Thread: Green washing- Cost- reality and alternative energy

Originally Posted by RANDLOVER

Australian lobby groups oppose greenwashing overhaul as study finds conservation claims lack evidence - ABC News

The Feds are holding an enquiry into greenwashing and want to change the law, but big oil is lobbying against that.

It washes both ways/ Today silly Billion $ Nuclear claim was rather ironic given the billions about to be added to your power bills


The clean energy super highway has hit a roadblock. Here's why

"NSW — $200,000 per kilometre over 20 yearsVIC — $200,000 per kilometre over 25 years
QLD — on average $300,000 per kilometre over 20 years"
ABC link

Instead of real review the Energy Minster claims "Energy minister says replacing coal-fired power stations with nuclear would cost $387 billion

"

I wonder where he gets his numbers from as a really good actual case study of this in Canada suggests some ones pants are on fire Link "Dr. Keefer’s speech at Minerals Week in Australia sharing the story of Ontario’s coal phaseout & the decarbonization of its electricity grid."

Another example were poor planning is impacting on us all. Tax payer subsidies for part time power may not be very bright at all!

It perversely cannabises' it self if this clear example ", Gridcog said large-scale solar farms were, perversely, being hit hardest by the trend because rooftop solar was generally beyond the control of the market operator.It noted utility-scale solar plants were having to pare back generation or switch off entirely during such periods to avoid having to pay to maintain production.
"Price cannibalisation is a major emerging feature of the energy transition," the company wrote on LinkedIn.

"It occurs when increased volumes of renewables with the same generation profile produce at the same time.

"



Rooftop solar '''cannibalising''' power prices as Australian generators pay to stay online - ABC News

With little more to do whilst waiting in a hotel in Greece, I thought I'd open this thread Since I still have a few minutes left, why not spew my 2 cents...

What I have taken away from all this green hubbub over the past 20 years (at least that's when the early seeds were sown in my recollection) is this:

• Green washing is a thing. Who knew
• big oil is being replaced by "big green?" ie. a trillion+ dollar industry pushing their will down everyones throat
  
  • ie. it's all about the money
  • even if there is merit, the best solution will not be chosen (from a technical point of view) only the most profitable
  • scapegoats like CO2 are abused to within an inch of their life
  
  
• follow the money is also applicable, I was once naive enough to think it would not apply to green stuff (WRONG)
• politics play a major role it seems and not just because of money, see below.

I mean, it is fairly straight forward but I thought it useful to say out loud.

Regarding politics, far be it for me to go into tin-foil-hat territory here, that belongs in the conspiracy theory thread elsewhere but...
As we can now see with Russia and it's gas the west has a dependency on there are reasons to try and find alternatives. The same goes for dependency on oil from the middle east. I am not sure nuclear would be a resource we could find enough of "locally" though, in other words: uranium. Then again solar panels are almost exclusively produced in china, a country I am getting quite sick of supporting (well the CCP that is). Since OZ rode through the 2008 financial crisis with relative ease only because they provided china with all the resources it needed it is safe to say you guys are very dependent on them. Perhaps batteries worth a few billion and other "weird" decisions are made on the political understanding that we do appreciate the largest buyer of your goods. From that POV the entire green washing thing is just a shift of power from the middle east and OPEC to china and... well china.

It is easy to think that that is by design but perhaps it is just an opportunity that is being made use of. I for one have given up blaming the governments (locally, regionally, etc.) of deliberately screwing us over where in most cases plain stupidity or at the very least incompetence is the more obvious and most likely culprit.

Circling back to Greece... Since Greece is part of the EU most of the EU rules SHOULD be implemented here they are not since luckily for the more southern countries our benevolent overlords in brussels do allow for some countries to walk a bit slower towards the common goals than others. Take cars for instance. I have seen it mentioned somewhere here on the forum that a fellow member seems to think that OZ is a bit backward and that Australia should have adopted more stringent EURO x (at 7 currently I believe?) emissions standards and blablabla. I guess if you live in a city that you may have a point but...

