9 June 2015, Renew Economy, How South Australia coped without any baseload power: South Australia’s electricity system was put the test over the long weekend when the state’s only baseload power contributor, the brown coal Northern power station near Augusta, suddenly tripped and stopped providing power. The incident was caused by a fire that caused several injuries, including one serious injury to a worker still in hospital. This is not the first time that South Australia has been without baseload coal power, of course. Northern was mothballed for nearly a year because of the declining economics of the coal generator. The difference with this event is that it came unannounced. While declines and increases in the output of wind and solar are quite predictable, sudden outages in baseload fossil fuels are not, which is why the energy system needs a large amount of redundancy to support large centralised generation. Read More here
Category Archives: Fossil Fuel Reduction
r ageing populations could help slow greenhouse emissions: finally -something good about being a Baby Boomer! In many parts of the world, and particularly in developed countries, populations are getting older. Of the baby boomers (born between 1945 and 1965), the oldest are now well into their sixties, and in their lifetimes fertility rates have fallen while life expectancies have climbed… Population ageing will put significant pressure on the fiscal policies of governments around the world. Healthcare and pension systems are expected to bear the brunt, while ageing populations will shrink the labour force, putting downward pressure on economic productivity. But what if there’s an upside for the environment? My recent research has found that, in rich countries at least, ageing populations might help to drive down greenhouse gas emissions. Read More here
9 June 2015, Renew Economy. Pressure on Abbott’s coal strategy as G7 signals end of fossil fuels: Less than a month after the Abbott government committed billions of dollars in funding to prop up Australia’s coal industry, the world’s major G7 democracies have set a deadline for weaning their economies off carbon intensive fuel sources like coal, oil and gas – and to help developing countries do the same – offering one of the clearest signals yet that the age of fossil fuels is coming to an end. At the close of the weekend Summit in Germany, the leaders of the Group of Seven nations – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US – pledged in a communique to develop long-term strategies to combat climate change, including abandoning fossil fuels by the end of the century. Read More here
8 June 2015 Energy Post, Going for gas: the risky strategy of the world’s largest companies: They are the biggest companies in the world and they are making a huge bet: they are staking their – and our – future on natural gas. At the World Gas Conference in Paris, the major oil companies all avowed their belief that gas will be the world’s “fuel of choice”, because it is “the cleanest fossil fuel”, “abundant” and “competitive”. But Karel Beckman argues they are overstating the case for gas. And may even be betting on the wrong horse. “The question before us today defines our industry and perhaps our society in the 21st Century.” The “question” that Robert Franklin, President of Exxon Mobil’s Gas and Power Marketing Company, was referring to, during a panel debate at the World Gas Conference in Paris (1-5 June), was that of “how to meet the world’s energy demand while reducing the risk of climate change”. The answer to both sides of this question, he said, increasingly was: natural gas. Franklin was not alone. At the 26th edition of their triennial global gathering, the gas industry made it abundantly clear that they believe gas is the foremost solution to the world’s energy problems. One CEO after the other sang the praises of what Gazprom lovingly calls the “blue fuel”. Read More here