Sorry, you have no idea whether ...
DAVID LITTLEPROUD: I’m not a scientist. I haven’t made an opinion one way or another, but I don’t think it really matters. I think ...
DAVID SPEERS: Sorry, just to be clear on this, you’re not sure whether man-made climate change is real?
- Speers, Sky News, 10 September, 2019
Can this Australian minister in the Morrison Government really so stupid?
He doesn't know that climate change is man made?
He doesn't think it matters whether or not it is man made?
Again quoting the Media Watch transcript, two days later, Minister Littleproud said in Parliament:
"Let me make it clear: I accept the science on man-made impact on climate change. Always have."
Is the man a shameless liar, is he hopelessly confused, or just stupid?
What does he believe?
What has my country come to, to have a federal minister like this?
While he was Environment Minister, in 2017, Josh Frydenberg went against the advice of his own department, against the wishes of the people of Lord Howe Island, against the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), against economical good sense, and against the environmental imperatives, to block the construction of two wind turbines on the island, condemning the people to stay with expensive and polluting diesel generation. Just because he, and the government he is a part of, hate renewable energy. Monstrous!
For more information refer to the
article in The Guardian by Anne Davies dated 2019/09/18.
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This section added 2019/05/30
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Rosemary Bolger and Nick Baker
reported for SBS in late May 2019 that newly appointed Special Envoy for the Great Barrier Reef Warren Entsch has claimed that "the reef didn't need saving" and refused to accept that climate change was the greatest threat to the reef.
This is totally at odds with what the world's climate scientists are telling us.
He went on to complain about adults "coaching" young people who quite rightly expressed deep concern for their, and the planet's, future.
He said of the adults "They're frightening the living hell out of kids. It's like child abuse and I think they should be held accountable".
If there was any justice in this world people like Warren Entsch would be
held accountable.
This government seems hell-bent on destroying the future that these kids will live through.
Chief of staff John Kunkel
Prime minister Scott Morisson's chief of staff is John Kunkel, the former deputy CEO of the Minerals Council of Australia, one of the main coal lobbying groups.
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This section added 2020/01/23
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Bridget McKenzie, Sports Minister at the time, handed out $100 million dollars of taxpayers money as grants to sporting organisations just before the election on May 2019.
A report by the Auditor General heavily criticised the way that these grants were handed out, as documented by
Jack Snape on the ABC.
The Auditor General said in his report:
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Total denial! 2020/02/03
Printed in the Adelaide Advertiser: "... the inquiry by Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet Secretary Phillip Gaetjens, formerly Mr Morrison's chief-of-staff before be became one of the nations's top public servants, found no evidence of pork-barrelling".
(My emphasis.)
This is obviously a blatant lie.
It is, on its own, quite enough to demonstrate the complete lack of ethical standards in the Morrison government.
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"The award of funding reflected the approach documented by the minister's office of focusing on 'marginal' electorates held by the Coalition as well as those electorates held by other parties or independent members that were to be 'targeted' by the Coalition at the 2019 election...
Applications from projects located in those electorates were more successful in being awarded funding than if funding was allocated on the basis of merit assessed against the published program guidelines."
As of the time of writing Prime Minister Morrison has not condemned any of Ms KcKenzie's actions.
He has said repeatedly things like 'no law has been broken' and he and Ms McKenzie have said 'all the recipients were eligible'.
Shortly before I wrote this section the PM has called for an examination to see if there has been any "breach of ministerial standards".
One could only conclude that if this has not breached ministerial standards then those standards must be very lax.
Whether or not anything illegal was done or whether the ministerial standards have been breached, there can be no doubt at all that the actions of Ms McKenzie were unethical, but the Morrison government seems to place little, if any, weight on ethical standards.
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| The people of Beijing are reminded of what a clear sky looks like
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| Much of the smog is due to the burning of coal
Attribution "Feng Li/Getty Images"
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In a world in which government ministers were held properly to account, PM Scott Morrison, Environment Minister Melissa Price and Energy Minister Angus Taylor would all be tried and convicted of
a crime against humanity and against the biosphere.
What crime can there be greater than for a person in a position of power to knowingly lie in order to support actions that will damage the planet for all future generations of humans and for all life on earth?
Their actions will not even have an economic advantage, there can be no doubt that renewable energy is cheaper than new-build coal.
The only groups to win (and then only in the short term) if the Morrison Government slows renewables development and encourages coal will be the coal industry and their puppets in government.
Australia and the world will suffer, economically and environmentally.
Australia's future is with the renewable energy industry, not with
polluting coal.
We all have a choice in what we do with our lives.
Why would anyone choose to take a course in their lives that would earn them the disgust and condemnation of future generations as these people have done?