We drove from our little backwater through Germany, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, North Macedonia and finally into Greece and what struck me was that I found cars with Dutch lettering still on the sides and a Greek license plate with some lettering in Greek on the door also German lettering on trucks and trailers with Bulgarian license plates, etc. etc. Pushing through the mountains here with 5% inclines you would see huge clouds of black smoke bellowing from trucks and cars. I must say I miss the days of seeing trucks like that so at first I did kind of enjoy it. Ahhh the smell of diesel power, the raw bellowing of an unrestrained be it old engine. Of course it got old so the air recirculation button was found quickly to keep the inside of the cabin a bit more breathable. After spending a few days in the second largest city in Greece, Thessaloniki, the pink glasses of vacation wore off and it suddenly occurred to me: All the old cars that are no longer allowed due to emissions in the "rich" north-west of Europe do not get scrapped at all! Yes, some of them are in such a state that it does not make economical sense to transport them 2500k's down to the south and then have a healthy profit margin left so they do get scrapped but... the parts like engines DO live on as spares for the south and east. We get the crap that nobody wants, they take the useful chunks that are easier to transport, but I digress.

It comes down to this: EURO rules are more or less a scam. Yes, they do clean the air up somewhat in your direct neighbourhood however the pollution/emissions of those vehicles that you traded in when you spend your mullah on that virtue signaling tesla POS is NOT going away at all, it's just moved elsewhere where it does not die out for at least another 20 years. Fortunately we all know that CO2 and other emissions respect international borders so that's all good.

One last little example then before I wrap this up. There is a Dutch city called Arnhem which has the most stringent emissions rules in it's city centre of all the Dutch cities at current. With these rules they deleted a whole bunch of pre 2004 diesels in one fell swoop. Being that we dutchies like to be the best boy of the class and be in front this also means old timers, something that virtually all other EU member states consider to be driving heritage. One of the old timer clubs had a pretty smart bloke as a member who did some digging and came to a hilarious result: the removal of those old cars cleaned the air by less than 1% since the bulk of the air pollution in Arnhem comes from the Ruhrgebiet or the very large and dirty industrial area of our German buddies to the east. Guess what; Germany does not cut it's emissions there and Arnhem was to full of itself to alter the rules so they went ahead and forced their stupidity through anyway.

So, as per the topic, what IS the cost of green washing? I find it very hard to say but it is most obviously => 0 and I feel that only looking at the monetary part of this equation is probably not doing it justice. Unfortunately it is not a hip topic to discuss

-P

Geothermal energy is evolving and can be helpful.

What is interesting is several LOOK AT ME hyped up are in the game and while some of it is economic much may not be.


Heat from geothermal damaged a city in Germany in 2009!

"Green gone wrong07/12/2009July 12, 2009Residents near Dortmund were evacuated this week after the ground collapsed around a geothermal heat pump, while in another German town, almost 190 buildings have now been damaged by a geothermal project gone awry."


It was 2007 in "southern German village of Staufen, the news came as little surprise: their town began sinking - and then rising - as a result of geothermal drilling almost two years ago."

A little irony in that Staufen was not far from a Nuclear power plant which was shut down!

On Geothermal Iceland has long had some of the best resources in the World While 80% of Power is carbon free only about 20-30% is Geothermal.
Iceland gets most of its Electrical power from Hydro. It uses most of the Geothermal in heating "The main use of geothermal energy is for space heating, with the heat being distributed to buildings through extensive district-heating systems.[2] Nearly all Icelandic homes are heated with renewable energy, with 90% of homes being via geothermal energy.[6] The remaining homes that are not located in areas with geothermal resources are heated by renewable electricity instead.[7]"

The Governments site LINK
"About 85% of the total primary energy supply in Iceland is derived from domestically produced renewable energy sources. This is the highest share of renewable energy in any national total energy budget.
In 2016 geothermal energy provided about 65% of primary energy, the share of hydropower was 20%, and the share of fossil fuels (mainly oil products for the transport sector) was 15%. In 2013 Iceland also became a producer of wind energy. The main use of geothermal energy is for space heating, with the heat being distributed to buildings through extensive district-heating systems. About 85% of all houses in Iceland are heated with geothermal energy.
In 2015, the total electricity consumption in Iceland was 18,798 GWh. Renewable energy provided almost 100% of electricity production, with about 73% coming from hydropower and 27% from geothermal power. Most of the hydropower plants are owned by Landsvirkjun (the National Power Company) which is the main supplier of electricity in Iceland. Iceland is the world's largest green energy producer per capita and largest electricity producer per capita, with approximately 55,000 kWh per person per year. In comparison, the EU average is less than 6,000 kWh.
"

