Posted on 05/16/2018 7:03:35 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Japan has 45 new high-energy, low-emission (HELE) coal-fired power plants on the drawing boards. These will probably burn high-quality Australian coal. And despite the tsunami that hit Japan, nuclear power still generates about 20% of Japan's electricity.
Chinese companies have plans to build 700 new coal power plants all over the world, mostly in China. In addition, China will bring five new nuclear power reactors online in 2018 and has plans for a further six to eight units.
India generates more than 65% of its electricity from thermal power plants, and about 85% of these plants are coal-fired. India's state-run power utility plans to invest $10 billion in new coal-fired power stations over the next five years, and its thermal coal imports rose by more than 15% in the first three months of 2018. India also has 22 nuclear reactors in operation at seven sites and 11 more reactors are under construction.
Taiwan is home to Taichung Power Plant, the world's largest coal-fired power plant, with an installed capacity of 5,500 MW.
Worldwide, about 1,600 new coal-fired power plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries. Many of these power plants will utilize HELE technology.
Power plants burning low-energy lignite are being closed in Australia but still being built elsewhere. There are 19 such facilities in various stages of approval, planning, or construction in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Greece, Germany, Poland, Romania, and Slovenia.
Australia is the odd man of Asia. We march to the green drum.
Despite having huge resources of coal and uranium, Australia has no nuclear powered electricity and has not built a significant coal-fired power station since Kogan Creek was opened eleven years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Yes but California will combat it by forcing homebuilders to put solar panels on the roofs of all new homes.
Y’know, solar might actually work in Australia.
They could cover huge sections of the Outback with solar panels.
They’d need a storage system for off hours, though.
I understand that most writers may be liberal arts majors, but they still need to get their technical words right. That should say:
The climate in the Australian “outback” is actually very conducive for solar power, since very little rain falls there. Why Australia hasn’t built massive solar farms there is beyond me.
You are really asking a lot from a liberal brain.
The green panaceas of windmills and solar farms will never be able to power any industrialized society as they are too intermittent and any storage technology will always be subject to loss due entropy. The Aussie greens might not be too popular when the country experiences rolling blackouts and most of the population is sweltering or freezing in darkened homes
The Abos probably want a big cut of the action.
Electricity from the grid is so expensive in Australia that the payback period of privately-owned solar panels is just a couple of years, if all the power is used on site (i.e. no storage or buybacks). Australia’s grid is largely foreign owned, quite a lot by the governments of Singapore and China.
The author mentioned fracking. Australia’s natural gas situation is quite bad too, but not for a lack of fracking. Australia is one of the world’s largest exporters of natural gas, but at a loss. Domestic customers face supply shortages and are charged several times the international price to make up for the losses, to the point where Australian gas distributors are planning import terminals to provide their customers with cheaper gas from overseas. The Australian gas exporting company Santos is in the process of being sold to foreign interests.
Anyway, Australia is in decline for many more reasons than the author states. Look for the country to be this century’s Argentina.
“Australia is in decline for many more reasons than the author states.”
Would you explain briefly a few of those reasons if you have a minute? I know so little about Australia but am interested. Thanks.
Transmission network lacking. Long distances from source to high population density areas. Building such a network would probably cost more than buying and installing the solar cells.
Not real practical in the outback, which lacks water.
That is a major issue, since probably only the city of Perth in western Australia can benefit from cheap power transmission from solar cell farms. The power transmission distance from solar cell farms in the "outback" to most other large Australian cities could make it a less viable proposition.
It’s difficult to cover everything, but I think the main things are:
- Economic mismanagement. Australia is highly indebted and most productive industries have shut down. At this point it will be very difficult to recover, as the factories have had their equipment sold off or scrapped, and there is just nothing to start back up. Anybody trying to start up a new business is almost like a pioneer having to set up their own supply lines for everything, except that they face extremely high unavoidable costs and a punitive taxation system.
- Very high immigration rate of people from foreign cultures, with associated ghettoization. There is now a large Chinese population that has begun to assert itself politically and being used by the PRC to pressure Australia. Australia only pretends to have strict border controls: last year it received 800,000 long-term immigrants and the rate keeps increasing.
- related to the above, minimal investment in infrastructure. Australia’s largest cities already suffer with serious traffic congestion and very high land values, but their populations are on track to double in the next couple of decades. Very little new infrastructure has been built in recent times and there is no plan for more even with the high population growth. High land values and crowding make infrastructure especially difficult to develop. Living conditions in the cities will absolutely decline, but getting out of the cities is difficult.
- Declining educational standards. Australia’s formerly excellent universities have been turned into degree mills in pursuit of tuition fees from foreign students, and also used to “fix” youth unemployment statistics (as youths in education are not counted as unemployed).
- Massive socialist state and an entitlement mentality in the population. Half the country is on some sort of welfare, there is little genuine culture of self reliance or responsibility. Productive activities are taxed and regulated to death. And, honestly, they are rude and entitled.
- housing bubble that stifles productive activities - the whole system has basically been rigged to support a land bubble, which stifles all economically productive activities. Land even in towns with a population of a few tens of thousands is priced similarly to American cities with populations in the millions. Australian banks have borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars from overseas to support the high prices.
- the above also forces up the cost of doing business directly and indirectly in various ways (high rents, wage demands, etc)
- few constitutional or statutory civil rights. There is almost nothing to protect the population from government overreach. There is nothing equivalent to the Bill of Rights, just a vague protection of some political speech, no real gun rights, etc. Month-long waiting periods to buy guns and the police having the right to drop in and make sure your guns are safely locked up doesn’t count as freedom to own guns.
- no real culture of conservatism - even if you come into FR threads about gun control or the recent one about Australia banning cash transactions over $7500 you will see some Australian posters, who are indeed conservative by Australian standards but still defend those sort of policies. So, not only is there no legal protection, there is no cultural protection which would protect the population by way of a backlash against the government that infringes the people’s rights.
- unfavorable trade deals, endemic high-level government corruption, etc
NYS gets less than 2% of its electricity from coal fired plants. Australia should check out NYS and see what that’s done for us.
The Hydro storage can be hundreds of miles away from the solar farm. That’s what power transmission lines are for.
Need those new coal plants to keep al those so-called “electric” cars charged. So-called because an electric car is in reality a coal-fired car which the greenies seem to overlook.
I had no idea Australia was in such a decline. How terrible. Half of the country on some type of welfare and many industries shut down—sounds like the U.S. Hopefully, with President Trump’s policies, things are turning around here.
And what a sad statement about those trying to start new businesses. That alone can kill creativity and cause people to settle for the welfare system.
I’m really surprised at no real culture of conservatism. I must have had a misinformed opinion of Australians.
Guess with all the problems you’ve listed, it seems a dim outlook for the country. I appreciate your very thorough and informative post, thanks so much. I hope somehow things can change for the better for Australia.
Long-distance power transmission lines are exactly what Australia lacks. If you look at a population density map, you will see that areas of dense population are long, long distances from any viable solar location. Pumped storage is only practical in a very few geographic locations.
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