Households consume around 30 per cent of Australia’s total energy account. They’ve historically been the most expensive to supply, have the most volatile demand and are most politically sensitive customers on the grid. One way to reduce household greenhouse emissions is to use zero emissions electricity for natural gas and run an electric car on …
Household electrification is unlikely to produce free money Read More »
Australia is the world’s second biggest gas exporter, yet still we may face a regional version of the current European-styled gas supply crunch. Nationals leaders need not worry: Queensland is not affected. The ground zero of this looming gas shortage is Victoria, the result of declining local production and infrastructure constraints. How this gas market …
It’s clear the Morrison Government intends to commit to a net zero emissions target by 2050 in time for the Glasgow climate summit in early November. There is no sudden epiphany, this is pure politics, both national and global. The groundwork for the Coalition’s climate pivot has been under development for weeks now. Coalition backbenchers …
Greenhouse emissions are a stock, not a flow. Which means every tonne of carbon dioxide not emitted into the atmosphere, regardless of how this is achieved, delivers against the objective of abating emissions. The popular debate around climate has been reduced to an overly simplistic narrative around good versus evil. Renewables are good, coal is …
The carbon price in Europe is soaring, currently approaching AUD$100 a tonne. That’s while the European economy is forging out of its COVID-19 recession with the EU’s economy predicted to grow by around 4.8 per cent in 2021 and more of the same in 2022. Pricing emissions doesn’t appear to be holding the European economy …
High EU carbon prices: does ambition exceed reality? Read More »
Four years ago in the days before green hydrogen was the buzz word, pumped hydro was the buzz word. Or words. In March 2017 then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced the 2000MW Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro scheme, promising a price tag of $2 billion. Later that year a report from The Australian National University in …
Australia’s largest electricity user, the Tomago aluminium smelter in NSW, says it won’t be renewing its coal fired electricity contract with AGL after 2028 because it will be switching to renewables to power the smelter. This is the same Tomago smelter that had been leaning on AGL and the Federal Government to extend the life …
Europe has now issued more than USD500 billion in green bonds, a tsunami of investment cash, some of it heading into a wind or solar farm near you. Green or climate bonds are the same as conventional bonds: financial instruments issued by governments, banks and companies to raise money which is then invested in climate-related …
In the world of electricity market nerds the Ford vs Holden debate of the past decade has been about how you pay for the electricity generated. This has come down to two different models: energy-only market design and capacity markets. Energy-only markets are for the purists: they pay generators only for the electricity they dispatch …