Do they believe that the short term benefits to them are sufficient to justify going down in history as the worst of criminals?
Or do they simply not see the big picture?
Probably unprecedented in Australia political history at the beginning of March 2019 seven ministers or former ministers had announced, or were expected to announce, that they intended to resign from Parliament at the coming election due in May.
They were:
- Minister for Defence Christopher Pyne;
- Indigenous Affaires Minister Nigel Scullion;
- Jobs Minister Kelly O'Dwyer;
- Human Services Minister Michael Keenan;
- Former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.
Defence Industry Minister Steven Ciobo and Small Business Minister Craig Laundy were also expected to announce their departure.
It would seem likely that these people were motivated by one or a combination of the following reasons:
- They were fed-up with the culture in the Parliamentary Liberal Party;
- They could see no future for themselves if they remained with the Parliamentary Liberal Party;
- They had had enough of the in-fighting in the Parliamentary Liberal Party;
- They had had enough of the failure of the Parliamentary Liberal Party to act in any way decisively on greenhouse emissions or climate change;
- They could see that the Liberal-National coalition was very likely to lose the coming election and they didn't want to serve one, or probably more, terms in opposition;
- They simply saw that their future prospects would be improved by terminating their parliamentary careers.
It would be nice to be able to believe that number four was the main reason for the resignations, but to credit major party politicians with altruistic, rather than selfish, motivations would be hard to justify.
What do the Australian people want?
A Lowy Institute poll carried out on 1,200 Australian adults on 2018/06/20 showed that 84% of Australians wanted the government to "focus on renewables, even if this means we may need to invest more in infrastructure to make the system more reliable".
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December 2018
The Morrison Government reached a new level of self-delusion.
A press release from Energy Minister Angus Taylor foresaw
"no further investment in large scale renewables, and no more significant emissions cuts – from 2022 all the way through to 2030", should it stay in power.
At the time of writing this note wind farms and utility-scale solar farms were being built at record rates and both wind and solar power were as cheap, or almost as cheap, as power from existing coal-fired power stations and substantially cheaper than new-build coal, and their cost was steadily falling.
By 2022 renewables will be replacing old coal-fired power stations hand-over-hand purely for economic reasons.
The
ABC reported NSW (Coalition government) Energy Minister Don Harwin saying after the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting of December 2018 "it's absolutely imperative that we end the Canberra climate wars, it's absolutely imperative that we get a sensible national approach which brings climate and energy policy together".
The Queensland energy minister said that "we were completely blocked by Angus Taylor", "every state was in unison regarding climate change policy".
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A poll of the people in Energy Minister Taylor's electorate showed that almost twice as many wanted to see Australia decrease its emissions faster, rather than slower.
Blind Freddy could see that there is
no future in the coal industry and that
Australia's energy future is in renewables but the Morrison Government is trying to deny this great opportunity to Australia.
Plainly the Australian people want renewable energy, not more coal power.
Plainly the Australian people want action on climate change.
Plainly the world's and Australia's future is with renewable energy not fossil fuels.
By the time of writing it was clear that renewable energy in the forms of wind and solar PV was cheaper than new-built coal-fired power.
As decarbonisation becomes more urgent any coal-fired power station is likely to have a short life, further eroding its financial justification.
No company is interested in building a coal-fired power station, it would simply be incapable of competing economically with renewables.
The only way a new coal-fired power station will be built in Australia is with heavy subsidisation from the Australian tax-payers, and they plainly do not want it.
Has there ever been a federal government more out of touch with what the Australian people want, what is best for Australia and what the world needs?
I've written about
who wants renewable energy? elsewhere on this site.
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| Nyngan solar farm
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| | At the time of my visit, April 2017, this was the biggest solar farm in Australia, at 102MW.
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The world outside of the Australian government recognises that renewable energy is the future, fossil fuels are the past.
I've written below of
just one renewable energy project that has huge economic potential that, if the Morrison Government had its way, would probably not go ahead.
Fortunately, like so many other renewable energy developments, it seems likely to happen in spite of the best efforts of the federal government to halt progress.
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This section added 2019/12/01
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Hornsdale Power Reserve expansion, November 2019
Nick Toscano wrote an
article in the Sydney Morning Herald on 2019/11/19 about Neoen's proposed 50 per cent expansion of the Hornsdale Power Reserve battery.
Toscano wrote:
South Australian Energy Minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan said the battery was continuing to "break new ground".
"As South Australia continues to increase its share of renewable energy generation, large-scale storage solutions such as grid-scale batteries will help address some of the key challenges impacting South Australia’s power system, such as energy reliability and inertia," he said.