Germany dreaming it can be like Iceland is facing the reality of its choice to prematurely shut down its Nuclear Power plants "German official says Germany 'should end dreams' of phasing out coal by 2030

To meet its energy needs through winter, Germany, a world leader in renewable energy, has had to keep coal plants running, including several mothballed plants it brought back online earlier in October.
" Link

Cadogan is at it again.Greenwashing.
I can't put up the link,but this is a hint.

"New diesel EVs for the Outback!"

Black outs in Germany by DW Had the Lars Kissau of BASF at about minute 19 state. If the entire German chemical industry electrified it would use 100% of all the current German power generation by itself! Thats before the other BIGGER German industry joins the party!

Another quote was German energy transition is like "Jumping out of an airplane with out a parachute and cheerly explaining you will solve the problem on the way down! DW had a person some of us might think a nut who kept saying its all ok Jens Hegenberg statements had my jaw on the ground with much of his views.

Min 28 suggest Germany needs just 14000km of new High Voltage power lines!!!! Min 29 showing the issues confronting high voltage power lines! Professor Harald Schwarz statement. "IF THEY KEEP IGNORING THE PHYSICS" the probability of (Blackouts) is very very high' Min 31
That number in Germany is interesting in the Australian claims of just 10,000 km of HV lines AEMO suggested?


I am not wishing pain on Germany. Clearly a lot of people in Germany are aware of the limitations and huge risks of not using physics and the science required. They need to make their choices. My thoughts are they will change course back to the existing Nuclear power plants they have hopefully before it hurts people.

Sorry a rant again


"How to spin it!

"Some of the trends now seem locked in for the year: wind and solar are likely to be in a dead heat with coal,” Turner reported, “and all carbon-emissions-free sources combined will account for roughly 40 percent of US electricity production.”"

Not knocking wind and solar. The part time power at times they provide can be useful or chaos depending on the cyclical/seasonal nature of their energy production.

The reliable full time " carbon-emissions-free sources" in the US is over the entire year only from one type of power which is not mentioned untill the end in the almost the greenwashed article cut and pasted. It did eventually add "wind, solar, and hydroelectric—they only generated 22%"
It did not cover the issues of the peaks and trough, Feast or famine the cyclical/seasonal nature of wind, solar and hydro.

It added Nuclear then immediately added a negative to it. Not considering Feast or famine the cyclical/seasonal nature of wind, solar and hydro or the unbelievably/impossibly high costs of new transmission lines and grid sized storage is greenwashing!"

"You came here for truths and straight talk, so, here's a doozy."
Standing on stage at the National Press Club — being beamed live into offices and lounge rooms across the country — one of Australia's top energy bosses was preparing to say what few in the industry will acknowledge publicly.
Jeff Dimery — CEO of Alinta Energy – looked up from his notes on the lectern and delivered the promised doozy to the audience.

"Australians will have to pay more for energy in future," he said.

"We need to be honest about that."
Honesty – and transparency – are features that have arguably been missing from an often ideologically driven and contorted debate about energy policy in this country.
Clean energy 'half-truth



The Australian Energy Market Operator's own figures suggest the transition will cost around $383 billion between now and 2050.
When asked who pays, Dimery replied: "it all comes from consumers, whether through the bill directly or through the tax base.

When has any government cost estimate been correct

I suspect the real cost will be massively over that number of 383 billion as industry will leave to smarter places with cheap reliable nuclear power in Canada, USA, France and other places not chasing the FREE wind and solar conspiracy.

Not anti wind or solar! I may be full of hot air and have two solar arrays that save me a lot of money

Your power bills are going up, according to one energy boss. Here’s why - ABC News

The Cost of Electricity by country can already be used to see where industry and jobs are going to. I know it's not here!!!

Cost of Electricity by Country 2024