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OT: Plebiscite 24-Jun-2011 At 7:34:47 AM evanbb

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On 24/06/2011 Wendy wrote:
>I normally agree with you on most things, but are you really saying you
>think the market will sort out carbon emissions?
No, I don't. I'm strongly of the opinion that economy-wide goals should be managed by Government for the top-down control, and agree on the penalties. But, that will take time and actually probably would crash the shit out of our economy. An astonishing amount of our resources income is based on industries that really need to change; probably a higher proportion of emissions intensive industries than any other country in the world, which I suspect is the reason the denialist movement has gained so much traction.

So, my long run goal is to reduce emissions, but I think the first step to doing that must be altering our economy in such a way that we change our emissions intensity. To do this you can either crash demand by closing industries or clean up supply by changing the stationary generating mix. Note 85% I think of our emissions are from burning coal for electricity.

I've spent this year working only on coal and it is astonishing how entrenched into our economy and infrastructure the whole industry is. The power plants are built literally on top of the deposits, in big clusters in the Hunter, SE Qld and Victoria. The big loads are built nearby, with the high capacity carriers in between, with the rest of the grid fanning out from those points. In general the best renewable sources are not currently power generating hubs, so the grid will have to be seriously unpicked and rebuilt to connect them all and get power back to areas of high demand. That's a big job.

And I don't think Government should deliver it. I don't think they have the capacity and their incentives are all wrong. When Government spends money, they are chiefly concerned with managing risk. 4 people died in broadly related circumstances while installing ceiling insulation and the papers made it sound like the world would end, imagine the cacophony if the power grid crashed, or if project costs blew out by 80, 100 billion dollars? So they choose very low risk projects and spend a long time thinking about how to do that. From what I have seen, private energy companies are far better set up to deliver these projects and quickly. Markets are good for this sort of thing because they provide an incentive to take risk, and risk is where the big breakthroughs and innovations are made.

I am pretty pessimistic about Australia's ability to achieve any targets. The task required, plus the level of public apathy combined with the current political state mean it's going to be 5 years at least before we start in any meaningful way. If we'd started 10 years ago, as the Greens suggested, we could well be sitting on some exceptional intellectual property to sell to the world and we'd be laughing about alumium smelting. But since then the growth in demand through more wide spread air conditioning use and uncertainty about the electricity market mean the grid is far less able to cope with change. We need something fast and innovative, set a price on carbon to drive innovation and let the smart people who are geared up for this stuff just go for it.

I admit to being thoroughly
>cynical. I'd rather see swift government action enforcing emission reductions.
> I agree with ni that all this nannying around has had diddly squat effect.
> Although I'm not sure what answer s/he was offering there?
>