The 'big battery' has been a huge financial and energy success and is appreciated as such by the (Liberal) South Australian government.
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The Hornsdale Power Reserve has been a huge and very valuable success in stabilising the Australian power grid
When the Tesla 'big battery' (more properly the Hornsdale Power Reserve) was first proposed Scott Morrison was reported in
The Daily Telegraph as having said that Mr Musk’s bid to build the world’s largest lithium ion battery wouldn’t solve any energy problems because its capacity is so small.
He said:
“By all means, have the world’s biggest battery, have the world’s biggest banana, have the world’s biggest prawn like we have on the roadside around the country, but that is not solving the problem,”
Morrison said Tesla boss Mr Musk was clearly very good at promotion. “I think he saw [South Australian Labor Premier] Jay Weatherill coming.”
What he demonstrated with this statement was his shameful and
criminal devotion to the fossil fuel industry and his contempt for the truth and ethical standards.
Update February 2020
Energy consultant Auracon produced a report indicating that the amount of money Hornsdale Power Reserve saved consumers in 2019 jumped to $116 million, from $40 million in 2018.
An
article on the report by Renew Economy stated that the total investment for the battery was $96 million.
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This section added 2019/03/06
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Australia has wind and solar renewable energy resources that are well up among the best in the world.
South Australia has
shown very well that wind power can provide about half of an electricity supply with minimal changes to a power grid.
The nation is seeing that solar PV power can also generate substantial percentages of the electricity that the Australian people want and need.
At the time of writing utility-scale solar PV power installations are being built at a great rate.
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German ambassador's visit
On 2019/02/26 Shannon Beattie wrote an
article in the West Australian about the German Ambassador, Dr Anna Prinz, who visited Karratha to learn about the hydrogen-producing potential of the Pilbara region.
She intends to visit again.
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In the Pilbara the
Asian Renewable Energy Hub project, backed by the Macquarie Group and with a value of $22 billion, has been proposed with the intention of exporting electricity by undersea cable to Java and possibly Singapore.
At the time of writing there are a number of pilot projects around Australia testing the economic viability of using our abundant renewable energy to produce clean hydrogen.
Hydrogen can be exported as a gas or it can easily be converted into ammonia which can be exported or used for many purposes including the production of fertilisers; and ammonia can be converted back into hydrogen after exporting, if required.
There seems to be strong optimism in the energy industry that if clean hydrogen is not yet economically very competitive it soon will be.
Again at the time of writing, Energy Minister Angus Taylor, who seems to have an
ideological hatred of wind power, was holding up a feasibility study for what could be Australia's first off-shore wind farm,
The Star of the South.
As discussed elsewhere in these pages coal is no longer needed for producing heat for things like generating electricity, renewable energy is not only much cleaner, but it is also
cheaper.
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This section added 2020/03/01
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It is now becoming clear that renewable energy can also be used for metallurgical purposes.
Coke, made from high-grade coal (usually called coking coal or metallurgical coal), has long been used for smelting ores and making steel, but its replacement with hydrogen is not only possible, it is becoming economically viable.
And hydrogen can be extracted from water using renewable energy.
Iron, steel and other metals can now be made without using fossil fuels.
This has been discussed in an
article published in The Conversation on 2020/02/27 written be Dominique Hes of the University of Melbourne.
Those companies and nations that are earliest to fully develop and implement the technologies involved will have a competitive advantage over those that stay with coal.
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This section added 2020/08/19
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While the Morrison Government continues to support Flinders University
research into a possible and tenuous link between wind turbines and some people possibly losing some sleep they are not funding promising research at the same university going into stage one human trials of a promising Covid-19 vaccine.
It seems that the Morrison Government will support anything that may conceivably put renewable energy in a bad light, but are not willing to invest in the development of a vaccine to protect against a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands.
Our federal government has put five million dollars into the wind farm noise study, billions into keeping the economy going during the Covid pandemic, but are not willing to support this important research.
A Current Affair posted an
article on the internet 2020/08/13 about the Morrison Government's failure to fund the research by Professor Nikolai Petrovsky at Flinders University.
Professor Petrovsky was quoted as saying:
"We've had no support from the federal government to date in any of our program," Professor Petrovsky told A Current Affair.
"We've obviously asked for it but we haven't received anything,"
The article went on to say that Professor Petrovsky would take the phase two trials to Pakistan.
A run-down on vaccines in development in Australia is given in an
RMIT 'Vaccine progress report'.
The Morrison Government has turned its back on these current and future industries because they don't involve coal.
Wind, solar and energy storage in one form or another are plainly the
future of the nation, but the Morrison Government can't see beyond coal, coal and more coal.
With any new industry the advantage is with the early adopters; the Morrison Government has not provided any support for the development of these innovative projects, thus allowing Australia's competitors a head start.
An era when Australia dared to have a vision
An endorsement by Thomas Keneally of the book The Snowy: a History by Siobhan McHugh:
“You should read this tale of an era when Australia dared to have a vision”.
In 2019 no one could accuse the Morrison government of “having a vision”.
When we could be leading the world in renewable energy, instead we are leading the world in clinging to old ways that everyone knows must go as soon as possible - coal in particular.
By the way, the book is a good read.
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| Change in terawatt-hours generated in the National Electricity Market between 2008 and 2018.
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| | Image credit: Simon Holmes à Court,
The Guardian
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The graph on the right records the change in Australia's energy mix in the decade from 2008 to 2018.
In spite of the best efforts of the recent coalition governments, from the
Abbott Government starting in September 2013 to the
MorrisonGov.html, doing all they can to support the coal industry and slow the growth of sustainable energy, renewables have made great inroads into power generation in Australia.
Quoting Simon Holmes à Court in the Guardian article that published the graph:
"Highly polluting brown coal use is down 36.6% and black coal (still dirty!) has fallen 9.4%, mostly replaced by wind and solar."
At the time of writing it was looking like the rate of renewable energy installation and coal power station retirement was only going to increase.
These governments have been nothing short of
criminal in their opposition to action on climate change, but fortunately they have been notably ineffectual in their efforts to stop the transition to renewable energy.
The Morrison Government is opposing a federal Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), just as the Turnbull Government opposed a royal commission into the financial industries.
PM Turnbull was forced into allowing a royal commission into the financial industries and it uncovered a huge amount of exploitative, even criminal, behaviour.
I suspect that a federal ICAC would unearth just as much sculduggery as did the royal commission on the financial industries.
Of course Scomo doesn't want an ICAC, it would uncover his misdeeds and those of others in or close to government.
For more information see
The Chaser.
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| Sundrop Farms – the 40 MW solar thermal installation that powers a huge greenhouses at Port Augusta
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If Scomo really wanted to do some good for reducing emissions he would make sure that the proposed
Aurora Solar Reserve solar thermal power station with energy storage project went ahead at Port Augusta.
Photo taken by my drone 2016/03/14
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In what appears to be a desperate last-ditch attempt to gain some emissions reduction credibility PM Morrison has proposed a scheme that is
breathtaking in its cynicism, shocking in its wastefulness, useless in its effects on emissions, shameful in its failure to grasp clearly visible opportunities and criminal in its betrayal of future generations.
The Emissions Reduction Fund renamed as the Climate Solutions Fund
Ian A. MacKenzie, Senior Lecturer in Economics with the University of Queensland wrote a
piece for The Conversation on 2019/02/26 titled "The government’s $2bn climate fund: a rebadged rehash of old mistakes".
"The government has put a new name on an existing scheme, while steadfastly refusing to learn from mistakes made along the way. In cruder terms, it’s slapped a gleaming coat of lipstick onto a pig of a policy."
Giving money supposedly aimed at reducing emissions to companies so that they can burn more fossil fuels
Paying a foreign-owned company to burn gas
Adam Morton wrote a piece in
The Guardian, 2019/02/25, titled "Emissions reduction fund to pay for fossil fuel plant that would be built anyway".
As part of their Emissions Reduction Fund (rebadged a "Climate Solutions" fund) the Morrison Government announced that it was giving a million dollars of taxpayers' money to South African-owned gold miner Gold Fields to pay for a gas turbine powered electricity generator.
The gold miner stated that they would have built the gas turbine anyway.
If the Morrison Government really wanted to reduce emissions or find climate solutions they would have encouraged Gold Fields to build a solar farm or wind farm rather than installing a gas turbine.
Paying Rio Tinto to burn diesel
In an
article by the Australian Conservation Foundation the Foundation’s Chief Executive Officer, Kelly O’Shanassy, said:
“Rio Tinto is one of the world’s largest companies. It is disturbing that it will receive what looks to amount to several million dollars from government climate change programs to switch from burning one fossil fuel to another."
To make matters even worse, Adam Morton wrote for
The Guardian, 2019/02/26, that the generator had already been commissioned before the Climate Solutions fund opened.
At the same time as PM Morrison announced his Climate Solutions Fund, Energy Minister Angus Taylor, who has justifiably been accused of having a "blind hatred toward renewable energy", was
blocking progress on a feasibility study for Australia's first offshore wind farm, the
Star of the South offshore wind farm in Bass Strait.
I have written about Minister Taylor and his hatred of wind power in particular on
another page on this site.
